Are you funding animal experiments (without knowing about it)?

Animal Aid are currently running a campaign warning people that charities they may be supporting may be conducting animal experiments. According to their literature, two of the worst offenders are The British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

They've now come up with a list of charities that do fund animal experiments and those that don't. To see where charities stand, visit www.animalaid.org.uk  

Why should we care about whether these charities fund experiments on animals?

2 main reasons -

ONE - These experiments cause unnecessary suffering to animals that have no one to speak for them as they live out a miserable and painful existence. Labs are poorly monitored (if they are monitored at all), condemning many animals to a lifetime of suffering in a cage.

TWO - They are wasting your money.

Experiments on animals are unreliable and just because a drug or procedure works on an animal doesn't mean it will work on a human. These animals are often given diseases and conditions they wouldn't naturally get or genetically engineered to have them.

Charities who fund experiments on animals claim they do it because they want to find a cure. The truth is animal experiments often take us further away from a cure and not closer. They waste money and time. Time that people who are ill may not have to wait for a cure or a treatment.

It’s not just in the UK that you could be unwittingly funding animal experiments. Most charities are hardly upfront about it. This surely begs the question - surely if this is essential they would tell people they pay for animal research?

For charities in the USA who don't fund animal experiments, visit - www.humaneseal.org

You can check out charities in the following countries –

USA

Canada

Australia

UK

How to find charities that don’t use animal experiments

It can be hard to say ‘no’ to someone who asks you to donate money to charity. But the truth of that matter is that many charities commission animal experiments that DON’T further medical science. If they did a number of illnesses would have been cured by now like cancer and AIDS.

All the experiments do, is harm animals. Animals like rats, mice, cats, dogs and monkeys.

Is this justified? Maybe people would say it was if the animal experiments actually yielded results that saved the lives of human beings, but the sad fact is that these animals are dying needlessly.

To find out who the charities are that don’t fund animal experiments, go to –

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) website. They have a searchable database of charities that don’t fund animal research.

On their site, you can search for charities in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia. Charities awarded their ‘Humane Charity Seal of Approval’ are those that are committed to advancing medical research without using animals. 

In the UK, Animal Aid has a list of charities that only commission non-animal medical research and those that do. 

Note – the list is constantly updated and the policies of some charities may change.