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The Issues - Animal Testing

Animal experimentation, also called vivisection, causes a typically slow, grisly death for over 20 million animals in the United States every year. Animals are used for a variety of purposes, for example they may be forced to ingest lethal quantities of a chemical substance or have debilitating injuries done to them and then be dissected. The overwhelming majority of animal testing is done for product research, psychology experiments, and basic research (as opposed to new medical research). Animals are still used for cosmetics and household products testing by many companies.

In addition to the cruelties of animal testing, a growing portion of the scientific community has been expressing doubt about the validity of animal research as a reputable method of gathering information about illness, disease, and the human anatomy. Animals of a different species are significantly different in their biology and physiology, and as a result hundreds of products and medicines tested safe on animals have gone on to kill or seriously injure human beings. By the research industry’s own estimates, the results of testing a product on animals is less than 50% likely to predict the effects of the same product on human beings. In other words, it would be just as effective to flip a coin as to conduct painful animal tests. Furthermore, by the industry’s own figures over 95% of products tested “safe” on animals are eventually discarded as dangerous or unnecessary for human beings.

Many large pharmaceutical companies use animal testing as a shield against patient lawsuits. If a drug turns out to kill or seriously injure human beings, the company can – and in court cases successfully has – pointed to animal research that “proved” the drug safe in order to avoid financial liability. In fact, the fourth leading cause of hospitalization in the United States – one in every seven patients – is adverse reactions to prescription drugs that had been deemed “safe” by animal tests.

All of this testing is occurring at the same time as major scientific advances provide more and more accurate alternatives to animal testing. If you are against the testing of cosmetics, personal household products, and other items on animals, please click here to find out which companies do and do not test on animals. Please shop cruelty-free for the animals’ sake!

"I abhor vivisection. It should at least be curbed. Better it should be abolished. I know of no achievement through vivisection, no scientific discovery that could not have been obtained without such barbarism and cruelty. The whole thing is evil."
-Charles W. Mayo, MD (1961), son of the co-founder of the Mayo Clinic

"The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse... We have cured mice of cancer for decades -- and it simply didn't work in humans."
- Dr. Richard Klausner, Director of the National Cancer Institute

"During my medical education... I found vivisection horrible, barbarous and above all unnecessary."
- Carl Jung, MD, one of the founders of modern psychology