How You Can Alleviate Suffering: End Animal Testing!

    

   

Imagine being confined in a tiny metal cage your whole life, having never seen the sun, having never known love. This is the life of a mammal subject to medical testing in laboratories. These animals, primarily dogs, cats, primates, and rodents, suffer agonizing experiments and are brutally killed when they are ‘no longer useful,’ meaning when they are old, disabled, or not needed in a test. If we consider torture and massacre of humans evil, why do we let it continue with animals? Numerous studies show that medical mammal testing is unnecessary to and may even harm human health. Thus, the multiple billion dollars of taxpayer money used to fund medical mammal testing is being wasted. 

Mammals used for testing are not treated as living beings who can feel pain; they are treated as machines who cannot suffer, who cannot feel emotions. Therefore, medical testing on mammals is unjust and should be banned. From an early age, humans are taught to be just, fair beings by following the Golden Rule of treating others the way you want to be treated. For this reason, we would not torture other humans. For this reason, we would not slaughter people if they are old or disabled. For this reason, we would not abandon our friends to die a slow and painful death. Why do we justify these exact same behaviors on animals? According to ethicits, “All beings share the desire to live...we share the same origins, we inhabit the same Earth, and we are ruled by the same laws of nature. We are all the same.” We are all the same, therefore we cannot justify torturing mammals in medical tests. We must not live with this injustice and hypocrisy. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.” Allowing medical mammal testing to continue is unjust, and threatens human nature as a whole. It sets an example of cruelty and encourages discrimination and hypocrisy for all humans. We cherish our pets and would never harm them, yet we allow animal testing in which the same animals are needlessly slaughtered. If mammal medical testing continues, millions of animals will suffer, and future human generations will become desensitized to cruelty and encouraged to discriminate.

The assertion that medical testing on mammals benefits humans by forecasting capabilities of certain drugs is a myth. Studies show that such tests demonstrate nothing about the effects of these drugs on humans, and may even harm human health. According to polio expert Dr. Albert Sabin, “prevention of polio was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease on monkeys.” This illustrates that, if it weren’t for animal testing, countless lives might have been saved during the polio epidemic of the 20th century. Today, millions of people per year are dying of cancer, and the primary method of testing potential cures is on mice. However, according to the former director of the National Cancer Institute, “The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse. We have cured mice of cancer for decades and it simply didn’t work in humans.” If testing on mice had been abandoned earlier for more practical alternatives, thousands of lives may have been saved. In addition, studies suggest that the results of tests on mammals are insignificant and mean nothing in preventing human illness. For example, experiments show that fewer than 2 percent of human illnesses are expressed in animals. In fact, over 106,000 people die yearly from drugs tested safe on animals. This evidence shows that tests on animals are meaningless, harmful to human health, and detract from efforts towards discovering cures for fatal diseases such as cancer. If we continue to experiment on mammals, not only the animals, but also millions of people would die. 

Because medical mammal testing is meaningless, it is a waste of money. Today, the government spends 12 billion dollars of taxpayer money on animal research. Not only does this money contribute towards meaningless drug tests, it also contributes towards proving facts that we already know to be true. Today, the government has spent 20 million dollars exposing animals to drugs in order to prove for the umpteenth time that smoking is dangerous to human health. This money could have been used to alleviate suffering, create jobs or benefit veterans. Instead, it contributed to more people dying of cancer, and one more of the hundreds of studies warning people not to smoke. Every person in the country lost some of their personal income funding this. This illustrates that medical animal tests are an immense waste of money that could eventually lead to increased unemployment, homelessness, and starvation. In addition, alternatives to animal testing are currently being developed. One existing alternative is testing chemicals on cells in vitro. This eliminates all animal suffering, and can produce human-applicable results. Studies show that in vitro tests “produce data that is more relevant...than...a value obtained from mice, rats, or other animals.”

These alternatives have the potential to completely replace animal testing, and could eventually contribute to the development of cures for fatal diseases. Testing on mammals has been a setback in medicine, is unethical, and thereby sets an example of cruelty, discrimination, and hypocrisy for humans. Medical mammal testing is useless, cruel, and a waste of money as I have proven. It is so misguided that it is not only killing animals, but is also killing and impoverishing humans.  Do you want your hard-earned income contributing to human deaths and more studies showing smoking is unhealthy? The answer is a clear no. For this reason, it is imperative that you take action against animal testing.

    How can you help alleviate the agony of animals used for testing? First, you can only patronize cruelty-free companies. Visit the following link to download an app or view a list of companies that do test on animals: http://www.beaglefreedomproject.org/cruelty_free. You lose nothing in replacing one type of shampoo with a cruelty-free one, or any cruel product with a cruelty-free one. However, the animals the product was tested on lost their lives for one fleeting whim. Imagine you were one of these animals. Choose cruelty-free. Another thing you can do is sign anti-cruelty petitions by subscribing to the PETA online news with the following link: http://www.peta.org/features/what-peta-really-stands-for/ (at the bottom of the page). Finally, you can support the Beagle Freedom Project by adopting or fostering rescued beagles (http://www.beaglefreedomproject.org/adopt_or_foster ), volunteering to help (http://www.beaglefreedomproject.org/get_involved),  purchasing their merchandise (http://www.beaglefreedomproject.org/right_to_release ),  or donating (https://beaglefreedomproject.nationbuilder.com/donate).

The 3D Printing Pen

Imagine being able to make your drawings into real objects, customize jewelry, and draw buildings! You're probably thinking, "That's impossible!" However, with the 3Doodler pen, you can do all this and more without needing to learn complicated computer software! The 3Doodler is exactly like a pen, except instead of ink, it releases molten plastic which hardens in several seconds. The 3Doodler requires a special type of plastic strand, which is extremely easy to load into the pen. Once you have pushed the plastic through the back of the pen, you are ready to start doodling! You can either doodle 3-dimensional structures, or make flat drawings, and then lift them right off the paper.

Thanks to Professor Lynn Klett at Pellissippi State College, a scientist studying polymer compositions and 3D printing, I was able to borrow a 3Doodler pen. She showed me how to use it, and explained how it works. She also showed me several 3D printers in action, and told me about one of the world's first 3D printed cars, engineered at the Oak Ridge Lab in Tennessee. Click the following link for more information on how it was made: http://web.ornl.gov/sci/manufacturing/media/news/detroit-show/
                                             Here are some projects I made with the 3Doodler pen:

A neuron

How does this seemingly magical device work? It works exactly like a hot glue gun, heating the plastic until it is soft, then extruding it. However, unlike hot glue guns, it can melt two types of plastic: ABS and PLA. PLA requires a lower temperature to melt, and is a corn-based polymer, whereas ABS is petroleum-based. Why use two different kinds of plastic? ABS can bend more easily when dry, and is easy to peel of paper. PLA, on the other hand, often peels paper with it, and is brittle, but more suitable for drawing on hard surfaces. Although PLA and ABS are more suited for some uses than others, they are still able to make the same projects. For example, if you want to make a detachable paper doodle, you can still use PLA. If you have any questions about general use of the pen, visit http://the3doodler.com/faq/.