Animal testing is a well known concept in biomedical research. The first recordings of animal testing date back to ancient Greece and scientists like Aristotele, Erasistratus and Galen. In twelfth century, an Arab physician Ibn Zuhr proposed that surgical procedures should be tested on animals before they are applied to human patients (Hajar 2011). Nowadays, animal testing is a method that is used for testing various products around the world. Despite being controversial, this practice remains a legal requirement for placing new products on the market in countries like the United States of America. However, the pain and suffering that animas experience in these laboratory tests raises concern and a controversial ethical question: Should animal testing of all forms be banned in the United States?
The need for animal tests became evident in the twentieth century when a pharmaceutical company in the USA created a preparation of sulfanilamide which caused massive poisoning an death (Hajar 2011). Public outcry was massive and it resulted in passing of the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act requiring safety testing of drugs on animals before they could be marketed (Hajar 2011). A similar incident in the late 1950s and early 1960s that involved a drug halidomide caused malformations in more than 10,000 children in 46 countries, reinstated the need for animal testing (Hajar 2011). Despite the fact that animal experiments prevented reoccurrence of many similar cases, ethical issues of cruelty against animal subjects caused Member countries of the European Union , the largest cosmetics market in the world, along with Norway, Israel, Korea, Brazil and ASEAN to prohibit animal-tested cosmetics (The Huffington Post 2014). Contrastingly, the United States still allows companies to test their products on animals. The companies are not required to utilize alternatives before resorting to animal tests in all but three federal states: California, New Jersey and New York (Hajar 2011). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires by law that pesticides are tested on dogs, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demands that companies which market fluoride products do the testing on laboratory rats (PETA n.d.). PETA (n.d.) reports that there are other U.S. agencies such as U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, and the National Toxicology Program that require or conduct animal testing. PETA (n.d.) also claims that some of these tests can kill more than two thousand animals every time they are conducted while any of them have neither been formally proved to be relevant nor to able to accurately predict human health effects. This is contradictory to the claims of Claude Bernard, who standardized the practice of animal testing in scientific research. Bernard states that “experiments on animals are entirely conclusive for the toxicology and hygiene of man. The effects of these substances are the same on man as on animals, save for differences in degree” (Hajar 2011). However, Claude Bernard lived in the nineteen century and the relevance of his claims remains questionable in the twenty-first century. The science today has developed testing alternatives for some of the most required cosmetic safety tests. Additionally, many thousands of established ingredients do not need to be further tested as they are recognized as safe (Huffington Post 2014). The momentum to ban animal testing is now building up in the U.S. Congress. USA Today (2014) reports that following the bans in Europe and India, opponents of animal testing for cosmetic purposes plan to push for a similar prohibition in the United States. USA Today (2014) further states that the initiative to introduce legislation that would prohibit testing cosmetic products on animals, as well as the sale of any new cosmetics if the final product or any component was developed using animal testing came from Republican Jim Moran. This legislation initiative does not apply to biomedical research. However, it is a big step forward in introducing a complete ban on animal testing in the United States. This initiative shows that there are certain groups of people that would like to see the United States as a leader in this field and not only the follower of the progress that has been achieved internationally. Surveys show that the American public greatly supports alternatives to testing cosmetics on animals and think of animal testing as unethical (Huffington Post 2014). At the same time, more and more people are beginning to understand that the power to change the world around them lays in the fact that they are the consumers. These compassionate people need to be given a safe alternative to animal tested products.
No matter how controversial the issue of animal testing is, the real need for animal tests still exists. Many medical treatments would not have been possible if it was not for animal tests. At the same time, many cosmetic products are still tested on animals without the real need for that. There is no conclusive answer if animal testing of all forms should be banned in the United States. However, people must be given a choice. If so many developed countries succeeded to lower the need and ban some forms of animal tests, there is no real excuse why the United States are still galloping behind. Sometimes, corporative interests have to be put behind what is considered to be a truly good thing. Compassion and empathy are an essential part of the American people’s mentality and they have the power to change their country. The final decision rests in their hands.
Works Cited
"Federal Ban Sought for Animal Testing on Cosmetics." USA Today. Gannett, 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 30 Dec. 2015.
Engebretson, Monica. "Bill to Ban Animal Testing for Cosmetics in the United States Introduced." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 5 Mar. 2014. Web. 30 Dec. 2015. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monica-engebretson/bill-to-ban-animal-testing_b_4905926.html>.
Hajar, Rachel. “Animal Testing and Medicine.” Heart Views : The Official Journal of the Gulf Heart Association 12.1 (2011): 42. PMC. Web. 30 Dec. 2015.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals- PETA. "U.S. Government Animal Testing Programs." PETA.ORG. Web. 30 Dec. 2015. <http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/us-government-animal-testing-programs/>.
