Nexus - 0226 - New Times Magazine-pages

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The Alternatives Animal Testing You can do something to help stop the needless suffering of animals. here is an unrecognised ingredient in most cosmetics, shampoos, soaps, tooth- pastes and other personal-care products. The ingredient is animal suffering. Each year, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of rabbits, guinea pigs, mice, rates and other animals suffer or die in the safety testing of these products. Such testing is not required by the federal government. And more and more companies are marketing products without resorting to animal testing. These progressive companies recognise that the tests not only cause animals to suffer, but also are unnecessary and, even when used, are of questionable relevance to public safety. You can do something to help stop the needless suffering of animals. The Draize Eye-Irritancy Test The Draize Eye-Irritancy Test yields a rough estimate of how damaging a substance is to human eyes. In this test, substances are placed in the eyes of several restrained rabbits who then endure anything from mild redness and swelling to ulceration and haemorrhage of the eyeball. This test is a crude procedure and has little relevance to human safety. Many substances that are irritating to rabbit eyes are nonirritating to human eyes, and vice versa. Indeed, the Draize test has even yielded conflicting results when the same sub- stances have been re-tested on more rabbits. The LD50 Test The Lethal Dose 50 per cent (LD50) test provides a rough measure of how poisonous a substance is to people by estimating the amount that is needed to kill SO per cent of a group of test animals. In the most common variation of the LDSO test, dozens of animals are forced to ingest the test substance. In other variations, they are forced to breathe the test substance in a vapour, powder or spray, or they have the substance applied directly to their skin or injected into their bodies. Mice and rats are most commonly exploited in this tact test. The LDSO test produces signs of poisoning such as bleeding from the eyes, nose or mouth, laboured breathing, convulsions, tremors, paralysis and coma. If the animals do not die by poisoning, they are killed at the end of the testing period which usually lasts two weeks. The LDSO0 test is crude and nearly useless in protecting the public from unsafe products. The test's results vary so widely, depending on which species is used as the test subject, that predicting the human lethal dose on the basis of the LDSO test is nearly impossible. The test results are also affected by a test animal's age, sex and diet. WHY IS COSMETICS TESTING ON ANIMALS UNJUSTIFIED? Cosmetics are not life-saving drugs. Although animal testing of new drugs might be considered a necessary evil, animal testing of new cosmetics is an unnecessary evil. A civilised society should not condone animal suffering to have a new eyeshadow. “Animal Testing—Cosmetics' Hidden Ingredient" and "Questions And Answers About Alternatives In Animal Research And Testing” Fact Sheets © 1994 by The Humane Society of the United States 2100 L Street, NW Washington, DC 20037, USA DON'T ANIMAL TESTS ASSURE HUMAN SAFETY? No. Every year thousands of Americans injure themselves using products that had been tested on animals. There are several reasons for this. Products that have been judged harmless on the basis of animal tests can still be harmful to people. Furthermore, those products that have been judged harmful as a result of animal tests are not necessarily kept JUNE - JULY 1995 NEXUS ¢ 19 ANIMAL TESTING — COSMETICS' HIDDEN INGREDIENT METHODS OF TESTING ON ANIMALS