Louie

I've known a few beagles in my life, and there's only one way to describe all of them: sweetness personified. So you have to wonder what kind of evil lurks inside a person who would purposely harm such a sweet creature. One of our own government agencies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for making sure that pharmaceuticals, biologicals, and medical devices are safe, effective, and of a high quality and also that foods, cosmetics, and radiation-emitting products are safe as well, is very big on using beagles for toxicity tests. In fact, the use of beagles is so widespread in pharmaceutical testing in the U.S. that 65,000 of these sweet puppies are forced to undergo hideous experiments every year.

What are these experiments like? Well, just imagine if you lived in a small prison cell and someone force-fed you every day with a nasty chemical that made you nauseous and dizzy for hours and hours and then, just as you were starting to feel better, came along again to pump some more of the sickening chemical down your throat. Imagine this going on for weeks or months. I have seen footage of beagles in toxicity tests, and it is heart-wrenching. The dogs can barely stand up, they whine, they drool, and they are clearly miserable and suffering. Many of these dogs are slowly and torturously poisoned to death.

Penny

And for what? Most of these drugs don't pass muster anyway. The ones that do are then tested extensively on humans (obviously in much more humane conditions) because the animal tests weren't really reliable to begin with. And even then, according to the FDA, a whopping 92 percent of the drugs fail during the human trials because they end up having side effects that weren't predicted based on the animal studies that were conducted.

The FDA regulations are in need of a massive overhaul, both technically and ethically.

Lulu

This morning, PETA ran a full-page ad in The Washington Post denouncing the head of the FDA, Andrew Von Eschenbach, for supporting these barbaric toxicity tests and calling on him to replace them with modern, reliable, non-animal tests. This is the 21st century! But we are still conducting these torture tests that aren't much different from burning people at the stake, except that they're being done on one of the sweetest, most loyal, affectionate, nonjudgmental, forgiving, and loving creatures on the planet, the beagle. What is wrong with us humans? Where is our sense of fairness and compassion? It's really shameful.

And it's not just beagles―it's lots of other kinds of animals who are being tortured as well. In my view, it's just plain evil to inflict suffering like this on any living being, no matter what can be gained from it. If you put yourself into those victimized animals' "shoes" and really try to feel what they are going through, then only the coldest, most heartless.person could give toxicity tests on them the thumbs-up. Of course, there are many cold, heartless people in the world. Apparently, a large number of them work in animal-testing labs.

Please help us try to change this sorry state of affairs!