Ban Animal Testing

Why does animal testing take place? British law says that any new drug used for medicine, must be tested on at least two different types of live mammal. One of these must be a large non-rodent type animal.
This is to make sure the drug works and doesn't hurt you.

Animal testing has also sometimes been used for developing:
Household products
Agricultural chemicals
Industrial chemicals
Pesticides
Paint
Food additives
In some countries animals are also used to test beauty products. But this is not allowed in Britain any more.

Animal testing has helped to develop vaccines against diseases like measles, rabies and mumps. Drugs to fight the effects of HIV and cancer rely on animal tests.

Operations on animals helped to develop organ transplant and open-heart surgery techniques.
However, an animal's response to a drug can be different to a human's and the stress the animals experience in the lab can affect the test results.

Laws protect all lab animals from cruelty during testing. However, these controls have not stopped some scientists from abusing animals and the animals can get very stressed.

Successful alternatives include taking human tissue samples and testing the drugs on them in a test tube. Also, some experiments are carried out using computer models and programmes. While others involve looking at large numbers of statistics.

Thanks, Salman Hanif.
References From CBBC