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No More Monkey Business

No More Monkey Business
Over four million animals, including frogs, cats, dogs, mice, and pigs, are dissected yearly just by junior high and secondary school students (Levine 32). Another 50 to 100 million are estimated to be experimented on annually with medical, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical products. These animals suffer through painful, and often unnecessary, tests. The reactions that the animals have and the effects that the experiments have on them are usually misleading and unlike the results when tested on a human. Very few breakthroughs have occurred because of the experiments done on animals. Many people mistakenly believe that medical advances are a direct result of animal experimentation. Theses tests are not essential in order to progress in the scientific community as well as in other situations. There are alternatives to the testing of medicine, drugs, and other products on animals, that can be used with the intention of finding out the same results.
Animal testing can be dated back to the Greeks in the third and fourth centuries BC with Aristotle and Erasistratus. A few centuries later, records have led us to associate Galen as the "father of vivisection," or the dissection or surgery upon living animals. He mostly experimented with pigs and goats and was able to see how the inside of the body came together. William Harvey experimented upon animals and was able to conclude how the movement of blood worked. In the 1700s, using a guinea pig, Antoine Lavoisier demonstrated that respiration was a form of combustion. Many of these experiments were practical and the results from it helped explain new ideas and answer questions. Currently, though, numerous tests on various animals prove little nor help our society. "A reason for stopping animal research is that many uses of animal research just duplicated results that have already been found in earlier experiments" (Levine 31). There is no reason for people to continue doing repetitive...