Here we highlight three key takeaway lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic: animal tests inherently are cruel, costly, and unsafe. Humanity could be better served by shifting to safer, more humane and more cost-effective human biology-based methods.
A dead rabbit lies on the floor in view of hutches full of live
rabbits, after being used for drug testing. (Photo Credit: We
Animals Media)
Hundreds of thousands of animals are tortured and killed in the
United States each year in cruel and unreliable animal tests.
Some of the cats, dogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, monkeys, rabbits,
pigs, rats, mice, and sheep endure multiple experiments, being
“recycled” from one study to the next. Others — including all
animals infected during disease trials — are killed at the end of
the experiments.
The United States used and killed more than 797,500 animals in
research experiments in 2019 alone, according to the most recent
data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service (APHIS).
That massive number does not include rats and mice, who are not
protected under the Animal Welfare Act, a federal law that
establishes only minimal protections for animals used in labs who
often endure painful procedures — including being burned, shocked,
poisoned, mutilated, or brain damaged — without anesthesia.
The cruel animal testing is required for all new medical treatments
by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), via provisions
established in 1938 that necessitate tests on at least two species:
one rodent species, and one non-rodent species.
Those provisions remain in place despite decades of evidence
highlighting key genetic differences between humans and other
species: the reason that more than 90 percent of all drugs approved
in animal tests fail once they hit human clinical trials, and why
only 6 percent of vaccines make it to human markets.
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