Animal testing

Essay by mustangmanUniversity, Bachelor's May 2008

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Animal Rights: Legal or Inhumane?"They're Pinky and the BrainThey're Pinky and the BrainOne is a genius; the other's insaneThey're laboratory miceTheir genes have been splicedThey're Pinky, they're Pinky and the Brain, BrainBrain, Brain, Brain."This theme song to a popular cartoon is a mockery dealing with experiments carried out on animals. In the cartoon, one mouse is made very smart and wants to take over the world while the other is clearly not as smart. While the cartoon makes jokes, the reality is that mice and other animals are being used for medical tests every day. For some people, this testing brings up ethical questions. One of the biggest questions is, Is it really necessary to take the lives of animals in the name of science and for the betterment of humanity? Animal testing is too important to stop because of the benefits they have produced and those still waiting to be discovered.

To animal rights activists, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the answer to the question of taking animals lives for scientific purposes is no. PETA pressures labs into halting experiments because they believe that animals are not to be used by humans for "food, clothing, entertainment, or to experiment on" (PETA). Its stance is that any testing is painful, inhumane, and unnecessary when alternatives are available. The PETA website says that, "animals, like humans, have interests that cannot be sacrificed or traded away simply because it might benefit others" (PETA). Essentially, PETA is of the opinion that animals and humans should have identical rights. In their press releases, PETA puts out pictures of rabbits with open flesh wounds and dogs with rashes on their skins--all in an attempt to disgust people into sympathy for their cause. In actuality the number of lab animals used...