I’ve seen this petition twice in two days, and it irritates the hell out of me.
Firstly, the animals that would be tested are rats, so the image is an appeal to emotion, which is dishonest.
But what really annoys me is that the people signing these petitions go around signing every “help the animals” thing they see. Considering the drugs that keep me alive were (are?) tested on animals, that’s really irritating. Especially when it’s my friends.
This is a quote from a NZ politician: “So the prime minister thinks ’cause an animal’s got a cute fluffy tail it’s okay, if it has a long skinny tail it is not.”
This guy is trying to say that animal testing is just as awful regardless of whether it’s on a rat or a dog. He seems to have forgotten that the whole point is to protect people. I think people are more important than dogs.
What most people don’t realise (or don’t consider) is that animals used in scientific testing have to be healthy. When you’re doing an experiment, it has to be repeatable, and scientists can’t draw reliable conclusions from animals that are unhealthy because that would introduce too many variables. So most lab animals are better treated than people’s pets and they have good lives, for the time that they are alive.
It’s very sad that we have to test things on animals, but all things considered, it’s better than the alternative.
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