To many people today, animals are seen as nothing more than a childhood pet, a mere source of education, or even a useless annoyance. To other people, animals are beautiful, exquisite creatures that should be protected and cherished. Recently, many animal rights activists have turned their focus to animal experimentation, which has become one of today's largest controversies.

Many animal rights activists see their fight against animal experimentation as a simple matter of moral duty, of ethics, or even of religious obligation. Tom Reagan states, "We can't justify harming or killing a human being. . .[N]either can we do so even in the case of so lowly a creature as a laboratory rat" (Reagan 39). Accepted knowledge that by nature, animals lack the same motor skills and brain power that humans are born with (37) justifies the ideas that, " It is [man's] duty to use his knowledge for the welfare of animals" (Singer 20). Statistics that seem frighteningly unreal as well as factual evidence that "[I]tems routinely are tested on animals in a variety of painful ways. . ." (ARWCC 55) only supports the activists in finding fuel for their battle with animal experimentation. For example, one

After much speculation, a person should easily be able to tell what is right from what is wrong. Though they have been valuable to modern science, animals are not objects to be owned and inspected by humans and are not simply here for our welfare. Animal experimentation has caused a flame in the media, and with much right; the greater interest here is that unnecessary testing goes on every day and that it is not necessary. Animals are their own beings.

Although "[w]ork with animals contributed to [many medical] advances" (Woods 41), the extreme numbers of creatures experimented on make animal welfare seem more important. According to many sources, every year multi-millions of animals are used in experiments (Newkirk 139). "Animals from giraffes to gerbils are used for everything from forced aggression and induced fear experiments to tests on new football helmets and septic tank cleaner" (139). Facts such as this can have life-changing effects on a person with even the slightest concern for an animal's well being. Presented with evidence of such seemingly pointless experiments such as that "at Rockefeller University, experimenters have forced cats to vomit up to ninety-seven times in three and a half hours after severing the connections between the cats' brains and spinal cords" (140) the average person is left baffled, disgusted, and confused as to what would constitute such an experiment to take place. The basic argument that equality does not require equal

Some topics in this essay:
Louisiana University, Tom Reagan, Care Committee, Rockefeller University, Assessment OTA, Test Test, animal experimentation, animal rights, animal rights activists, rights activists, people animals, singer 20, animals day, reagan 39, animal research, animal activists,