Right now, millions of mice, rats, rabbits, primates, cats, dogs, and other animals

are locked inside barren cages in laboratories across the country. They languish
in pain, suffer from extreme frustration, ache with loneliness, and long to be free.
Instead, all they can do is sit and wait in fear of the next terrifying and painful
procedure that will be performed on them. The complete lack of environmental
enrichment and the stress of their living situation cause some animals to develop
neurotic types of behavior such as incessantly spinning in circles, rocking back
and forth, pulling out their own fur, and even biting themselves. They shake and
cower in fear whenever someone approaches, and their blood pressure spikes
dramatically. After enduring a life of pain, loneliness, and terror, almost all of
them will be killed.
There are many non-animal test methods that can be used in place of tests on
animals. Not only are these non-animal tests more humane, they also have the
potential to be cheaper, faster, and more relevant to humans.
While some of the experimentation conducted on animals today is required by
law, most of it is not. In fact, a number of countries have implemented bans on
the testing of certain types of products on animals, such as the cosmetics testing
bans in the European Union, India, and Israel.
Millions of Animals Suffer and Die in Testing, Training, and Other Experiments
More than 100 million animals suffer and die in the U.S. every year in cruel
chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics tests as well as in medical training exercises
and curiosity-driven medical experiments at universities. Animals also suffer and
die in classroom biology experiments and dissection, even though modern nonanimal tests have repeatedly been shown to have more educational value, save
teachers time, and save schools money. Exact numbers arent available because
mice, rats, birds, and cold-blooded animalswho make up more than 99 percent
of animals used in experimentsare not covered by even the minimal
protections of the Animal Welfare Act and therefore go uncounted.
Examples of animal tests include forcing mice and rats to inhale toxic fumes,
force-feeding dogs pesticides, and dripping corrosive chemicals into rabbits
sensitive eyes. Even if a product harms animals, it can still be marketed to
consumers. Conversely, just because a product was shown to be safe in animals
does not guarantee that it will be safe to use in humans.
Taxpayer and Health Charities Dollars Fund Experiments on Animals
Animals are also used in toxicity tests conducted as part of massive regulatory
testing programs that are often funded by U.S. taxpayers money. The
Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the
National Toxicology Program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are just a
few of the government agencies that subject animals to crude, painful tests.
The federal government and many health charities waste precious dollars from
taxpayers and generous donors on animal experiments at universities and
private laboratories instead of on promising clinical, in vitro, epidemiological, and
other non-animal studies that are actually relevant to humans.

What You Can Do

Each of us can help prevent animal suffering and deaths by buying cruelty-free
products, donating only to charities that dont experiment on animals, requesting
alternatives to animal dissection, demanding the immediate implementation of
humane, effective non-animal tests by government agencies and corporations,
and calling on our alma maters to stop experimenting on animals.
With the help of our members and supporters, PETA campaigns globally to
expose and end the use of animals in experiments. Some of our efforts include
the following:
Groundbreaking undercover work and colorful advocacy campaigns to educate
the public
Pushing government agencies to stop funding and conducting experiments on
animals
Encouraging pharmaceutical, chemical, and consumer product companies to
replace tests on animals with more effective non-animal methods
Helping students and teachers end dissection in the classroom
Funding humane non-animal research
Publishing scientific papers on the superiority of non-animal test methods
Urging health charities not to invest in dead-end tests on animals
This multifaceted approach yields scores of victories for animals imprisoned in
laboratories every year.
Animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments. The
California Biomedical Research Association states that nearly every medical
breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using
animals. [9] Experiments in which dogs had their pancreases removed led
directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics. [101]
The polio vaccine, tested on animals, reduced the global occurrence of the
disease from 350,000 cases in 1988 to 223 cases in 2012. [112] 113] Animal
research has also contributed to major advances in understanding and treating
conditions such as breast cancer, brain injury, childhood leukemia, cystic fibrosis,
malaria, multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, and many others, and was instrumental
in the development of pacemakers, cardiac valve substitutes, and anesthetics.
[10] [11] [12] [13] Chris Abee, Director of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson
Cancer Center's animal research facility, states that "we wouldn't have a vaccine
for hepatitis B without chimpanzees," and says that the use of chimps is "our
best hope" for finding a vaccine for Hepatitis C, a disease that kills 15,000
Americans annually. If thalidomide had been properly tested on pregnant
animals, its potential for causing severe birth defects would have been
discovered before the drug became legal for human use. [14]
There is no adequate alternative to testing on a living, whole-body system.Living
systems like human beings and animals are extremely complex. Studying cell
cultures in a petri dish, while sometimes useful, does not provide the opportunity
to study interrelated processes occurring in the central nervous system,

endocrine system, and immune system. [9] Evaluating a drug for side effects
requires a circulatory system to carry the medicine to different organs. [15] Also,
conditions such as blindness and high blood pressure cannot be studied in tissue
cultures. [9] Computer models can only be reliable if accurate information
gleaned from animal research is used to build the models in the first place. [16]
Furthermore, even the most powerful supercomputers are unable to accurately
simulate the workings of complex organs such as the brain. [12]

Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human
beings in many ways. Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and
mice are 98% genetically similar to humans. [9] All mammals, including humans,
are descended from common ancestors, and all have the same set of organs
(heart, kidneys, lungs, etc.) that function in essentially the same way with the
help of a bloodstream and central nervous system. [17] Because animals and
humans are so biologically similar, they are susceptible to many of the same
conditions and illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. [18]
Animals must be used in cases when ethical considerations prevent the use of
human subjects. When testing medicines for potential toxicity, the lives of
human volunteers should not be put in danger unnecessarily. It would be
unethical to perform invasive experimental procedures on human beings before
the methods have been tested on animals, and some experiments involve
genetic manipulation that would be unacceptable to impose on human subjects
before animal testing. [19] The World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki
states that human trials should be preceded by tests on animals. [20]
Animals themselves benefit from the results of animal testing. If vaccines were
not tested on animals, millions of animals would have died from rabies,
distemper, feline leukemia, infectious hepatitis virus, tetanus, anthrax, and
canine parvo virus. Treatments for animals developed using animal testing also
include pacemakers for heart disease and remedies for glaucoma and hip
dysplasia. [9] [21] Animal testing has also been instrumental in saving
endangered species from extinction, including the black-footed ferret, the
California condor and the tamarins of Brazil. [13] [9] Koalas, ravaged by an
epidemic of sexually transmitted chlamydia and now classified as endangered in
some regions of Australia, are being tested with new chlamydia vaccines that
may stall the animal's disappearance. [22] [18] The American Veterinary Medical
Association (AVMA) endorses animal testing. [23]
Animal research is highly regulated, with laws in place to protect animals from
mistreatment. In addition to local and state laws and guidelines, animal research
has been regulated by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) since 1966. As well
as stipulating minimum housing standards for research animals (enclosure size,
temperature, access to clean food and water, and others), the AWA also requires
regular inspections by veterinarians. [3] All proposals to use animals for research
must be approved by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)
set up by each research facility. Humane treatment is enforced by each facility's
IACUC, and most major research institutions' programs are voluntarily reviewed
for humane practices by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of
Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC). [24] [25] All institutions

receiving funding from the US Public Health Service (PHS) must comply with the
PHS Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. [3] [26] [27] [28]
Animals often make better research subjects than human beings because of their
shorter life cycles. Laboratory mice, for example, live for only two to three years,
so researchers can study the effects of treatments or genetic manipulation over
a whole lifespan, or across several generations, which would be infeasible using
human subjects. [29] [9] Mice and rats are particularly well-suited to long-term
cancer research, partly because of their short lifespans. [30]
Animal researchers treat animals humanely, both for the animals' sake and to
ensure reliable test results. Research animals are cared for by veterinarians,
husbandry specialists, and animal health technicians to ensure their well-being
and more accurate findings. According to Nature Genetics "stressed or crowded
animals produce unreliable research results, and many phenotypes are only
accessible in contented animals in enriched environments, it is in the best
interests of the researchers not to cut corners or to neglect welfare issues." [31]
At Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's animal research facility, for example, dogs are
given exercise breaks twice daily to socialize with their caretakers and other
dogs, and a "toy rotation program" provides opportunities for play.[32]
Animals do not have rights, therefore it is acceptable to experiment on them.
Animals do not have the cognitive ability or moral judgment that humans do and
because of this they have been treated differently than humans by nearly every
culture throughout recorded history. If we granted animals rights, all humans
would have to become vegetarians, and hunting would need to be outlawed. [33]
[34]
The vast majority of biologists and several of the largest biomedical and health
organizations in the United States endorse animal testing. A 2011 poll of nearly
1,000 biomedical scientists conducted by the science journal Nature found that
more than 90% "agreed that the use of animals in research is essential." [35] The
American Cancer Society, American Physiological Society, National Association
for Biomedical Research, American Heart Association, and the Society of
Toxicology all advocate the use of animals in scientific research. [36] [37] [38]
[39] [40]
Some cosmetics and health care products must be tested on animals to ensure
their safety. American women use an average of 12 personal care products per
day, so product safety is of great importance. [41] The US Food and Drug
Administration endorses the use of animal tests on cosmetics to "assure the
safety of a product or ingredient." [42] China requires that all cosmetics be
tested on animals before they go on sale, so cosmetics companies must have
their products tested on animals if they want distribution in China. [43] Mosquito
repellent, which helps protect people from malaria and other dangerous
illnesses, must undergo toxicological testing (which involves animal testing) in
order to be sold in the United States and Europe. [44]
Religious traditions allow for human dominion over animals. The Bible states in
Genesis 1:26: "And God said... let them [human beings] have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." [45] The BBC
reports that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim teaching allows for animal

