Health Charities That Do and Don't Test on Animals

With Spring just around the corner, many people are registering for upcoming charity running races and starting to train for these events. If that's you, great-- but please, before signing up for an event, consider where the money is going and how it will be used.
There are still many health charities that test on animals as part of their research. These experiments include sensory deprivation, physically hurting the animals, and separating infants from their mothers, among other cruel practices. Not only that, but animal testing doesn't give scientists a good sense of how the human body works anyway, since humans and animals have different body chemistry and physiology. If you were to fundraise for or donate to a health charity that funds tests on animals, you may think that you'd be helping your cause, but in fact, you'd be supporting cruelty to animals and bad science.

Happily, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has set up a Humane Charity Seal of Approval website, which notes which health charities do and don't fund tests on animals. With so many charities listed, you should be able to find charities for each major health condition that are humane-approved. Here are some examples of charities listed on the website:

Charities that DO fund animal testing, according to PCRM:

• The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada
• The American Cancer Society
• The Alzeimer's Society of Canada
• and a great deal more...

Charities that DON'T fund animal testing:

• The Breast Cancer Society
• Canadian Red Cross
• The Leukaemia CARE Society (in the UK)
• and many more!

For the complete list, please go to http://www.humaneseal.org/search.cfm?ap=y.