Animal Testing
Synthesis Prompt
Madison Beaver
Sydney Buchanan
Olivia Drake
Kaylee Pressley
AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION FREERESPONSE QUESTION
Internationally, animal testing is used for everything from drugs to cosmetics. Over 100 million animals are tested in US labs every year. Some people believe that animal testing is cruel. Others, however, believe that animal testing is necessary in order to advance medically and test products.
Carefully read the following six sources, then synthesize information from at least three of the sources and incorporate it into a coherent, well-developed essay that takes a position on whether animal testing is or is not necessary in the United States today.
Your argument should be the focus of your essay. Use the sources to develop your argument and explain the reasoning for it. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly which sources you are drawing from, whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may site the sources as Source A, Source B, etc.
Source A
Orlans, F. Barbara. In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation. New
York: Oxford UP, 1993.
Using animals in research and to test the safety of products has been a topic of heated debate for decades. According to data collected by F. Barbara Orlans for her book, In the Name of Science:
Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation, sixty percent of all animals used in testing are used in biomedical research and product-safety testing (62). People have different feelings for animals; many look upon animals as companions while others view animals as a means for advancing medical techniques or furthering experimental research. However individuals perceive animals, the fact remains that animals are being exploited by research facilities and cosmetics companies all across the country and all around the world. Although humans often benefit from successful animal research, the pain, the suffering, and the deaths of animals are not worth the possible human benefits. Therefore, animals should not be used in research or to test the safety of products. First, animals' rights are violated when they are used in research. Tom Regan, a philosophy professor at North Carolina State University, states: "Animals have a basic moral right to respectful treatment. . . .This inherent value is not respected when animals are reduced to being mere tools in a scientific experiment" (qtd. in Orlans 26). Animals and people are alike in many ways; they both feel, think, behave, and experience pain. Thus, animals should be treated with the same respect as humans. Yet animals' rights are violated when they are used in research because they are not given a choice. Animals are subjected to tests that are often painful or cause permanent damage or death, and they are never given the option of not participating in the experiment. Regan further says, for example, that "animal [experimentation] is morally wrong no matter how much humans may benefit because the animal's basic right has been infringed. Risks are not morally transferable to those who do not choose to take them" (qtd. in Orlans 26). Animals do not willingly sacrifice themselves for the advancement of human welfare and new technology. Their decisions are made for them because they cannot vocalize their own preferences and choices. When humans decide the fate of animals in research environments, the animals' rights are taken away without any thought of their well-being or the quality of their lives. Therefore, animal experimentation should be stopped because it violates the rights of animals. Next, the pain and suffering that experimental animals are subject to is not worth any possible benefits to humans. "The American Veterinary
Medial Association defines animal pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience perceived as arising from a specific region of the body and associated with actual or potential tissue damage" (Orlans 129). Animals
