HARM AND SUFFERING

Vivisection is one of the worst forms of institutionalized animal abuse in our society, and it is a

sanctioned and legal abuse. Within laboratory walls, what can be done to animals has no limit

except those imposed by a committee selected by the facility itself. Imagine spending your entire

life as a hospital patient or prisoner, and this will only begin to approximate the life of an animal

in a laboratory. What happens to you can range from uncomfortable to agonizing to deadly—and

you are helpless to defend yourself.

Animals in labs live stressful, monotonous, and unnatural lives of daily confinement and

deprivation. The only changes in their lives may come from being called into a research or

testing protocol—which may include an invasive experiment, or a procedure whose endpoint is

death.

Every year in the U.S., over 25 million animals are used in biomedical experimentation, product

and cosmetic testing, and science education. This includes—dogs, cats, ferrets, rabbits, pigs,

sheep, monkeys, chimpanzees, and more. However, the majority of animals in labs (over 90

percent) are rats, mice, and birds. Some estimates place them in the tens to hundreds of millions.

PAINFUL PROTOCOLS
In research and testing, animals are subjected to experiments that can include everything from

testing new drugs to infecting with diseases, poisoning for toxicity testing, burning skin, causing

brain damage, implanting electrodes into the brain, maiming, blinding, and other painful and

invasive procedures. It can include protocols that cause severe suffering, such as long-term social

isolation, electric shocks, withholding of food and water, or repeated breeding and separating of

infants from mothers. In toxicity testing, animals used in chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity

studies receive the test substance daily, seven days a week, for up to two years with no recovery
periods. Many, if not most, animals die before the end of the study. With the exception of

chimpanzees, animals who survive their use in research and testing can be killed after the study

is completed.

Many animal experiments utilize restraining devices, designed to prevent an animal from

moving. Some research projects call for immobilization of specific parts of an animal’s body—

head and neck, legs and pelvis—while other protocols involve immobilization of an animal’s

entire body. For example, researchers at several major U.S. universities have all conducted

“stress experiments” on rats and mice. These experiments included immobilizing mice and rats

in tubes, shocking their feet, suspending them by their tails, and forcing them to swim to avoid

drowning. Researchers claimed these experiments had relevance to human anxiety and

depression. Although restraint is particularly stressful and frustrating for an animal, some

experiments are designed to hold animals in partial or total immobilization for months.

Anesthetization, intubation, and euthanasia are also common lab procedures which require

extensive training and skill. When improperly performed, these procedures cause extreme pain

and discomfort. For example, if a researcher uses a paralyzing agent on an animal but does not

monitor vital signs to make sure she/he is adequately anesthetized, there is a great chance that the

animal is actually experiencing pain but unable to move. Unfortunately, in some cases, the lab

personnel often lack the experience and training—and sometimes the sensitivity—needed to

avoid unnecessary animal suffering.

The areas of xenotransplantation (transplanting cells, tissues, or organs from one species into

another species) and genetic engineering also create a great deal of suffering and death for

animals. Genetic engineering consumes and destroys untold volumes of animals in attempts to

create animals with specific traits. Nonhuman primates, cats, dogs, mice, rats, and others have all
been subjected to genetic manipulation. Many of these animals die, while suffering from

abnormalities and other diseased conditions.

DAILY EXISTENCE
Animals in labs suffer not only pain from protocols, but also severe stress from day-to-day

laboratory life. They spend their lives in barren cages, unable to make choices or express natural

behaviors. Most never experience fresh air or sunshine, only bars and concrete. Those few

facilities that provide some outside caging typically rotate the animals, giving them limited and

infrequent amounts of time outdoors. Standard lab conditions, such as small, crowded cages, lack

of enrichment, loud noises, and bright lights out of sync with natural lighting are all known to

create stress in animals who in turn show physical symptoms of the stress, including chronic

inflammatory conditions. Studies show that mice are capable of empathy and become even more

stressed when witnessing other mice in distress. Other research documents the long-lasting

effects on chimpanzees from the stress and trauma of living in a lab and being used in research

and testing. In 2009, an undercover lab investigation revealed monkeys frantically spinning

around and around in their cages, biting open wounds, mutilating themselves, and ripping out

their own hair, all because of the chronic psychological distress they must endure. The term used

for this is “stress-induced psychosis”—laboratories are literally driving these animals crazy.

After seeing footage of chimpanzees from this same investigation, famed primatologist Dr. Jane

Goodall stated, “In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense

fear. The screaming I heard when chimpanzees were being forced to move toward the dreaded

needle in their squeeze cages was, for me, absolutely horrifying.”

For all of the animals trapped in labs, their day-to-day existence is traumatic in itself—even

without their forced participation in one dreaded protocol after another. They experience ongoing
mental and physical suffering from the endless boredom, confinement, fear, and emotional stress

of daily laboratory life. Add to this the fear and agony of a procedure, and only then can we start

to understand the desperation and pain in which they live, every day—and for most, for their

entire lives.

"Animal research" redirects here. For other uses, see Animal studies (disambiguation). For the
journal, see Animal Research (journal).
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research and in vivo testing, is
the use of non-human animals in experiments that seek to control the variables that affect the
behavior or biological system under study. This approach can be contrasted with field studies in
which animals are observed in their natural environments or habitats. Experimental research with
animals is usually conducted in universities, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, defense
establishments and commercial facilities that provide animal-testing services to industry. [1]The focus
of animal testing varies on a continuum from pure research, focusing on developing fundamental
knowledge of an organism, to applied research, which may focus on answering some question of
great practical importance, such as finding a cure for a disease. Examples of applied research
include testing disease treatments, breeding, defense research and toxicology, including cosmetics
testing. In education, animal testing is sometimes a component of biology or psychology courses.
The practice is regulated to varying degrees in different countries.
It is estimated that the annual use of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—
ranges from tens to more than 100 million. [2]In the European Union, vertebrate species represent
93% of animals used in research, and 11.5 million animals were used there in 2011. By one estimate
the number of mice and rats used in the United States alone in 2001 was 80 million. [3] Mice, rats, fish,
amphibians and reptiles together account for over 85% of research animals. [4]
Most animals are euthanized after being used in an experiment. [5] Sources of laboratory animals vary
between countries and species; most animals are purpose-bred, while a minority are caught in the
wild or supplied by dealers who obtain them from auctions and pounds.[6][7][8]Supporters of the use of
animals in experiments, such as the British Royal Society, argue that virtually every medical
achievement in the 20th century relied on the use of animals in some way. [9] The Institute for
Laboratory Animal Research of the United States National Academy of Sciences has argued that
animal research cannot be replaced by even sophisticated computer models, which are unable to
deal with the extremely complex interactions between molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms
and the environment.[10] Animal rights organizations—such as PETA and BUAV—question the need
for and legitimacy of animal testing, arguing that it is cruel and poorly regulated, that medical
progress is actually held back by misleading animal models that cannot reliably predict effects in
humans, that some of the tests are outdated, that the costs outweigh the benefits, or that animals
have the intrinsic right not to be used or harmed in experimentation