Just an animal
Think of an animal. A panda let’s say, wrenched from their natural surroundings and incarcerated in a bleak bare prison, displayed for the entertainment of the local public. This is the animal you didn’t know got beaten behind the gleaming glass windows of an average European zoo; this is the animal you thought its rights were protected by the EU. Well, I’m afraid your naked eye has been hidden from the truth; you have been kept away from horrors, kept away from the hardship, the injustice and the hell these innocent animals are put through every day. The constant threat of death if they do not perform. Supply and demand they call it, just business they say, but we, we have had enough and will not sit back and watch it happen, watch it spread over the world like a deadly disease. There are many horrific ways animals can be used for profit and entertainment but today I’m going to talk about animals being put under excruciating pain in lab experiments which are not always needed.
Many organisations argue that experiments cause unacceptable pain and suffering to animals. They believe that it is morally wrong to abuse, misuse and kill animals for our own knowledge. These organisations can’t help, can’t make a difference without your help, your dedication, your time. What gives us the right, what gives the human race the right to destroy and torture god’s creatures? God’s blessing, god’s gifts.
Think of a world, a bleak bare world with no animals. You’d go to the sandy plains of Africa to find nothing; you’d go on a safari with your camera to find… Nothing. And the only people we would have to blame ourselves. What would I tell my kids when asked, “daddy can we go and see the lions at the zoo,” what would I say? Sorry son we killed them all. Our present is there future.
There is also evidence that many experiments are unjustified on scientific grounds. Results are often misleading, because animals react to certain drugs and chemicals in a different way to humans. Many experiments test different versions of the same drug. This suggests that far more animals are being made to suffer than is necessary.
Animals are used for either testing medicine and beauty products or to find out how they behave in different situations. A good example of this is, the Rhesus monkey was used in a famous experiment to see how animals behave if their mother is taken away. Do you think this experiment is morally acceptable?
Animals played a big part in the first moon landings. Monkey’s dogs and rats have all been blasted into orbit, in the cause of the space race. If they do not die in space, most are killed and dissected on their return to earth. NASA has been particularly criticised for its Bion project. This was a joint USA, French and Russian experiment. Rhesus monkeys were wired up by inserting electrodes into their arm and leg muscles, abdomens and holes drilled into their skulls. After this painful operation, the monkeys were launched into space for fourteen days, restrained so that they could not move. They were part of an experiment to study the effects of weightlessness, yet NASA already had data on human beings who had spent hundreds of days in space. The project was criticised for its lack of scientific leadership and its failure to consider less cruel methods of obtaining data. After a huge campaign by animal activists, NASA announced the end of its involvement in this project in April 1997. But still tests still go on throughout the world to help discover further travel into space.
We all want to be healthy, and if we are ill we call on doctors to help us recover. Western treatments rely on drugs and surgery. But these are not used on humans until they have been thoroughly tested. Because animals do not suffer human diseases, scientists create the effects of disease artificially. To research rheumatism, they use chemicals to inflame the joints of rabbits. To study Parkinson’s disease, they deliberately inflict