ANIMAL TESTING - Cruel and Unusual Punishment?

Weighing in on this subject in defense of testing is rather like spraying the Flag, Mom, and Apple Pie with an AK-47 on full automatic and then stupidly hanging around to gloat over the damage while the police forces of seven states descend upon you.

Nevertheless, I find grim amusement in seeing on Day 1 a diatribe against animal testing, and on Day 2 an exposé of companies whose products have been found to be unsafe for human use. Caught between this Scylla and Charibdis, it's a wonder that companies make products at all. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. Except that then we'd probably buy absolutely all our stuff from China, where they don't bother with testing. Just like with the untested "natural products" of completely unknown content we get at the "health store" and dose ourselves with.

Yes, an increasing amount of animal testing is being found to be unnecessary. However, the alternative tests are often expensive and of uncertain reliability. And they may not satisfy the regulators, who are used to interpreting the results from animal tests and are not going to put their jobs on the line approving the results of test they don't find in their rule books.

And despite the horror stories that hit the press, most animal testing is performed under safe and caring conditions by professionals. You want real animal cruelty, think battery-farmed chicken. You'll never eat another one once you find out the conditions under which Perdue and its ilk raise their birds.

James Thurber once related, in words, a cartoon that appeared in Punch in the 1860s. Where a woman rushes in to her husband screaming that their son had just been bitten by a mad dog, and needed to see Louis Pasteur (who had just introduced a rabies vaccine) PDQ. I paraphrase, I don't have the story in front of me:

"But dear, I just published an article in the newspaper slamming Pasteur for his cruelty to rabbits. And at your instigation, too!"

"What are all the rabbits in the world compared to our only child??"

Those who like sausage (or chicken), respect the law, and use cosmetics, should not watch any of these being made. :)

"Those who like sausage (or chicken), respect the law, and use cosmetics, should not watch any of these being made."

Well said. Well said.

Later