History Main / AnimalTesting

* Touched on in an episode of ''Series/{{Castle}},'' wherein a cosmetic company executive is found dead with "Murderer" (well, "Murderc") written on his mirror. His assistant points the team to an animal rights group that has been protesting the company after the discovery that one of their affiliates used animal testing, though she does point out that the company itself has never used animal testing and cut its ties with the "guilty" organization upon discovery. The animal rights group is quickly eliminated as suspects and never appears onscreen, and no judgement is passed either way on the animal testing; it's simply identified as controversial. That said, it ''is'' a factor in the murder: [[spoiler:the negative publicity that came with the animal testing revelation led to a hit in the company's stock. When another product was found to be controversial, some of the company's employees decided to murder the exec rather than let him go public with a new scandal, which they feared would tank the company]].

-->-- ''Literature/{{Stray}}''

* ''Literature/{{Stray}}'': Pufftail is captured and sent to a laboratory, used to test shampoo. That's unpleasant enough, but his record of a cat screaming "My eyes! I cannot close my eyes!" because [[EyeScream his eyelids had been cut off]] to test the effects of sleeplessness was horrifying.

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* ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' shows that Eggman's grandfather, Doctor Gerald Robotnik, was a scientist who tested on animals, [[FunnyAnimal anthropomorphic]] or otherwise. Shadow the Hedgehog is an [[ArtificialHuman Artificial Hedgehog]] created to help his terminally ill granddaughter Maria, as well as society as a whole.
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* ''Film/IAmLegend'':
** ''I Am Legend'' with Creator/WillSmith featured large scale animal testing on rats. The experiments are for the sake of humanity, so it's good. The fact that they were ''infected vampiric'' rats probably helps justify his work, too.
** Not to mention the experiments Neville performs on the dark seekers, whom he doesn't see as humans. [[spoiler:At first.]]

* ''Videogame/TraumaCenter: New Blood''. Marcus inadvertently unleashed Stigma via vivisection, but vivisection itself seem to be largely considered something that medical researchers just have to do -- the ends justify the means (he talks about "disposing of the subject", not "killing the rat"). Some room for disagreement here, of course.

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Centurions}}'', part of the {{Backstory}} of [[TeamPet Lucy the orangutan]] is that she was a test subject for the Exo-Frames.

* ''ComicBook/{{We3}}'' is pretty unambiguously anti-animal testing, and the covers implicitly support the "family pets stolen and sold to testing labs" allegations alluded to below.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Felidae}}'', based on the book of the same name. Dear Lord. Like the murders weren't horrible fuel enough. Francis comes across a tape of a perfectly healthy cat, shown meowing and struggling, [[StrappedToAnOperatingTable being bolted to a table]] and having its head cut open to test a new "glue" for wounds. Said glue ''eats through its skull into its brain while it is conscious'' as the scientist impartially narrates and observes its dying twitches. Enough to give anyone nightmares (and check that your own pets are where you left them). As if that wasn't enough, most of the cats in Francis' neighborhood are mangled by the lab's experiments - Felicity is blinded, Bluebeard has a withered paw, and Claudandus goes insane.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSecretOfNimh'': The animation in the laboratory, and the effects of the concoction given to the rats and mice, are pretty nightmarish. Notably, the injections to which the animals are subjected are of a ''much'' larger volume than could ever be given to such rodents without killing them in RealLife, suggesting that the lab-flashbacks are subjective memory, not objective fact. Weirdly enough, [[UpliftedAnimal everything good about the rats]] is owed to these experiments.

* ''Film/{{IQ|1994}}'': Catherine Boyd's [[DisposableFiance arrogant fiance]], James Moreland, is a psychology professor who conducts behavioural experiments on lab animals.

* ''Literature/{{Stray}}'', a book by A.N. Wilson. Pufftail is captured and sent to a laboratory, used to test shampoo. That's unpleasant enough, but his record of a cat screaming "My eyes! I cannot close my eyes!" because [[EyeScream his eyelids had been cut off]] to test the effects of sleeplessness was horrifying.
* On that note... quite a few animal care books will warn you against thieves who kidnap pets in order to sell them to laboratories. Given that even people who support animal testing in principle would baulk at the idea of that happening to Tiddles or Fido... ParanoiaFuel, anyone? It is difficult to get a fix on the reality of this situation -- pet care manuals and sites, and certainly the animal rights supporters, will definitely warn you against it; scientific sources will maintain it's an urban myth. What ''is'' true is that ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_animal_sources animal shelters]]'' in certain US states are ''obliged'' to hand over animals to any "Class B" dealer (selling to laboratories) who asks for them. Happens sometimes in the present, and happened often in the past, but not entirely realistic -- the vast majority of lab animals are bred in the labs, so that their genetics and upbringing are fully known. Using animals with unknown histories is a great way to mess up your research.

