By 6:00 this evening, hundreds of animals will have had their eyes, skin, or gastrointestinal systems burned or destroyed to produce new versions of deodorant, hairspray, lipstick, and nail polish. Anesthesia is rarely administered, and these poor animals can suffer in agony for up to 168 hours. If they survive these tests, they are killed or forced to suffer through more testing. All this in the United States, where cruel and unusual punishment goes against the Constitution. I believe animal experimentation is a cruel and outdated practice because it is cruelty to animals, tests are not reliant, it wastes taxpayers' money, and there are many alternatives.
             Many tests are cruel to animals. Painful tests are administered, usually without any anesthesia, and left for a prolonged period, sometimes until all the test subjects are dead. One such test is the Draize test. This is an eye irritancy test usually performed on albino rabbits. They are the test subjects of choice because their eyes shed no tears, their eyes are clear, and their thin corneal membranes are extremely susceptible to injury. Six to eighteen rabbits are immobilized with only their heads protruding. A substance is placed in their eye and left with the eye clipped open. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "Many animals break their necks as they struggle to escape." They are examined for reactions to the substance at intervals ranging from one hour to a period of weeks. There is no attempt made to treat the rabbits. Another example is acute toxicity tests. These tests determine the amount of a substance that will kill a percentage of a group of test animals. The substance being testing is forced into the animal's stomachs, injected, mixed into food, or inhaled through a gas mask. One such test is the infamous lethal dose 50 test, which continues until at least 50 percent of the test animals die. These animals are ...