The Price of Beauty

According to In Defense of Animals (n.d.), 'Every year, cosmetics companies kill millions of animals to test their products' on the premise that 'they test on animals to establish the safety of their products and ingredients for consumers'.

Draize test leaves rabbits blind in some cases

Products are commonly tested on animals to measure the levels of skin irritancy, eye tissue damage and the level of toxicity in the substances used in cosmetics. Some tests are extremely painful for animals, such as the Draize test in which 'caustic substances are placed in the eyes of conscious rabbits to evaluate the damage to sensitive eye tissues'. As a result of the application many 'often scream when the substances are applied and sometimes break their necks or backs trying to escape the restraints'.

Lethal Dosage (LD) tests are used to determine the fatal levels of substances. In some cases 'subjects are forced to ingest poisonous substances until half of them die ... reactions to LD tests include convulsions, vomiting, paralysis and bleeding from the eyes, nose, mouth or rectum'.

Moreover, the results of these tests may not necessarily apply to humans. Peter Tatchell (2009) reports that the human physiology is sufficiently different to those of animals and will therefore counteract any cures derived from animal experimentation. There is no dispute that animal testing provides data, but whatever is discovered from these tests will have to then be re-tested on humans in order to correctly ensure they work. So not only do animals inevitably suffer a cruel cause that could have ultimately been avoided, the patients trying out the novel treatments will also suffer from the irrelevant data collected.