Target: Steny Hoyer, Majority Democratic Leader of the U.S. House
Goal: Thank the U.S. House for ending the archaic FDA animal testing mandate and encourage them to continue taking steps towards a cruelty free research industry
Over 100 million animals– including mice, dogs, cats, frogs, guinea pigs, rabbits, monkeys, farm animals, birds, and fish– are cruelly tortured in labratories each year in the name of medical training, consumer product testing– including cosmetic, pharmaceutical, chemical, and food testing–, or experiments driven by sheer human curiosity. These animals are forcefully exposed to toxic chemicals, drugs, or infectious diseases that can result in extremely painful deaths; genetically manipulated; physically restrained for prolonged periods of time and intentionally wounded or inflicted with medical illnesses like cancer and depression to study the “healing” processes, among other things. Animals at testing facilities suffer food and water deprivation, social isolation, and extreme confinement until they are ultimately killed by means of anesthetics, carbon dioxide asphyxiation, or decapitation, if they are to even live past the experimentation phase at all.
Until recently, the FDA maintained an outdated mandate that all experimental drugs had to be tested on animals before they could be used on humans in clinical trials. However, more often than not, animal tests for human drug development are done in vain. Results are only rarely predictive– with about a 95% failure rate– of human responses, due to our extremely different biological and cognitive makeups.
In this previous ForceChange petition, consumers demanded the end to animal testing. Now, newly enacted legislation by The House– which promises to abolish this antiquated FDA mandate– will save the lives of thousands of innocent animals, while simultaneously making drugs more affordable for the masses. The U.S. House acknowledges the more viable alternatives that now exist in the 21st century to better suit human medical progress and which are more grounded in human biology rather than that of, say, a beagle’s.
Sign this petition to thank the U.S. House for ending this cruel and unnecessary FDA animal testing mandate, and saving thousands of lives in the process. We still have a ways to go in ending animal research once and for all, but this is a major step.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear Mr. Hoyer,
Over a hundred million animals of dozens of different species are subjected to physically and psychologically abusive experiments each and every year in the United States. These experiments are wasteful and oftentimes unreliable. In fact, 95% of the time, preliminary animal tests fail to successfully predict human responses to drugs and other consumer products.
We at the ForceChange community want to thank you for putting an end to the archaic FDA mandate that requires all experimental drugs to be tested on animals before they can be used on humans in clinical trials. Not only will you be reducing the cost of drugs for the people who need them, but you will be saving thousands of animal lives from excruciating deaths in the process. There are so many more biologically relevant alternatives that exist that there is no longer any need to continue the torturous, error ridden process of conducting animal tests.
Thank you again for recognizing these viable alternatives, and for taking a step towards ending animal testing once and for all.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: tiburi
