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The community of Animal Testing is a community where people perform procedures on living animals for the purpose of research into basic biology and diseases. During these procedures, they asses the effectiveness of new medical products as well as other products such as makeup, cleaning products, food additives, and other chemical products.

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The problem that impacts the community is that these animals are being tortured and most of the time, the experiments fail. These animals are being injected with toxic chemicals and/or diseases that cause permanent suffering or even death. They are locked in cages all their lives and are uncared for, just used as a science experiment. It is unfair and cruel.

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Animal testing claims more than 25 million dogs, cats, monkeys and other animals each year. Get the facts on harmful animal experiments.

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Not only do the animals suffer, humans do too. More than 90% of drugs that are tested on animals are failed in human trials.

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A look into the effects of Animal Testing. 

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A look into the effects of Animal Testing. 

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Save Ralph - A short film with Taika Waititi

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Every year, nearly 60,000 beagles are used for testing and experiments. Beagles are usually preferred when animal testing due to them being small and docile. Just recently, 4,000 beagles were rescued from a Virginia research facility where they were being bred to be sold to laboratories for drug experiments.

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In what's thought to be one of the biggest dog rescue efforts in the U.S., nearly 4,000 beagles are looking for forever homes after being saved from a Virginia facility that bred them to be sold to laboratories for drug experiments.

Animal rescue organization volunteers started moving the first batch of dogs late last month, the Humane Society of the United States reported. As of Tuesday, just over half of them had been removed, the non-profit reported on its website.

"I was able to bring out the very first puppy and it gets you. To know what these dogs were destined for and where they are going now, it's indescribable," said Kitty Block, president and chief executive of the U.S. Humane Society.

Shelters from Illinois to Pennsylvania have begun receiving the dogs to give them medical exams, vaccinations and other treatments before they are ready for adoption.

"It's going to take 60 days to get all of these animals out, and working with our shelter and rescue partners across the country, working with them to get these dogs eventually into ever-loving homes," Block told Reuters.

The plan to remove the dogs kicked off when the federal government filed a civil lawsuit in May against Envigo RMS, which owns and operates the Cumberland, Virginia, facility that breeds beagles for medical research.

According to court papers, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged Animal Welfare Act violations at the facility.

"It's very unprecedented," said Audra Houghton, the Humane Society's Animal Rescue Team director. "I don't think there is anyone on our team that has seen 4,000 dogs in one location at one time in their entire career."

Federal officials accused Envigo of a chain of animal welfare violations at the facility - including dogs receiving insufficient food, inadequate medical care, housing in filthy conditions and some being euthanized without anesthesia. An inspection report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that, between January and July of last year, more than 300 puppy deaths were attributed to "unknown causes" - with the facility not taking any additional steps to investigate the deaths or prevent similar losses in the future.

In June, parent company Inotiv Inc. said it would close the facility. In July, Envigo settled with the government, without paying any fines.

"The Cumberland Facility was recognized as needing improvements and investments," Inotiv's Chief Executive Officer Robert Leasure, Jr. said in a statement released to USA TODAY Wednesday. "Our work and the work of our clients is essential to saving human lives. Without critical drug discovery and development efforts, millions of people around the world would continue their lives devoid of any hope for treatments and cures to life-threatening diseases. Our top priority continues to be ensuring proper animal welfare and regulatory compliant practices at all of our facilities."
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The Humane Society does not adopt animals directly to the public.

On its website, the non-profit wrote its shelter and rescue partners plan to place the dogs into foster and adoptive homes.
Contributing: Camille Fine and Wyatte Grantham-Philips Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.
"While these dogs prepare for the next stage of their new lives, our work is far from over," the non-profit posted on its Facebook page. "Please, rush a donation to help transfer the remainder of these dogs and give more animals a better life."

For more information visit www.humanesociety.org/beaglerescue, where names of shelter and rescue partners aiding with placement are listed as they are confirmed.

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Looking for 'ever-loving homes': Nearly 4,000 beagles bred for drug experiments rescued

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In what's thought to be one of the biggest dog rescue efforts in the U.S., nearly 4,000 beagles are looking for forever homes after being saved from a Virginia facility that bred them to be sold to laboratories for drug experiments.

