Vivisection

Vivisection is the practice of animal experimentation. This originally began because of religious prohibitions against the dissection of human corpses. When the prohibitions were lifted, the practice had become a convention.

Many household products and cosmetics still test on animals, including Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Cheesborough-Ponds, and Lever Brothers.

One of the standard tests used is called the Draize Test. Substances are placed in the eye of a rabbit, then the eye is watched for changes. Rabbits were considered desirable for this because their eyes lack tear ducts, so the chemical will not "wash" out. When it was found that blinking expelled significant quantities of the test product, the eyes were fixed open with wire staples. The animals are enclosed in such a way as to leave only the head exposed, since the rabbits will claw out their own eyes, rather than quietly submit to the agonies of science.
Dogs and cats are frequently used as well. The animals are obtained from pounds, unwitting animal shelters, and professional "bunchers" who capture strays for the purpose of sale to testing companies. Here they will have the honor of having their fur (and some skin) removed with adhesive tape, and chemicals rubbed into the abraded area. Products may also be injected into their stomachs.

The National Institutes of Health is the largest funder of animal experiments in the world: Five billion dollars of taxpayers' money is spent each year on animal tests. Military facilities also use tax dollars to carry out radiation experiments, research on chemical warfare, and other deadly procedures- many of which are conducted on primates.
All of this despite the fact that animal tests lead to notoriously bad science. Results from tests on non-humans simply can not be extrapolated to humans! Since 1976, every drug which has been recalled after causing dangerous or deadly side-effects was first tested on animals!(including DES and Thalidomide) In several studies, substances which caused cancer, or other diseases in mice, had no detrimental effect upon rats! How then, is this of use to humans?

Possibly the most frightening development in vivisection is in the realm of agriculture. Here chickens, turkeys, pigs, cows and sheep are hormonally, chemically or genetically altered to better suit the uses of humans. (People want more white meat- so today's "new and improved" chicken is so top-heavy that the legs become deformed, and cannot support the weight of the poor creature.) Massive amounts of hormones are injected to factory farm animals to force rapid growth from an animal on a diet of processed sewage and sawdust. What a fantastic advancement of science! Now if only there was a way to get these hormones out of the meat! Unfortunately, there isn't. Nor is there a filter to remove the Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) from the milk you drink. These hormones have been identified as the culprits in cases of girls reaching menarche at the age of eight, and little boys who have been growing breasts.
Now science is expanding the realm of vivisection to include outright creation. Companies such as PPL Therapeutics specialize in "Pharm Animals"- bioengineered creatures, whose genes have been altered so that drugs can be extracted from their milk. All of the resulting drugs can, of course, be produced by other methods, but the pharm animal method leads to greater profits for the drug manufactures.

References:

Peter Singer, Animal Liberation
The American Anti-Vivisection Society
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
John Robbins, Diet For A New America
Jim Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories
United Animal Defenders, Inc.