* Creator/WilliamKotzwinkle's novel ''Literature/DoctorRat'' comes off as decidedly anti-experimentation, describing in gruesome detail a variety of procedures, many of them done ForTheEvulz. The eponymous character, a lab rat, is wholly in favor of animal testing -- but he's described as having been driven insane by the experiments to which he's been subjected and is viewed as a traitor by the other denizens of the lab.
* ''Literature/{{Felidae}}'' had a number of horrific experiments detailed in a researcher's journal. Said researcher, Dr. Pretarius, was attempting to create a sort of "glue" for injuries, using cats as test subjects. It's pretty gruesome (and involves questionable methodology), as the glue eats away at flesh and bone rather than binding wounds together, but there's no real malice from the scientists initially. The glue only works on a single cat named Claudandus, possibly due to a minor mutation. As the project hits more dead ends, money begins running out, and his assistants leave him, Pretarius goes mad and starts cutting Claudandus apart and gluing him back together in every way he can imagine, just for kicks. [[spoiler:He's eventually killed by the very same cat, who then goes on to try and wipe out humanity.]]
* This is the cause of the aporkalypse (no misspelling) in ''Literature/{{Tuskers}}'' from Creator/RagnarokPublications. Science creates super-intelligent boar who menace a small Arizona town!

* ''VideoGame/{{Oddworld}}''. In ''Munch's Oddysee'', test creatures (called "fuzzles") are experimented on by evil scientists ("Vykkers"), who are one of your antagonists.

* ''VideoGame/CaveStory'' has The Doctor who has similarities to Izuka above.
* ''VideoGame/{{Whiplash}}'': You play as two animals attempting to escape a lab. Note the sheer ridiculousness of the experiments being performed.

* Another Akino manga, ''Genju No Seiza'', features a plotline where the animals killed via animal testing start possessing living animals in the area. Again, it's technically ambiguous -- Fuuto can hear the animals' torment as they die, frightened and in agony... but can also sense the lead doctor's desire/desperation to save people who otherwise face a slow death. The doctor pulls the "well, you eat meat, don't you?" card, stopping Fuuto in his tracks as he berates the doctor. However, the doctor appears to be operating illegally (using an AbandonedHospital), and his gene splicing results in an unnatural hell-beast that cannot be calmed by any of the Guardian Beasts, and which ultimately attacks Fuuto. Coupled with the test subjects' desperate cries for help that are repeated throughout the chapter... ''Genju'' comes out slightly more on the animals' side than ''Petshop''.

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'':
** A Golden Age story touched on this, with Gerta von Gunther experimenting on sharks, but then everything quickly shifts away from a more grounded example since she turns the sharks into winged mermaids with human-level intelligence somehow and when they break out of their tanks to get revenge on her for keeping them in tanks and experimenting on them, ''they're'' the ones treated as the villains.
** [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Volume 1]]: Considering that Prof. Zool's "evolution" machine seems to turn whatever is placed in it into an approximation of an existing animal, with a few remaining traits of whatever it was originally it's definitely a good thing he doesn't use human subjects to experiment on. It's also not great that he uses animals since he has created one of Wonder Woman's most enduring supervillains using it, but the story makes the animal testing seem reasonable.

* Parodied in the comic ''Betty''. Plenty of question marks followed upon one of the characters reading the label for a dog shampoo product.
-->"Dog Shampoo, Not tested on animals."

---> Her gaze came to rest on a row of cages filled with rats. She sighed again. "For now, make yourself useful and start shaving the test subjects."

---> ''“My Empress? Pardon the interruption, but I have run out of test subjects,”'' a mental message from Monteraine derailed [Ami's] train of thought.\\
That, at least, was a problem she could solve quickly. She shifted her Keeper sight to a tiny hatchery back at her dungeon. Hens and yellow-feathered chicks scrabbled in the dirt of the square pit

* ''Film/TwentyEightDaysLater'', in the very beginning. The AnimalWrongsGroup aren't treated as anything other than wrong for setting the ZombieApocalypse upon the world. Then again, it also wouldn't have been an issue if the scientists hadn't been making [[MadScientist zombie chimps]] in the first place. "Zombie chimps" weren't the scientists' main objective, but it was still ironic it was the end result in trying to neutralize violent impulses.
* In '90s teen movie ''Film/DriveMeCrazy'', the tension between the main character and his ex girlfriend centers around this. She is against animal testing and wants to attend a protest, and he declines. She becomes angry and breaks up with him, but it turns out that he declined because his mother died of cancer and might have been saved through advances in animal testing.

