Cosmetic testing on animals is painful and cruel. Here are the facts:

The Tests

The Draize Eye Irritancy Test is used to evaluate the ability of a test substance to cause damage to the tissues of the eye. Liquid, flake, granule and powdered substances are placed into the eyes of conscious rabbits. In a typical test, six to nine rabbits are held in stocks from which only their heads protrude so that they cannot dislodge the substance with a paw. Rabbits do not have tear ducts to clean the irritants away and they cannot blink their eyes for relief because clips are holding their eyes open. The rabbits often scream when the substance is applied and sometimes break their necks or backs in their efforts to escape the pain. They usually receive no anesthesia during the tests.

Reactions to the substances include swollen eyelids, inflamed irises, ulceration, bleeding, massive deterioration and blindness. When the test is done, the animals are killed or "recycled" into further tests, such as dermal toxicity tests.

Skin irritancy tests, such as the Draize 24-hour Patch Test and Dermal Toxicity tests, are conducted on rabbits, guinea pigs and other animals. The process involves placing chemicals on the animals' raw, shaved skin and covering the skin with adhesive plaster. The animals are immobilized in restraining devices to prevent them from struggling while laboratory workers apply the chemicals, which burn into the animals' skin.

Acute toxicity tests, commonly called Lethal Dose (LD) or poisoning tests, determine the amount of a substance that will kill part of a group of test animals. Animals are forced to ingest substances through stomach tubes, inhale substances as a vapor spray, have substances injected or have substances applied directly to exposed skin. Animals' reactions to toxicity tests include convulsions, vomiting, diarrhea, paralysis and bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth or rectum. Sub-acute tests can last 28-90 days or longer. In chronic tests, animals are dosed daily for up to two years. To avoid interference with results, no painkillers are used.

Cosmicmojo: at best you are in denial, at worst, you are an outright liar. Cosmetic testing of animals is painful for them. It does cause them to suffer greatly. You paint a little fantasy world of happy animals in labs. At least have the courage of your convictions and face up to the fact that you support cosmetic testing of animals despite the fact that it is cruel.

http://www.atourhands.com/cosmetic.html

Humans have a funny relationship with nonhuman animals. We keep some as pets and treat them with love and kindness, but we use those exact same animals, or others like them, for experiments or food or sport or clothing. We know they feel pain, and we know they have emotions, but we abuse them anyway, because we consider them inferior to us. Except for our pets: we love our pets.

Here's a thought experiment for anyone who thinks that there might be intelligent life on other planets. Suppose one of those extraterrestrials was as large and powerful and intelligent to us, as we are to rats and rabbits. Suppose they came to our planet and "harvested" us to use in the same way that we use rats and rabbits: to test their products on, to perform medical experiments on, to try out new nerve and poison gases on for their military, to shoot us for fun, to cram us into dirty cages and then kill us for food, to trap us by a leg and then skin us for clothing, and all the other brutal things which we do to rats and rabbits and so many other animals.

Sure, we would squeak in pain (to their big ears). We would tremble in fear. We would bleed and writhe in agony, but hey, we're only animals to them, and they are so much more important than us.

Don't fret: it's just a thought experiment. Chances are that any alien life intelligent enough to travel to this planet will have a sense of compassion commensurate with their intelligence. On the other hand, if their sense of justice is also as developed, they may look at the suffering we inflict upon each other and upon the animals at our mercy, and decide that maybe we're not worth caring about after all.

Thank you for your kind words, and thank you for oblterating once and for all cosmicmojo's absurdly rosy view of what really happens to animals in labs. Her messages remind me of an old Bloom County strip, where Opus imagines life in a Mary Kay cosmetics testing lab: a bunch of women in party dresses and hats applying lipstick and eye shadow to rabbits. I do wonder what cosmicmojo's interest in all this is. She acts like she makes her living selling rats to labs.

The truth about animal testing, as you know, is ugly as hell, and the more people learn about it, the more demand will arise for reform and one day, hopefully, abolition.