Demand an End to Animal Testing, Now! EMPTY ALL CAGES!

Please sign this petition if you agree that Animal Testing should be banned in the United States. There are various reasons why Animal Testing should be banned, and not only can it be pointless but it is plain cruel and inhumane. First of all, animal tests are more expensive than alternative methods and are a waste of government research dollars. Humane Society International compared a variety of animal tests with their in vitro counterparts. An "unscheduled DNA synthesis" animal test costs $32,000, while the in vitro alternative costs $11,000. A "rat phototoxicity test" costs $11,500, whereas the non-animal equivalent costs $1,300. A "rat uterotrophic assay" costs $29,600, while the corresponding in vitro test costs $7,200. A two-species lifetime cancer study can cost from $2 million to $4 million, and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends $14 billion of its $31 billion annual budget on animal research. Second, animals are very different from human beings and therefore make poor test subjects. The anatomic, metabolic, and cellular differences between animals and people make animals poor models for human beings. [52] Paul Furlong, Professor of Clinical Neuroimaging at Aston University (UK), states that "it's very hard to create an animal model that even equates closely to what we're trying to achieve in the human." [53] Thomas Hartung, Professor of evidence-based toxicology at Johns Hopkins University, argues for alternatives to animal testing because "we are not 70 kg rats." [54]. Another reason this should be banned is because alternative testing methods now exist that can replace the need for animals. In vitro (in glass) testing, such as studying cell cultures in a petri dish, can produce more relevant results than animal testing because human cells can be used. [15] Microdosing, the administering of doses too small to cause adverse reactions, can be used in human volunteers, whose blood is then analyzed. Artificial human skin, such as the commercially available products EpiDerm and ThinCert, is made from sheets of human skin cells grown in test tubes or plastic wells and can produce more useful results than testing chemicals on animal skin. [15][50][51] Microfluidic chips ("organs on a chip"), which are lined with human cells and recreate the functions of human organs, are in advanced stages of development. Computer models, such as virtual reconstructions of human molecular structures, can predict the toxicity of substances without invasive experiments on animals. [50] Lastly, animal testing is just cruel and inhumane. According to Humane Society International, animals used in experiments are commonly subjected to force-feeding, forced inhalation, food and water deprivation, prolonged periods of physical restraint, the infliction of burns and other wounds to study the healing process, the infliction of pain to study its effects and remedies, and "killing by carbon dioxide asphyxiation, neck-breaking, decapitation, or other means." [47] The Draize eye test, used by cosmetics companies to evaluate irritation caused by shampoos and other products, involves rabbits being incapacitated in stocks with their eyelids held open by clips, sometimes for multiple days, so they cannot blink away the products being tested. [48][49] The commonly used LD50 (lethal dose 50) test involves finding out which dose of a chemical will kill 50% of the animals being used in the experiment. [65][102] The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in 2010 that 97,123 animals suffered pain during experiments while being given no anesthesia for relief, including 1,395 primates, 5,996 rabbits, 33,652 guinea pigs, and 48,015 hamsters. [26]
My goal for this petition is to get over 50,000 signatures so that maybe, someday, animals won't be burdened for our nonassential luxuries.

Citation(s): https://animal-testing.procon.org/