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Materials needed for alternative testing:

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Materials needed for alternative testing:

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The wonderful thing about performing alternative testing is that a lot of these laboratories already have the proper materials and equipment that are needed. Some equipment that they might need are human volunteers, blood samples (or any body fluids) for biomarker testing, human simulators, or computer programs. Through fundraising and donations they will be able to get everything they need to perform experiments that are not on animals. Also, these places can relocate to other locations that have the proper equipment, such as hospitals, to perform their research/tests.

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The community of animal testing could better itself by not using animals to test products. Even though it is for research purposes, there are better, more effective ways to test diseases, products, medications, and more. Just because animals are less superior than humans, doesn't mean that the animals rights can be stripped away for the purpose of research. Animal testing is cruel and overall, not effective. There is no need to use animals to test products when there are many alternative ways to test products.

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Using animals in research and to test the safety of products has been a topic of heated debate for decades. According to data collected by F. Barbara Orlans for her book, In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation, sixty percent of all animals used in testing are used in biomedical research and product-safety testing (62). People have different feelings for animals; many look upon animals as companions while others view animals as a means for advancing medical techniques or furthering experimental research. However individuals perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies all across the country and all around the world. Although humans often benefit from successful animal research, the pain, the suffering, and the deaths of animals are not worth the possible human benefits. Therefore, animals should not be used in research or to test the safety of products.

First, animals' rights are violated when they are used in research. Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University, states: "Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment. . . .This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment" (qtd. in Orlans 26). Animals and people are alike in many ways; they both feel, think, behave, and experience pain. Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect as humans. Yet animals' rights are violated when they are used in research because they are not given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often painful or cause permanent damage or death, and they are never given the option of not participating in the experiment. Regan further says, for example, that "animal [experimentation] is morally wrong no matter how much humans may benefit because the animal's basic right has been infringed. Risks are not morally transferable to those who do not choose to take them" (qtd. in Orlans 26). Animals do not willingly sacrifice themselves for the advancement of human welfare and new technology. Their decisions are made for them because they cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices. When humans decide the fate of animals in research environments, the animals' rights are taken away without any thought of their well-being or the quality of their lives. Therefore, animal experimentation should be stopped because it violates the rights of animals.

Next, the pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any possible benefits to humans. "The American Veterinary Medial Association defines animal pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience perceived as arising from a specific region of the body and associated with actual or potential tissue damage" (Orlans 129). Animals feel pain in many of the same ways that humans do; in fact, their reactions to pain are virtually identical (both humans and animals scream, for example). When animals are used for product toxicity testing or laboratory research, they are subjected to painful and frequently deadly experiments. Two of the most commonly used toxicity tests are the Draize test and the LD50 test, both ofwhich are infamous for the intense pain and suffering they inflect upon experimental animals. In the Draize test the substance or product being tested is placed in the eyes of an animal (generally a rabbit is used for this test); then the animal is monitored for damage to the cornea and other tissues in and near the eye. This test is intensely painful for the animal, and blindness, scarring, and death are generally the end results. The Draize test has been criticized for being unreliable and a needless waste of animal life. The LD50 test is used to test the dosage of a substance that is necessary to cause death in fifty percent of the animal subjects within a certain amount of time. To perform this test, the researchers hook the animals up to tubes that pump huge amounts of the test product into their stomachs until they die. This test is extremely painful to the animals because death can take days or even weeks. According to Orlans, the animals suffer from "vomiting, diarrhea, paralysis, convulsion, and internal bleeding. Since death is the required endpoint, dying animals are not put out of their misery by euthanasia" (154). In his article entitled "Time to Reform Toxic Tests," Michael Balls, a professor of medial cell biology at the University of Nottingham and chairman of the trustees of FRAME (the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments), states that the LD50 test is "scientifically unjustifiable. The precision it purports to provide is an illusion because of uncontrollable biological variables" (31). The use of the Draize test and the LD50 test to examine product toxicity has decreased over the past few years, but these tests have not been eliminated completely. Thus, because animals are subjected to agonizing pain, suffering and death when they are used in laboratory and cosmetics testing, animal research must be stopped to prevent more waste of animal life.

