Animal Cruelty

Essay by Bob ClarkHigh School, 12th gradeA-, January 1997

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A little bit opinionated, but lots of info -

The topic of animal cruelty is one of great importance to the wold today. Why we humans have the right reserved to treat animals as lesser individuals is beyond me. Animals are fulfilling their part in the ecosystems and communities of the earth, and to the best extent that they are able. For example, a spider is being the best possible spider that it can be, spinning webs and working diligently at what it knows best, not bothering any creatures of the earth besides the ones which it needs to capture for food. We, as humans, decided that we are a much advanced life form and can basically treat anything else in this world in ways which we cannot imagine being treated. As a result the threads holding our earth together tightly in the balance are being slowly unraveled to lead into ultimate self-destruction.

In 1988, 16, 989 animals died in laboratories in the United Kingdom. This was due to such tests as acute and chronic toxicity experiments, where the animals are forced to consume substances such as perfume, make-up and other beauty products and are often literally poisoned, their systems literally overloaded by the substance in question. Another testing method is the Lethal Dose 50 percent test or LD50. In this procedure at least half of the animals must die in order for the government to figure out how much a human can ingest without dying.

In one such test some animals were fed 4. lb. of lipstick and one ended up dying of intestinal obstruction. In another, 7 pints of melted eye shadow was fed to rats. In yet another, mice were wrapped in tin foil and grilled in ultraviolet light to test a sun block cream for a...