User:Bathen s/Bagrut Project

=Experiments Using Animals: Where do scientists get their animals for research?=

Teacher's Name: Nellie Deutsch

School Name: Ort Guttmann

Students' Name: Bat-Hen

Date: 1/11/08

Introduction
My project topic is experiments using animals. I chose this topic because I love animals. I have a female dog and I feel like I am her mom. She is my whole world. I feel concern about animals because they are elpless; they cannot say if they feel bad or things like that. All over the world, there are experiments using animals. However, in many places there are demonstrations against it. In addition, there are Internet sites that call people to sign against experiments using animals.

I think that we should execute people who do experiments on animals, because it's sickly, and these people should be killed. I love animals with all of my heart. I think they are helpless because they cannot say if they get hurt or if they want something. I feel the need to protect them. The question of my project is "where do scientists get their animals?" I want to find out where and who gives them the poor animals.

Research Findings
In my project, I checked where scientists get their animals for the research. I found out that the animals that are most commonly used in research are rats, mice, and other rodents. These animals are raised for research, and scientists purchase them from animal breeders. A small number of other animals are used in research including pigs, sheep, other farm animals, dogs, cats, and primates. Dogs, cats, and monkeys combined make up less than 1% of research animals. In addition, there are special rules about obtaining them for research. For example, monkeys from endangered or threatened species may not be caught from their natural homes and must therefore come from breeding farms. Researchers may buy raised animals from USDA-licensed breeders or raise them in their own breeding places. Purpose-bred animals tend to be young, share a common genetic background, and be small in size. These characteristics make them suitable for some kinds of research, but unsuitable for others. In addition, when scientists want to study heart disease, organ system failure, bone defects, or joint disorders, they need to use animals that are large, physiologically mature, or even old animals. Every year, 6-10 million unwanted dogs and cats are killed in the animal pounds. Less than 1% of these animals were not suitable for medical research and so had to be killed.

Survey
During my project, I asked people from my family, and friends about my project subject and I got many different answers, so I wrote the answers in percents to show the differences between the answers.

60% say that they have pet of there own, and 40% say that they do not have any animals but they don’t have anything against them. 70% say that animal experiments is negative thing because it heart the animals, and 30% says that animal experiments is good because it help to find cure for diseases. 90% didn’t know from the scientists get there animals for researches!!! And only 10% guess the right answer.
 * 1) What do you think about animals?
 * 1) What do you think about animal experiments?
 * 1) Do you know from where scientists get their animals for research?

Some people think that an animal experiment is good because it helps people. However, do they not care about the animals? Do they not realize that animals have feelings? In addition, people do not even know where animals for experiments come from. All that matters to them is that animal experiments help people. The people are unaware of the fact that special organizations raise animals and supply the animals for the experiments.

Conclusion
There are many organizations that provide animals for experiments although there are many groups against animal experiments. For example, the researchers can get their animals from the USDA or raise them on their own. I hope that some day all this will stop somehow and people will realize that animals have feelings too. However, until then each other of us should do something for animals, people can adopt animals or if they see animals on the street- help them. The main idea is not to ignore the situation

Reflections
In the process of working on the project, it was hard to me to enter the sites with the experiments on the animals. When I saw a site with photos, I left. I enjoy the project because I found out many things that I did not know about organizations against s experiments using animals. I found out people are actually demonstrating all over the world and that in some places it has changed things.