The cruelty of animal testing
Chemical, pharmaceutical, and medical research laboratories use live animals to test everything from shampoo to surgical procedures. There are more than 115 million dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, and other mammals that suffer and die each year, but 80 percent of the lab animals used – mice, rats and birds – are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act, and therefore are not counted. For research and teaching labs, animals are merely disposable tools. Are the animals hurt during testing? Animals endure chemicals being dripped into their eyes, injected into their bodies, forced up their nostrils or forced down their throats. They are addicted to drugs, forced to inhale/ingest toxic substances, subjected to maternal deprivation, deafened, blinded, burned, stapled, and infected with disease viruses. These treatments are exempt from anti-cruelty statutes, and worse yet, undercover investigations have exposed violations of animal welfare policies and cases of extreme negligence at labs...