Against Publicly Funded Animal Experimentation
Our tax dollars are used to support animal testing.
I realize that to most this is not surprising. But the numbers should be: Our government spends over $5 billion a year of our money conducting experiments on animals. 5 billion dollars!!!
Estimates of how many animals are killed through animal testing vary considerably. An anti-vivisection site places the number between 17 and 70 million a year. The Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1966, requires labs to make publicly available the number of animals it “uses,” but the law does not apply to birds, rats and mice—the three animals which alone make up over 85% of the total number of animals killed.
There are several reasons why we should oppose this type of research. First, on general libertarian grounds we should oppose any type of governmental spending that is not vitally necessary for the security of its citizens. For example, the Department of Transportation recently conducted a test that consisted of repeatedly pouring a corrosive chemical on the backs of rabbits (their fur was shaved), to test the acidity of that product. What product were they testing? “Goodbye Graffiti.” This is not an essential function of government—our tax dollars shouldn’t support such worthless tests as that. A “limited government” shouldn’t spend $5 billion a year on vivisection.
Second, conservatives should reject it for foreign policy reasons. The Department of Defense spent over $200,000,000 last year on animal testing. That is a lot of money, and I don’t think you will find a single soldier who would want it spent teaching monkeys how to fly airplanes or seeing how much it hurts dogs when they’re injected with poisonous gas (a lot, I'm guessing).
Third, and most importantly, experiments on animals have been notoriously inaccurate throughout history. Thalidomide, a drug used to treat morning sickness in the ‘50s and ‘60s before it became known that it created severe birth defects and over 10,000 deaths in babies, was tested on animals by the NIH and given a clean bill of health. One study showed that over one-third of the drugs successfully tested on animals were eventually found unsafe for humans by the FDA. The reasons are simple enough: There are vast physiological differences between animals, and it’s unsafe to say that just since a product doesn’t harm mice it’ll be safe to provide to humans.
I’ve limited my focus to the vivisection done with our tax dollars, because I feel that is the strongest argument. If Cover Girl wants to keep testing its make-up on animals, that’s their right as a business—if you object to animal testing on utilitarian grounds, you can simply stop using those business’s products. (PETA has a list of the companies that test on animals.) But I would hope we could all agree that the U.S. Government should, at the very least, limit its animal testing to only those situations that are vitally necessary for our safety.
I realize that to most this is not surprising. But the numbers should be: Our government spends over $5 billion a year of our money conducting experiments on animals. 5 billion dollars!!!
Estimates of how many animals are killed through animal testing vary considerably. An anti-vivisection site places the number between 17 and 70 million a year. The Animal Welfare Act, passed in 1966, requires labs to make publicly available the number of animals it “uses,” but the law does not apply to birds, rats and mice—the three animals which alone make up over 85% of the total number of animals killed.
There are several reasons why we should oppose this type of research. First, on general libertarian grounds we should oppose any type of governmental spending that is not vitally necessary for the security of its citizens. For example, the Department of Transportation recently conducted a test that consisted of repeatedly pouring a corrosive chemical on the backs of rabbits (their fur was shaved), to test the acidity of that product. What product were they testing? “Goodbye Graffiti.” This is not an essential function of government—our tax dollars shouldn’t support such worthless tests as that. A “limited government” shouldn’t spend $5 billion a year on vivisection.
Second, conservatives should reject it for foreign policy reasons. The Department of Defense spent over $200,000,000 last year on animal testing. That is a lot of money, and I don’t think you will find a single soldier who would want it spent teaching monkeys how to fly airplanes or seeing how much it hurts dogs when they’re injected with poisonous gas (a lot, I'm guessing).
Third, and most importantly, experiments on animals have been notoriously inaccurate throughout history. Thalidomide, a drug used to treat morning sickness in the ‘50s and ‘60s before it became known that it created severe birth defects and over 10,000 deaths in babies, was tested on animals by the NIH and given a clean bill of health. One study showed that over one-third of the drugs successfully tested on animals were eventually found unsafe for humans by the FDA. The reasons are simple enough: There are vast physiological differences between animals, and it’s unsafe to say that just since a product doesn’t harm mice it’ll be safe to provide to humans.
I’ve limited my focus to the vivisection done with our tax dollars, because I feel that is the strongest argument. If Cover Girl wants to keep testing its make-up on animals, that’s their right as a business—if you object to animal testing on utilitarian grounds, you can simply stop using those business’s products. (PETA has a list of the companies that test on animals.) But I would hope we could all agree that the U.S. Government should, at the very least, limit its animal testing to only those situations that are vitally necessary for our safety.
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