This is something most people are completely unaware of: how drug testing on animals harms humans. While it is obvious to want to stop testing anything on animals for animal welfare reasons, testing on animals is part of what makes so many pharmaceutical drugs so dangerous. I will quickly illustrate with the following example.
For any of you who are familiar with going out into the wild, whether to harvest wild plants or mushrooms, one of the first rules of wild foraging is not to rely on what others animals eat as being safe for you. You cannot observe a squirrel eating a mushroom or a deer eating a certain plant and assume that since it is okay for them then it is okay for you too. Yet this is exactly what has been taking place in the fields of drug and medical research for decades, and why so many people are seriously hurt or killed by taking pharmaceuticals.
And it is not just about toxicity risks. Most people know that dogs cannot eat chocolate. Imagine if society tested chocolate on dogs and came back to say that since it is not safe for them, it must not be safe for us. This also occurs in drug research, meaning that things that may have had some value for human health get dismissed because they proved unsafe in animals. What is toxic to other animals may not be toxic to us, and what is toxic to us may not be toxic to them.
So whether you care about the animals or your own health, or that of other humans, the next time you see petitions or other efforts to ban animal testing, pay attention and take action. Because as things stand, animals are being tortured and killed in unspeakable ways, while pharmaceutical drugs remain one of the riskiest substances to put into our bodies, and testing on animals is partly to blame for that.
It is time to evolve this system from its primitive approach.
For more information about this topic, further insights and potential solutions, I invite you to read and reflect on the following article by Lisa Kramer: It’s time to stop testing drugs on animals and start using better, more modern methods.