Since the animation “Save Ralph” is published on YouTube and other social media platforms, animal rights and especially the experiments performed on animals create crucial conflicts between people on social media. While some people defend animal rights responsibly, some state that these experiments are required to develop science and the medical industry globally. But how can we know which one is right? Do we mean that science is in the background if we think that experiments on animals are ethically wrong?
First of all, most of the brands that do experiments on living organisms -especially the animals like rabbits and mice- are cosmetics brands which is tragic. For people to feel beautiful or look good, lots of animals are being hurt by dangerous chemicals or different kinds of unhealthy matters. Even some of the animals die because of the damage to their body caused by that chemicals and the other ones suffer and feel pain until they die. In this case, I think that the cosmetics brands which test their products on animals must stop or must be stopped immediately. Unless they stop, There must be some disincentive punishments. If not, animals will continue to suffer and die just for the enjoyment of human beings.
Secondly, sometimes these kinds of experiments are carried out to produce some medicine which will help patients to recover from their illnesses. To ensure that the medicine will be beneficial and not harmful for the patient, it should be tested on a mammal or an organism that has a similar DNA to human beings. This similarity is to see the effects of medicine on a biologically similar organism and predict the possible effects of the medicine on people. As this medicine testing is both helpful for science and people’s health, I do not criticise it as harshly as I criticized the tests for cosmetics. I also think that if these scientific-purposed tests on animals will be carried on in any case, the scientists which are going to do these tests should get permission from authorities. These tests should be performed under the government’s control.
Finally, in the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights, it is written that “Any experiment that causes a physical or psychological damage to an animal goes against the animal rights” which means that no one can do agonizing experiments on animals under no circumstances. This explains everything about animal testing.
To summarise, I do not stand up for animal testing. As it is written in the declaration, it is not ethically true. As long as we don’t have to do experiments on animals, we shouldn’t. When we must, we shouldn’t hurt them.