July 8, 2003

From Texas to Tel Aviv, dogs and other animals are being poisoned and otherwise tortured in chemical, biological and conventional warfare experiments. Each year, at least 320,000 primates, dogs, cats, pigs, goats, sheep, rabbits and other animals are hurt and killed by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) in experiments that rank among the most painful conducted in the country.

They are among the 70 million animals that suffer and die in research laboratories each year in "pure" research, toxicity and other studies, whose experimental  findings and results bear little correlation to the impact on human beings.

While the LD50 (lethal dose) test imposed by governments throughout the world determines the toxic dosage at which 50 percent of a given animal species will die, the physiology of these creatures is different than that of human beings. A test that determines how many bars of soap beagles must eat, or ounces of window cleaner that rabbits must drink, before 50 percent of these creatures die can establish only this fact. 

Two million people in the United States alone become seriously ill and more than 100,000 die each year because of reactions to medicines they were prescribed despite stringent animal tests before  these pharmaceuticals are released on the market.

As Peter Singer, the author of Animal Liberation, notes: "The practice of experimenting on nonhuman animals as it exists today throughout the world reveals the brutal consequences of speciesism."

A Vision of Hell: The Unspeakable Torment of Other Species, part 2 continues our meticulous examination of brutality towards animals and the devastating impact on our health and environment.