by James Johnson

Created on: January 24, 2009   Last Updated: February 09, 2009

In the past 30 years, animal testing in the United States has undergone drastic changes. It is an emotional issues with violent defenders of both on both side, for and against testing.It has swung from "let's feed or try everything on an animal (or sometimes several species of animals)" to "only use animals in critical areas and then use as few as possible". It needs to be clarified that animals are no longer used for testing most products such as cosmetics, but only for medical purposes.

Let's look at how animal testing started. Animal testing didn't start with the United States, it started at the dawn of civilization with primitive man feeding unknown products to animals such as chickens and seeing what happened. Then they started using dogs, cats and even other people (pigs, cows and horses were considered too valuable). It then advanced to laboratories and became a bit more complex, and controversial!

The United States needed workers so decided that it was a bad idea to test things on people, but they also wanted their citizens to have safe products. The government set up test procedures and requirements that they felt would be safest for everybody. These rules were consolidated in a book known as The Code of Federal Regulation, CFR for short.

Over time, the CFR grew, and grew, and grew some more; it became several thousand rules and restrictions, mostly involving the use of animals. It said what animals were to be used for each product or type of product, the age of the animal and often even the size. Most were justified, but many were cruel and useless, protecting people by submitting animals to cruel extremes.

Fingernail Polish was placed on the eyes of rabbits to see how inflamed they would become. The justification was that a woman may touch her hand to her face, but would she keep doing or not flush it out immediately? Chemicals were fed in tremendous dosages all at once to small creatures, at ridiculous levels to check for "cumulative effects"; though if given at normal doses the liver and kidneys could filter them out.

Concerned citizens found out about this testing and started to protest. Marches were held and government officials petitioned. Laboratories were raided and animals "liberated". In some cases it was needed, but in other instances valuable medical research was lost or hampered. The CFR got changed and many laboratories increased security as well as developed new procedures.

Now in the United States only essential testing is done on animals. Extensive research is done in the laboratory and using computers before testing on animals starts. The goals of the research are carefully examined and the value of the information determined, then the product is tested on animals or sometimes not. This decreases the number of animals required and cuts expenses, so all benefit.

At present, most if not all testing in the United States on animals is only for medical research. It is usually done on the final product when the drug or product has to be tested on a living system, frequently searching for unknown effects. If the effects are known and it is possible, the tests are not done using animals.

Emotions aside, animal testing will continue for the foreseeable future. It will likely decrease and hopefully get even more humane.

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