experimentation as long as there is no unnecessary pain inflicted and there is a

real possibility of benefit to human beings. [46]
Relatively few animals are used in research, which is a small price to pay for
advancing medical progress. People in the United States eat 9 billion chickens
and 150 million cattle, pigs and sheep annually, yet we only use around 26
million animals for research, 95% of which are rodents, birds and fish. [1] [2]
[115] We eat more than 1,800 times the number of pigs than the number used in
research, and we consume more than 340 chickens for every research animal.
[2]
Animal testing is cruel and inhumane. According to Humane Society
International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force
feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of
physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing
process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and "killing by
carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means." [47]
The Draize eye test, used by cosmetics companies to evaluate irritation caused
by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks
with their eyelids held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they
cannot blink away the products being tested. [48] [49] The commonly used LD50
(lethal dose 50) test involves finding out which dose of a chemical will kill 50% of
the animals being used in the experiment. [65] [102] The US Department of
Agriculture (USDA) reported in 2010 that 97,123 animals suffered pain during
experiments while being given no anesthesia for relief, including 1,395 primates,
5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters. [26]
Alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals. In
vitro (in glass) testing, such as studying cell cultures in a petri dish, can produce
more relevant results than animal testing because human cells can be used. [15]
Microdosing, the administering of doses too small to cause adverse reactions,
can be used in human volunteers, whose blood is then analyzed. Artificial human
skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, is made
from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and can
produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin. [15] [50] [51]
Microfluidic chips ("organs on a chip"), which are lined with human cells and
recreate the functions of human organs, are in advanced stages of development.
Computer models, such as virtual reconstructions of human molecular structures,
can predict the toxicity of substances without invasive experiments on animals.
[50]
Animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test
subjects. The anatomic, metabolic, and cellular differences between animals and
people make animals poor models for human beings. [52] Paul Furlong, Professor
of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University (UK), states that "it's very hard to
create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to
achieve in the human." [53] Thomas Hartung, Professor of evidence-based
toxicology at Johns Hopkins University, argues for alternatives to animal testing
because "we are not 70 kg rats." [54]
Drugs that pass animal tests are not necessarily safe. The 1950s sleeping pill
thalidomide, which caused 10,000 babies to be born with severe deformities, was

