Cages upon cages are stacked in a plain room. Each contains a monkey that will live there the rest of its life which could be years or days away.

From isolation and insanity they pace round and round in circles. When they are taken out different tests are performed on them. Among these brutal experiments, is being shoved in tubes to be bled, having tubes shoved down their throats, and being painfully injected several times.

Every animal, whose purpose in life, (determined by humans), is to be tested on, will never be free to live or ever be loved.

Animal testing is animal cruelty. It's something that goes unnoticed every day because of the benefits for people that are a result of it. You are most likely connected with it every day; it's the new cosmetic line that you just bought, your shampoo you use daily, or maybe even a vaccine. It's something that's overshadowed by advancements in the medical field.

However, no product, vaccine, or discovery makes it all right. Animals have feelings, which makes it cruelty. These tests can be unreliable, and there are more humane alternatives. Just because we are the more powerful species does not mean we should have the right to use animals like they're nothing. Would you want to be treated that way by a more dominate species for their benefit?

Today, humans dominate the world. We change our environment to suit us. We create new products for our use, and we also have power over other living things in this world.

Probably the most important quality that we have though is feelings. Humans are not the only ones with this quality that affects someone's whole life.

"If you step on your dog's paw, he yelps because it hurts. Animals experience pain..." said Goodman, a University of Connecticut graduate student who protested the use of primates in medical research. [Current Event 1-22-07].

Animals go through the same pain you would if you were both subjected to painful and deadly experiments. In other words, imagine if products were pumped into your stomach, rubbed on your skin, or squirted in your eyes. "Countless studies... have proven... that primates ... have extensive family bonds," says Blum, program director of Animal Defenders International [Current Event 1-22-07].

Think about what it would be like to never see any of your family and friends and just be waiting to die. If everyone and everything has feelings and experiences pain, then who are we to say that humans shouldn't have to go through it but other animals should?

Contrary to what some scientists say, others say that animal testing is dangerous and unreliable, [www.peta.org].

Whether it's a mouse, bird, bunny, or even a monkey, each animal is different. Animal testing can be unreliable because other animals are so different from humans. If the tests and results are unreliable this could ultimately lead to a dangerous outcome for the results of the products.

More importantly, animal testing is harming living creatures for data that is not one hundred percent reliable. Even if the results were one hundred percent reliable it still would be animal cruelty and wrong. However this point defends the argument that says that animal testing is not crucial to research. How can something be so crucial to research if the results are not even completely accurate?

Millions of animals are tortured and killed each year for testing, [www.peta.org]. For some who choose not to look on the humane side, all they see is that means millions of experiments for human benefit are performed each year. These experiments are cruel, unreliable, and harmful. Luckily, there are more humane alternatives that are less expensive.

Some of the alternative methods include computer models, cell cultures, and human testing. Although some may argue that computer models and cell cultures are not very reliable, neither is animal testing. You are therefore choosing between different not completely reliable methods, except that in one you are not painfully killing a living creature.

Human testing is also a more just method. If it is for human benefit then humans should have to be the ones to work for it. By choosing the alternatives millions of more humane and healthier research will be going on.

In conclusion, animal testing is a terrible way to do research.

Humans may be powerful and want justice, but as long as we test on and treat animals the way these labs do, there is no justice in the world today.

Animals are blinded, pricked, confined, and put through all kinds of torments as we speak. Like humans, they have feelings of hurt and pain; they just don't cry. This cruelty and brutal treatment is all for results that are not even that reliable.

This is because of the simple reason that those other animals are not like humans. How something works on an innocent mouse will not be the same for how it works on people.

Choosing the alternative methods of research would seem to be a no brainer decision. However, as long as people support the research by buying the products, they won't change to the alternatives.

So instead of doing nothing, refuse to use products tested on animals; shed a tear for the lonely souls in pain who will never see the light of day.

Animal Testing. Retrieved February 19, 2008, from PETA's Action Center Web site: http://www.peta.org/actioncenter/testing.asp

(07, July 22). Monkey in the Middle. Current Events, [7].