* In ''Film/AntMan1'', CorruptCorporateExecutive Darren Cross tests his reproduction of Pym particles on lambs. Hope thought they were going to use mice, Cross doesn't see what the big difference is. FridgeLogic kicks in when you consider how much cheaper mice are to raise and store... maybe he needed a bigger subject so when it got shrunk down it'd be easier to see?

* ''Literature/ThePlagueDogs'' by Richard Adams is a difficult enough case to judge. The overall stance is definitely pro-animal; horrendous experiments which are not related to the plot or protagonists (including a monkey in a sensory deprivation chamber, immobile rabbits blinded by hairspray, guinea pigs with their limbs and ears rotted off through application of tar, etc.) are described in great detail and with a chillingly bland tone. When the main scientist is asked what the traumatic experiments endured by the main canine characters were for, he defers and cites legislation which means that the experiments do not by law have to be ''for'' anything. However, a few scenes, including one of the scientists becoming overcome with guilt, and a scene where he comforts his LittlestCancerPatient daughter by describing some of the medical advances achieved through animal testing, prevent the book from taking a definite side. The movie is far less ambiguous.

* The Douglas Preston/ Lincoln Child novel ''Literature/MountDragon'' shows experiments gone wrong, too. In this case it's a rampant case of flu which they created while trying to find a cure. The chimp-experiments had previously been discussed in pro and contra though and also been shown in some kind of detail.

* ''Literature/TheTimeTravelersWife'' featured a geneticist experimenting on mice to make them time travel in order to figure out a cure, but there isn't much said or implied one way or the other about the morality of doing so.
* ''{{Literature/Animorphs}}'' had The Experiment, part of which involved the group morphing chimps and sneaking into a lab. There were some anti-testing complaints in the book, but also acceptance by even Cassie of testing being needed for things like diseases.
* ''[[Literature/CHERUBSeries Man vs. Beast]]'' is ambiguous in this. On the one hand, the scientists are using animals for testing, in various ways and for several reasons. On the other hand, the animal rights group that oppose do things like attacking a mother, and her teenage son who tries to defend her, napalming a courier company, and kidnapping a celebrity with the intention of torturing him live on the internet.

* ''Literature/TheFold'' plays this trope both ways and comes out in the middle. First is a TeleporterAccident as a test of the technology, on the team's dog mascot: it goes gruesomely wrong and everyone on the team admits it was a terrible mistake. After the technology progresses they try again with hundreds of mice, a few cats, and a chimpanzee: while many of the mice are dissected to check for physical effects, the remainder of the test subjects are released to animal sanctuaries to live out their natural lives. The technology in question is of such world-shifting importance that the sacrifice of the dissected mice is justified.
* In ''Literature/TheMouseWatch'', {{Cyborg}} MadScientist rat Dr. Thornpaw says the scientists who experimented on him wanted to learn what effects acid-based cleaning products, chemically bonding lipstick and [[ElectricTorture electric shocks]] would have on his body. The experiments were excruciating, and the results [[BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil turned him into a literal and figurative monster]].