tested on animals prior to its commercial release. [5] Later tests on pregnant
mice, rats, guinea pigs, cats, and hamsters did not result in birth defects unless
the drug was administered at extremely high doses. [109] [110] Animal tests on
the arthritis drug Vioxx showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of
mice, yet the drug went on to cause more than 27,000 heart attacks and sudden
cardiac deaths before being pulled from the market. [55] [56]
Animal tests may mislead researchers into ignoring potential cures and
treatments. Some chemicals that are harmful to animals prove valuable when
used by humans. Aspirin, for example, is dangerous for some animal species,
and Fk-506 (tacrolimus), used to lower the risk of organ transplant rejection, was
"almost shelved" because of animal test results, according to neurologist Aysha
Akhtar, MD, MPH. [105] A June 1, 2006 report on Slate.com stated that a "source
of human suffering may be the dozens of promising drugs that get shelved when
they cause problems in animals that may not be relevant for humans." [106]
95% of animals used in experiments are not protected by the Animal Welfare Act.
The AWA does not cover rats, mice, fish and birds, which comprise around 95% of
the animals used in research. The AWA covered 1,134,693 animals used for
testing in fiscal year 2010, which leaves around 25 million other animals that are
not covered. These animals are especially vulnerable to mistreatment and abuse
without the protection of the AWA. [1] [2] [26]
Animal tests do not reliably predict results in human beings. 94% of drugs that
pass animal tests fail in human clinical trials. [57] According to neurologist Aysha
Akhtar, MD, MPH, over 100 stroke drugs that were effective when tested on
animals have failed in humans, and over 85 HIV vaccines failed in humans after
working well in non-human primates. [58] A 2013 study published in Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
found that nearly 150 clinical trials (human tests) of treatments to reduce
inflammation in critically ill patients have been undertaken, and all of them
failed, despite being successful in animal tests. [59] [58] A 2013 study in
Archives of Toxicology stated that "The low predictivity of animal experiments in
research areas allowing direct comparisons of mouse versus human data puts
strong doubt on the usefulness of animal data as key technology to predict
human safety." [60]
Animal tests are more expensive than alternative methods and are a waste of
government research dollars. Humane Society International compared a variety
of animal tests with their in vitro counterparts. An "unscheduled DNA synthesis"
animal test costs $32,000, while the in vitro alternative costs $11,000. A "rat
phototoxicity test" costs $11,500, whereas the non-animal equivalent costs
$1,300. A "rat uterotrophic assay" costs $29,600, while the corresponding in vitro
test costs $7,200. A two-species lifetime cancer study can cost from $2 million to
$4 million, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends $14 billion of its
$31 billion annual budget on animal research. [61] [62] [63]
Most experiments involving animals are flawed, wasting the lives of the animal
subjects. A 2009 peer-reviewed study found serious flaws in the majority of
publicly funded US and UK animal studies using rodents and primates. 87% of
the studies failed to randomize the selection of animals (a technique used to
reduce "selection bias") and 86% did not use "blinding" (another technique to

reduce researcher bias). Also, "only 59% of the studies stated the hypothesis or
objective of the study and the number and characteristics of the animals used."
[64] Since the majority of animals used in biomedical research are killed during
or after the experiments, and since many suffer during the studies, the lives and
wellbeing of animals are routinely sacrificed for poor research. [65]
Animals can suffer like humans do, so it is speciesism to experiment on them
while we refrain from experimenting on humans. All suffering is undesirable,
whether it be in humans or animals. Discriminating against animals because they
do not have the cognitive ability, language, or moral judgment that humans do is
no more justifiable than discriminating against human beings with severe mental
impairments. [66] [67] As English philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote in the
1700s, "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they
suffer?" [66]
The Animal Welfare Act has not succeeded in preventing horrific cases of animal
abuse in research laboratories. In Mar. 2009, the Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS) found 338 possible violations of the Animal Welfare Act at the
federally funded New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) in Louisiana. Some of the
primates housed at NIRC were suffering such severe psychological stress that
they engaged in self-mutilation, "tearing gaping wounds into their arms and
legs." Video footage shows infant chimps screaming as they are forcibly removed
from their mothers, infant primates awake and alert during painful experiments,
and chimpanzees being intimidated and shot with a dart gun. [68] In a 2011
incident at the University of California at Davis Center for Neuroscience, "three
baby mice were found sealed alive in a plastic baggie and left unattended" on a
laboratory counter, according to the Sacramento Bee. [69]
Religious traditions tell us to be merciful to animals, so we should not cause
them suffering by experimenting on them. In the Bible, Proverbs 12:10 states: "A
righteous [man] regardeth the life of his beast..." [70] The Hindu doctrine of
ahimsa teaches the principle of not doing harm to other living beings. [103] The
Buddhist doctrine of right livelihood dissuades Buddhists from doing any harm to
animals. [46]
Medical breakthroughs involving animal research may still have been made
without the use of animals. There is no evidence that animal experiments were
essential in making major medical advances, and if enough money and resources
were devoted to animal-free alternatives, other solutions would be found. [107]
Did You Know?
95% of animals used in experiments are not protected by the federal Animal
Welfare Act (AWA), which excludes birds, rats and mice bred for research, and
cold-blooded animals such as reptiles and most fish. [1] [2] [3]

A 2011 poll of nearly 1,000 biomedical scientists conducted by the science

journal Nature found that more than 90% "agreed that the use of animals in
research is essential." [35]

Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and mice are 98%
genetically similar to humans. The United States and Gabon are the only two
countries that allow experimentation on chimpanzees. [4]

In 2010, Minnesota used more cats for testing than any other state (2,703), New
Jersey used the most dogs (6,077), and Massachusetts used the most primates
(7,458). [26]

In 1997, researchers Joseph and Charles Vacanti grew a human "ear" seeded
from implanted cow cartilage cells on the back of a living mouse to explore the
possibility of fabricating body parts for
plastic and reconstructive surgery. [108]