Animal Rights
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
Animals have been used in medical research for centuries. In a recent count, it was determined that 8,815 animals were being used for research at MSU, 8,503 of them rodents - rats, mice, hamsters and gerbils. There were 18 dogs, three cats and a variety of goats, ferrets, pigeons and rabbits. The struggle against this tyranny is a struggle as important as any of the moral and social issues that have been fought over in recent years." Animal rights are an emotional issue-second only, perhaps, to the bitter abortion debate." For decades the value of animal research has been grossly overrated. Although researchers have depended on animal test data to achieve medical advances, there should be other means of research because testing on animals is cruel and inhumane and often unnecessary.
The American Medical Association believes that research involving animals is absolutely essential to maintaining and improving the health of the American people. They point out, that virtually every advance in medical science in the 20th century, from antibiotics to organ transplants, has been achieved either directly or indirectly through the use of animals in laboratory experiments. They also emphasize that animal research holds the key for solutions to AIDS, cancer, heart disease, aging and congenital defects. Lastly they insist that, the result of these experiments has been the elimination or control of many infectious diseases. This has meant a longer, healthier , better life with much less pain and suffering. For many patients, it has meant life it self.
However, there should be other means of research because the whole process of animal research remains cruel and inhumane. Animal rights activists have gathered much information that has closed down laboratories that violate anti- cruelty statutes. "This includes a 1984 videotape stolen from the University of Pennsylvania Head Injury Clinic. The research subsequently suspended, reportedly involved inadequately anesthetized baboons receiving blows to the head to break their necks and cause brain damage." Alex Pacheo gives a first-person account of the conditions he witnessed in a primate laboratory. He is horrified by the painful experiments these monkeys endure. "On May 11,1981 I began work[at the Institute for Behavioral Research] and was given a tour.... I saw filth caked on the wires of the cages, faces piled in the bottom of the cages, urine and rust encrusting every surface. There, amid this rotting stench, sat sixteen crab-eating macaques and one rhesus monkey, their liv...