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "[[Recap/LawAndOrderS11E10WhoseMonkeyIsItAnyway Whose Monkey Is It Anyway?]]", a number of monkeys which had been infected with the AIDS virus (in order to test the effectiveness of an experimental vaccine they'd been injected with beforehand) are taken from a lab. The guy who makes off with them loses one, though, who runs around loose and ends up biting the scientist who finds him and tries to get him back in his cage, causing the man to die (not from anything the monkey had been infected with, but from an unknown allergy). In the first act somebody from the lab tells Det. Briscoe that once a monkey gets out of its cage, it fights like hell not to be put back in. Briscoe examines the cage and says that if it were him, he would fight like hell too. That being said, the episode doesn't really villify people on either side of the debate. The researchers at the lab infect the monkeys with AIDS, sure, but they try to minimize their suffering as much as possible and believe what they do is for the greater good. The animal rights activist who stole the monkeys doesn't do anything stupid like release them into the wild, but rather gives them to a shelter which knows how to care for them and which is informed of their condition. He never wanted anybody to die as a result of his actions, even though somebody did. There is one truly horrible act mentioned in the episode: an experiment in which the "scientists" turned on a blowtorch and burned living pigs in order to find out whether or not the pain would affect their appetites. But that's told to us by the defendant's girlfriend, who is testifying about why he believes in animal rights and describing how seeing the footage of the pigs affected him; we never meet the people who did it and thus there is no one in this episode who is cruel to animals ForTheEvulz. In the end, both points of view are presented pretty fairly and nobody is made to look ridiculous or immoral for believing what they believe.
* ''Series/{{House}}'' managed to use multiple aspects of both positions in ''a single opening sequence'', when a dying, wheelchair-bound researcher is shown sacrificing and dissecting one of his lab rats. On the one hand, we see the animal injected, killed, and cut open in a gruesome close-up; on the other, the researcher's frailty is obvious even before he seizes and passes out, and he apologizes to the rat before administering the injection.
** House himself plays with both sides of this with his pet rat Steve [=McQueen=] (at first he's supposed to kill it, instead he traps it, treats it, and keeps it, then later uses it as a test subject).
* On ''Series/{{Dollhouse}},'' Caroline, Echo's original personality, was a member of an AnimalWrongsGroup. On the one hand she's correct, Rossum ''is'' experimenting on animals (and people) in numerous disturbing and illegal ways, though Caroline herself is [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructed]] as being fairly radical and dangerous, especially as she learns more about Rossum and becomes a KnightTemplar terrorist.
-->'''Echo:''' You're saying [Caroline]'s evil?\\
'''Adelle:''' Worse. An idealist.
* In an episode of the sketch comedy show ''TV Funhouse,'' the puppets [[TestSubjectForHire endure scientific experiments for cash]]. Later, they're attacked by fundamentalist suicide-bombing puppets against the idea of animal research.

* ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' mostly plays animals testing for laughs or as just simply something the resident neurobiologist does as part of her job. She was once a little too happy about picking out "the beady-eyed little mother" whom she was going to feed some mad cow samples to and got a monkey addicted to nicotine. However, it's worth noting she treats that monkey like a pet, going so far as to take him home from the lab and let him watch TV in her apartment and her work is in studying addiction and diseases for the greater good.
* In ''Series/{{Helix}}'', which centers around a CDC rapid response team dispatched to a ResearchInc to contain an outbreak of TheVirus, animal testing is treated as expected and practical, to the point where veterinary pathologist Doreen becomes suspicious that Arctic Biosystems staff claim ''not'' to use monkeys, which would be necessary given their research. The CDC researchers themselves must use lab rats to test pathogens. Yet, after the missing monkeys are discovered, an Arctic Biosystems researcher refers to their infection with SyntheticPlague as "an abomination," while Doreen herself points out expressions of fear on their frozen corpses, to show that, compared to her and her fellow CDC {{Science Hero}}es, the {{Morally Ambiguous Doctorate}}s have gone too far.
* ''{{Series/Probe}}'''s "[[Recap/ProbeMetamorphicAnthropoidicPrototypeOverYou Metamorphic Anthropoidic Prototype Over You]]": Dr. Deanna Hardwick has been testing a new method of increasing intelligence on an orangutan. The result is a [[SuperIntelligence highly intelligent]] ape that sends Austin into a fury as he realizes just how badly Josephine had been abused to advance Dr. Hardwick's position in the scientific community.
* Touched on in an episode of ''Series/{{Castle}},'' wherein a cosmetic company executive is found dead with "Murderer" (well, "Murderc") written on his mirror. His assistant points the team to an animal rights group that has been protesting the company after the discovery that one of their affiliates used animal testing, though she does point out that the company itself has never used animal testing and cut its ties with the "guilty" organization upon discovery. The animal rights group is quickly eliminated as suspects and never appears onscreen, and no judgement is passed either way on the animal testing; it's simply identified as controversial.
** That said, it ''is'' a factor in the murder: [[spoiler:the negative publicity that came with the animal testing revelation led to a hit in the company's stock. When another product was found to be controversial, some of the company's employees decided to murder the exec rather than let him go public with a new scandal, which they feared would tank the company.]]

* ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'': Part of Mr. Boynton's job as a Biology Teacher is to experiment on animals. ForScience, of course. Miss Brooks seems slightly squeamish about the whole thing. It's PlayedForLaughs, if anything. One episode, "New Girl In Town", has Miss Brooks assist Mr. Boynton bury mice killed for the cause in the school athletic field. Harriet Conklin uses this information to help scare off the titular new girl and her mother, by implying that they are burying Mr. Boynton's old girlfriends.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' and ''VideoGame/Portal2'', animal testing is mentioned a little bit and is implied to happen at the end of the multiplayer campaign in the sequel. The only stance on animal testing that game takes, however, is that it is less fun and scientifically productive than human testing.

* ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'': ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure2'' shows that Eggman's grandfather, Doctor Gerald Robotnik, was a scientist who tested on animals, [[FunnyAnimal anthropomorphic]] or otherwise. Shadow the Hedgehog is an [[ArtificialHuman Artificial Hedgehog]] created to help his terminally ill granddaughter Maria, as well as society as a whole.
* ''VideoGame/ForgetMeNotMyOrganicGarden'': Chika does it, apparently, as Irene says to her:
--> '''Irene:''' ...It seems you've [[spoiler:taken several of my high-quality items]]. Don't tell me you hurt your poor lab animals and need to heal them?\\
'''Chika:''' It's got nothing to do with you. Besides, I'm not using animals this time.

* ''Webcomic/SluggyFreelance'': The reason why Dr. Schlock wears an eyepatch? When he was younger he tried testing cosmetics on [[KillerRabbit Bun-Bun]].

* ''WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain'' are themselves a product of testing and research, and act with levels of freedom ranging from 'escaping every night' to 'practically running the labs'. Despite being the reason for [[UpliftedAnimal their enhanced intelligence]], any time actual experiments are shown on-screen or the focus of the plot, they're consistently portrayed as hellish for the mice. The two also end up encountering an AnimalWrongsGroup and vainly try to tell them that they're genuine lab mice -- as in not able to survive in the wilderness.
** Notably, at least one of the animals to have had their intelligence increased (a cat) expresses bitterness at having her old life taken away. Pinky, the Brain, and Snowball, however, seem fine with that part.
* Professor Farnsworth of ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' is not above the using occasional animal test subject. In one episode, he creates a hat that [[UpliftedAnimal turns a monkey into a super-genius]], which of course causes the monkey to be miserable [[spoiler:until the hat is damaged, leaving him with just average human intelligence]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Lisa is for animal rights. One episode involved her and Homer being framed for releasing a bunch of experimental animals by a private investigator, which included pigs slathered with makeup and monkeys addicted to cigarettes. Weirdly enough, in an earlier episode, Lisa had to do a science project, and conducted an experiment called ''is my brother dumber than a hamster?'', which involved a hamster being forced to undergo some very psychologically damaging experiments.

* ''VideoGame/LostInVivo'' has an entire level based around the horrors of animal testing. The experiments done in Nezumi Labs have no reasonable motive, producing horrific, impossible, morbidly fascinating but ultimately useless scientific "breakthroughs". It gets so bad that [[spoiler: the combined pain eventually gives birth to the EldritchAbomination Sotiris]].

* ''WesternAnimation/OneHundredAndOneDalmatiansTheSeries'': In the episode "Food For Thought", Rolly is kidnapped by P.H. Devil and locked in his lab in which he is fed an experimental food additive to test for any negative side effects. In the lab, Rolly meets several other animals who have also been tested on and deformed in one way or another. The testing is clearly portrayed as a bad thing, and in the end all the animals escape and P.H. Devil suffers the [[HoistByHisOwnPetard ill effects of his own experimentation]].

** A Golden Age story touched on this, with Gerta von Gunther experimenting on sharks, but then everything quickly shifts away from a more grounded example since she turns the sharks into winged mermaids with human level intelligence somehow and when they break out of their tanks to get revenge on her for keeping them in tanks and experimenting on them they're the ones treated as the villains.

* In the ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "Whose Monkey Is It Anyway?", a number of monkeys which had been infected with the AIDS virus (in order to test the effectiveness of an experimental vaccine they'd been injected with beforehand) are taken from a lab. The guy who makes off with them loses one, though, who runs around loose and ends up biting the scientist who finds him and tries to get him back in his cage, causing the man to die (not from anything the monkey had been infected with, but from an unknown allergy). In the first act somebody from the lab tells Det. Briscoe that once a monkey gets out of its cage, it fights like hell not to be put back in. Briscoe examines the cage and says that if it were him, he would fight like hell too. That being said, the episode doesn't really villify people on either side of the debate. The researchers at the lab infect the monkeys with AIDS, sure, but they try to minimize their suffering as much as possible and believe what they do is for the greater good. The animal rights activist who stole the monkeys doesn't do anything stupid like release them into the wild, but rather gives them to a shelter which knows how to care for them and which is informed of their condition. He never wanted anybody to die as a result of his actions, even though somebody did. There is one truly horrible act mentioned in the episode: an experiment in which the "scientists" turned on a blowtorch and burned living pigs in order to find out whether or not the pain would affect their appetites. But that's told to us by the defendant's girlfriend, who is testifying about why he believes in animal rights and describing how seeing the footage of the pigs affected him; we never meet the people who did it and thus there is no one in this episode who is cruel to animals ForTheEvulz. In the end, both points of view are presented pretty fairly and nobody is made to look ridiculous or immoral for believing what they believe.

