| Animal Rights Essay, Research Paper
Animal Rights
Do you think a rat should have the right to go up to your table and eat with you? No, of course not. We are higher up in the world. This is what animal right activists are fighting for.
They say give animals the rights they deserve. The truth is if we give animals rights, we will be putting them on the same level as the human race. I know that I do not want to be on the same level as a rat. Animals should not have rights!
The use of animals in medical research is necessary in developing safe and effective medicines for treating human diseases. Genetics has allowed the creation of better, more precise mouse models for many serious human conditions, including cancer, cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. This speeds up research and ensures that trials in humans of promising treatments can begin sooner. Research using animals is the means, not the end, and most scientists are eager to see the animal phase of their work, because it means that they can move on to work with people (Brink). If animal activists have their way, we would not be able to use animals for research. Animal research is a very important step in finding treatments, and cures for both humans and animals. Animal research helps scientists find cures for such illnesses as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer?s, spinal cord injuries, and multiple sclerosis (Americans for Medical Progress). Both Jonas Salk, and Albert Sabin said if it was not for the use of animals in their research, they would have never been able to develop a vaccine for polio (Franklin par.32).
Animal activists are always in a hurry to wear their red or pink ribbons to let people know that they?re in the fight against cancer, when in reality all they are doing is stopping or slowing down the cure for aids by protesting animal research. They believe that if they wear enough ribbons and hope a lot, a cure will just come out of nowhere. It is going to take a lot of research on both people and animals to find a cure (Brink).
Animal activists have done more harm than they have done good. By trying to set a couple of animals free, animal activists have hurt more people by stopping studies on affects of stroke, and they say animal researchers are the inhuman ones. Animal right activists are the ones who are hurting people (Saunders par.11-14). Animal right activists think they have the right to go around and destroy things just because they think it is wrong. In one case they caused $500,000 worth of damage to a lab (Wells par.12). Between the years 1979 and 1993 animal right activists have caused over 300 break-ins. During these break-ins, they caused over 32 years in set backs for research (Brink). In other cases, animal right activists call and harass scientist. Most of the time, the scientists are so scared they can not concentrate on their work (White par.4-6).
Animal right activists are saying that they are helping the animals by going around and setting them free. This is not true in most cases, because the animals used in research are animals that were raised for research, and do not know how to take care of themselves. When animal right activists set them free as they call it, all they are doing is killing the animals in a slow death by starvation. In one case animal right activists broke into a mink farm outside of Mount Angel, and set free over 10,000 minks. To do this, the activists had to cut through a wire fence, spray a watch dog with pepper-spray, and disarm an alarm. Most of these minks were babies and once they lost their mothers they could not survive. A lot of adults died as well because they did not know how to care for themselves out in the wild. There were about 2,000 baby minks killed, and about 400 of 1,600 adult minks killed (Gorman). I do not see how this is giving animals rights. It looks like animal right activists are just giving them the right to die a slow painful death. Animal right activists say ?at least [the minks] had a shot at freedom?(Gorman). The minks did not know what freedom was, so how did they have a shot at it?
Has an animal ever saved your son, daughter, or family member that you love so much? Well if they ever had leukemia, lymphoma, heart surgery, organ transplant, a regular cold, cancer, a stroke, or a heart attack they have. Animals have helped scientist develop cures and treatments for all of these diseases and more. To show how important animal research is, in 1998 the Nobel prize for medicine went to Dr. Robert F. Fuchgott, Dr. Louis J. Lgnarro, and Dr. Ferid Murad for their research which was conducted by using animals (Calnan).
Animal right activist say that in a few years monkeys will be suing to get their constitutional rights. They plan to use technology that animal researchers have developed to save the monkeys from being studied. To obtain information to make a voice synthesizer, you have to do studies on the monkeys to see how they talk, and how their voice box works. They said just the other day a monkey said, ?Please buy me a hamburger?(Leo). Why is it alright for research to be done to help out the animal right activists, but not to help a little six year old girl that is dying in a hospital bed because she has cancer, and there is no real cure for it. Animal right activists are saying that the animals are more important than our own species. I think that I would like to keep my rights as a human, and have the right to save my species by coming up with new treatments and medicines, by using some animals that are not being hurt or treated inhumane.
One of the biggest fights that animal right activists are fighting for, is the way that animals are locked up in little cages inside of laboratories. The truth is that there are some laboratories where animals are kept in little cages for long periods of time, but not everyone is perfect. Most laboratories only keep animals in cages for short periods of time, when they are being treated, or when they are being transferred from one place to another. All of the rest of the time, animals are placed in groups called colonies, which consist of about 12-15 monkeys. These colonies are in big cages, which have activities that let the monkeys do natural things, like swinging, and climbing. They also have toys, ?and visual and audio stipulation, including brightly colored pictures and music.? Test have shown that rhesus macaques that are raised in a pathogen-free environment are much happier than rhesus macaques that are out in the wild (Franklin 03). In some cases, we are treating animals better than we treat our own species. One Christmas, San Francisco put homeless people in their new animal shelters because they were nicer than any other place they could find to put them (Tharp). I would think that we would have a better place for homeless people, than we would for homeless pets. Shouldn?t the animal right activists help out their own species before they go around helping the animals, which in this case, are doing a lot better than they are.
Animal right activists go around saying that laboratories need to stop research on animals, trying to make everyone believe they are helping the animals, when they are really not. There is a group of animal right activists called PETA, which in 1995 had $12 million in fiscal money. Of that money, PETA spent only $3,955 on animal shelters, or things that animals really benefit from. In 1996 they only spent $6,100 of it?s $10.9 million on things that animals really benefit from. It is also proven that out of the humane society?s $40 million budget they have not built one animal shelter (Thomas par.5-6).
If animal right activists would stop wasting their money on protesting against a good cause, they could put their money to good use and do something good for a change.
Animals should not have rights! If we give animals rights, we will be giving up a fight for our rights. We should care for the welfare of an animal, but they should not have rights to say I do not want to be used for research. Animal research should be done in a proper, ethical, and relevant way. We the people should have the right to say we need to use animals to save lives whatever the cost because a little girl?s life is priceless. If the time comes where animals have rights, and we cannot use them for research, let the animal right activists go to that little girl?s parents, and tell them that she is going to die, because we do not have a cure for her disease.
Bibliography
this paper is about animal rights and why animals should not have them
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