Finally, the testing of products on animals is completely unnecessary because viable alternatives are available. Many cosmetic companies, for example, have sought better ways to test their products without the use of animal subjects. In Against Animal Testing, a pamphlet published by The Body Shop, a well-known cosmetics and bath-product company based in London, the development of products that "use natural ingredients, like bananas and Basil nut oil, as well as others with a long history of safe human usage" is advocated instead of testing on animals (3).Furthermore, the Draize test has become practically obsolete because of the development of a synthetic cellular tissue that closely resembles human skin. Researchers can test the potential damage that a product can do to the skin by using this artificial "skin" instead of testing on animals. Another alternative to this test is a product called Eyetex. This synthetic material turns opaque when a product damages it, closely resembling the way that a real eye reacts to harmful substances. Computers have also been used to simulate and estimate the potential damage that a product or chemical can cause, and human tissues and cells have been used to examine the effects of harmful substances. In another method, in vitro testing, cellular tests are done inside a test tube. All of these tests have been proven to be useful and reliable alternatives to testing products on live animals. Therefore, because effective means of product toxicity testing are available without the use of live animal specimens, testing potentially deadly substances on animals is unnecessary.

However, many people believe that animal testing is justified because the animals are sacrificed to make products safer for human use and consumption. The problem with thisreasoning is that the animals' safety, well-being, and quality of life is generally not a consideration. Experimental animals are virtually tortured to death, and all of these tests are done in the interest of human welfare, without any thought to how the animals are treated. Others respond that animals themselves benefit from animal research. Yet in an article entitled "Is Your Experiment Really Necessary?" Sheila Silcock, a research consultant for the RSPCA, states: "Animals may themselves be the beneficiaries of animal experiments. But the value we place on the quality of their lives is determined by their perceived value to humans" (34). Making human's lives better should not be justification for torturing and exploiting animals. The value that humans place on their own lives should be extended to the lives of animals as well.

Still other people think that animal testing is acceptable because animals are lower species than humans and therefore have no rights. These individuals feel that animals have no rights because they lack the capacity to understand or to knowingly exercise these rights. However, animal experimentation in medical research and cosmetics testing cannot be justified on the basis that animals are lower on the evolutionary chart than humans since animals resemble humans in so many ways. Many animals, especially the higher mammalian species, possess internal systems and organs that are identical to the structures and functions of human internal organs. Also, animals have feelings, thoughts, goals, needs, and desires that are similar to human functions and capacities, and these similarities should be respected, not exploited, because of the selfishness of humans. Tom Regan asserts that "animals are subjects of a life just as human beings are, and a subject of a life has inherent value. They are . . . ends in themselves" (qtd. in Orlans 26). Therefore, animals' lives should be respected because they have an inherent right to be treated with dignity. The harm that is committed against animals should not be minimized because they are not considered to be "human."

In conclusion, animal testing should be eliminated because it violates animals' rights, it causes pain and suffering to the experimental animals, and other means of testing product toxicity are available. Humans cannot justify making life better for themselves by randomly torturing and executing thousands of animals per year to perform laboratory experiments or to test products. Animals should be treated with respect and dignity, and this right to decent treatment is not upheld when animals are exploited for selfish human gain. After all, humans are animals too.

Works Cited

Against Animal Testing. The Body Shop, 1993.

Balls, Michael. "Time to Reform Toxic Tests." New Scientist 134 (1992):31-33.

Orlans, F. Barbara. In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. New York: Oxford UP, 1993.

Silcock, Sheila. "Is Your Experiment Really Necessary?" New Scientist 134 (1992): 32-34.

Heather Dunnuck

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Using animals in research and to test the safety of products has been a topic of heated debate for decades. According to data collected by F. Barbara Orlans for her book, In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation, sixty percent of all animals used in testing are used in biomedical research and product-safety testing (62).

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How to help put an end to animal testing :)

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How to help put an end to animal testing :)

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There are many things that can be done to help end animal testing. For example:
1) Buy products that are cruelty - free.
2) Donate your body to science when you pass. Or, donate blood!
3) Make donations. (Make sure to research before donating.)
4) Boycott companies that test their products on animals.
5) Support organizations that are fighting to put an end to animal testing.
6) Educate others!