->'''Gerry''': These cats in there are being smothered with lipstick just so that cosmetic firms can make money out of silly women.\\
'''"Nasty"''': I suppose you'd rather we tested the lipsticks on people. Would you like your wife's lips to be like that poor moggy's mouth in there?\\
'''Gerry''': I don't want anyone's mouth to become like that: not my wife's, nor the cat's.

* ''Series/{{Fringe}}'' had a weird version of this. The AnimalWrongsGroup is made up of morons with nothing resembling common sense, the animal testing scientists created a horrible monster that goes on a bloody rampage the moment it's released.
* The ''Series/LawAndOrder'' episode "Whose Monkey Is It Anyway?". In this episode, a number of monkeys which had been infected with the AIDS virus (in order to test the effectiveness of an experimental vaccine they'd been injected with beforehand) are taken from a lab. The guy who makes off with them loses one, though, who runs around loose and ends up biting the scientist who finds him and tries to get him back in his cage, causing the man to die (not from anything the monkey had been infected with, but from an unknown allergy). In the first act somebody from the lab tells Det. Briscoe that once a monkey gets out of its cage, it fights like hell not to be put back in. Briscoe examines the cage and says that if it were him, he would fight like hell too. That being said, the episode doesn't really villify people on either side of the debate. The researchers at the lab infect the monkeys with AIDS, sure, but they try to minimize their suffering as much as possible and believe what they do is for the greater good. The animal rights activist who stole the monkeys doesn't do anything stupid like release them into the wild, but rather gives them to a shelter which knows how to care for them and which is informed of their condition. He never wanted anybody to die as a result of his actions, even though somebody did. There is one truly horrible act mentioned in the episode: an experiment in which the "scientists" turned on a blowtorch and burned living pigs in order to find out whether or not the pain would affect their appetites. But that's told to us by the defendant's girlfriend, who is testifying about why he believes in animal rights and describing how seeing the footage of the pigs affected him; we never meet the people who did it and thus there is no one in this episode who is cruel to animals ForTheEvulz. In the end, both points of view are presented pretty fairly and nobody is made to look ridiculous or immoral for believing what they believe.

The actual term can cover a number of things, which raise different dilemmas... and different levels of controversy. Behavioral experiments, like that of rats in mazes or [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov%27s_dogs Pavlov's dog]] don't tend to raise too many hackles unless physical or psychological trauma is involved (i.e. raising a baby animal in total isolation to see how its development is affected). Cutting animals open while still alive (vivisection) usually turns up in FreeTheFrogs plots and sci-fi/horror films, usually involving a degree of moral dilemma. Medical testing (using animals to test new drugs and procedures in order to benefit human patients) is probably the most contested minefield, with both staunch supporters and equally determined detractors. Cosmetic testing (using animals to test lipstick, shampoo, mascara etc.) rarely turns up in the media, unless the scientist is a villain in an animal-centric show. If it does show up, it is almost always exaggerated and even sometimes PlayedForLaughs, especially since using animals for cosmetics testing is falling out of favor -- cultured human cell lines are turning out to be much more useful and better for PR.

* Another cosmetics-testing example, back when it was making headlines: a ''ComicStrip/BloomCounty'' story arc had Opus thinking his mother was a lab rat... er, penguin for Mary Kay cosmetics, although Breathed took it as an opportunity to lampoon animal testing in general. Thumper-esque rabbits had their eyelids dipped in oven cleaner and were injected with Nyquil "until 50 percent of subjects die", in reference to [[ShownTheirWork real-life LD50 tests]]. In typical Bloom County fashion, Opus ends up caught in a shootout between pink Uzi-wielding "Mary Kay commandos" and a terrorist animal-freedom group who couldn't afford to take care of the animals they stole. According to Breathed, Mary Kay herself later sent him a letter [[SarcasmMode thanking him for all the attention]].