Projects and Cases

Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

The Other Side of the Animal Research Debate:
What Animal Enterprises Don't Want You to Know

MYTH: "We must recognize that scientific research is not only a legitimate career, but also an invaluable facet of medical advancement, conducted by respectable professionals deserving our support. The deplorable actions of these eco–terrorists threaten to impede important medical progress in California and across the country."
— Senator Feinstein, Co–Sponsor of AETA

FACT: Despite popular belief, animal testing is not necessary for progress in human medicine, and certainly not for cosmetics. In fact, many scientists are against animal research because they believe that it is harmful to humans. For example, the Americans for Medical Advancement (AFMA) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) argue that cellular differences between species are too great to extrapolate experimental results from one species and apply it to another. For example, Thalidomide was tested safely on animals but resulted in horrendous birth defects when pregnant women began taking it for morning sickness in the late 1950s. Similarly, the artificial fat substance Olestra was safe for animals but ended up causing anal leakage in humans. Furthermore, since Acetaminophen (the active ingredient in Tylenol) kills cats and Penicillin kills guinea pigs, had we tested these drugs on these animals we never would have had them today.

Horrifically, many household products and cosmetics companies still pump their products into animals' stomachs, rub them onto their skin, squirt them into their eyes, or force animals to inhale them as aerosol spray. Animals are subjected to torturous conditions where they are cut open, poisoned, and forced to live in barren steel cages for years. They are starved.¬ÝTheir skin peels off. Their eyes swell and pus. Their organs fail. They suffer from convulsions. They die from trauma. All of this pain and death for new shampoo formulas and failed medicines.

For both cosmetics and medicine, new research methods, such as computer models, cell cultures, and human studies are more accurate, less expensive, and much more humane.

It is obvious that animal testing is a controversial topic that deserves to be contested. AETA stops the discussion surrounding the merit of animal research by favoring one side of the debate because of the fear of profit loss: not violence.

There is a reason so many people are fighting against animal testing; they have the right to be heard.