To calm many a person’s stirred-up conscience, it is gladly emphasized that permission for animal testing in Germany is a particularly expensive and difficult process. In reality, as the responsible permission-giving organ, the animal testing commission, is primarily staffed with professionals who normally profit from animal testing themselves. As a rule, they consistently outvote the representatives of animal protection organizations who are in the minority. Standard formulations are usually used for the justification of why a certain species should be taken for a test. For example, the claim that all the previous scientific literature is based on a certain question concerning this species – mice, for instance – and therefore, because of the reproducibility and comparability of the new results to be expected, it would be best if the research is again carried out on mice. And so, this means that when allergies, infections, cancer and heart and circulatory diseases that occur in human beings are to be researched, then at best first on a mouse or rat, because it has always been done that way – not because the mouse is especially similar to the human being or has the same illnesses as a human being. This justification is not only difficult to comprehend, but also bears the seed for failures and false results
