I'm sure most of you know about one of the newest movies in theaters right now: Planet of the Apes. While production crew did not use real apes in the making (fortunately), the movie shows how cruel and sad it is for primates that are locked up in small cages for experiments. Theses animals who share 99% of our DNA are intelligent and share similar needs and emotions for us. They need socialization, fresh air, and natural lives just as much as we need love from others and our own will to do what we want. These primates suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and depression from living such miserable lives, just like we would in their position. Luckily for us, there is no higher and more powerful being that is sadistic enough to stuff us in cages 24/7, cut us up or probe us for their research and then toss us back into the cage when we are not being used. So who are we to take what (or who) we want for our own purposes while neglecting the basic needs of our primate cousins?
Sometimes experiments can be conducted humanely- however, as many animal welfare organisations have found, animals in labs are more often than not treated as lab objects- something you can cut up or inject chemicals into, something you can toss back into a cage until your next experiment. Their lives look a little something like this:
Furthermore, we are the last industrialized nation that continues to perform invasive operations on great apes, even when we know primates do not develop HIV or other diseases like Hepatitis C like humans do.
Whether it be chimpanzees, apes, or any other kinds of animals being used in experimental lab testing, more and more evidence is being found that the physiological effects of chemicals and substances do not manifest in the same for us humans as it is for other species- in other words, animal testing is unnecessary, ineffective, and inaccurate (and perhaps even an obsolete method of testing) for "health and medicine" purposes.
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