Animal Liberation from Experiments Report

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Professor Thorne
English 101
1 February 2022
Animal Liberation
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

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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 Medical 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 of which 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