What’s the point of putting lipstick on a guinea pig?
Other than making the guinea pig look fabulous, obviously.
Hello there lovely people, Amy here on DNews.
I wear cosmetic products, obviously, and probably do, too, even if you don’t think you do.
That’s because along with makeup, moisturizers, and nail polish, the US Food and Drug Administration’s
(FDA) definition of cosmetics includes things like shampoo, deodorant, and toothpaste.
Unless those cosmetics also treat something like dandruff or cavities, provide sun protection,
or have a color additive, the FDA has no authority to regulate them and it’s up to the cosmetic
company to make sure they’re safe before they hit the market.
There are a lot of factors to consider when testing a cosmetic.
Manufacturers need to know if products will cause an allergic reaction; if they’ll cause
temporary or irreversible skin or eye damage; at what point they’re toxic if absorbed
through the skin, lungs, or digestive tract; the effects of long-term exposure; if they’re
carcinogenic; if they cause infertility; or if they cause birth defects.
Pretty much all the things you need to worry about if you’re a teenage boy who overuses
body spray.
But cosmetic companies can’t jump straight to testing on teenage boys because they’d
probably get a call from their irate mothers.
No.
Companies don’t test on people because it’s inhumane and if something goes wrong, it might
irreparably harm a human being.
Before a human uses a product, we have to be sure they’re reasonably safe, so for
a long time animals were used to test the chemicals in cosmetics first.
Usually the tests involve mice, rats, guinea pigs or bunnies.
Understandably, many people consider these tests inhumane, and some places like Europe
have banned products that have been tested on animals entirely.
Other places like China actually require animal testing on the finished products.
The FDA’s stance falls somewhere in the middle: companies are neither encouraged or
discouraged to test on animals, though the FDA has stated they would like to gain the
maximum amount of information using the fewest animals as humanely as possible.
Depending on what they’re testing for, scientists might use just one bunny or as many as 2600
mice.
Cosmetic makers would probably rather not test on animals if they could avoid it.
It’s expensive and a PR nightmare.
Plus using an animal for testing a chemical’s effects on people can be imprecise because,
well, they’re not people.
But scientists are developing methods that substitute animals for test tubes.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, appropriately acronymed
to CAAT, is foremost in in vitro testing.
But some things, like how a product behaves when inhaled, still can’t be replicated
artificially.
Other proposed methods involve using mathematical models to extrapolate how thousands of different
chemicals will behave after testing just a tiny fraction.
Either way, learning more about what we put on and in our bodies is always a valuable
pursuit, otherwise we could end up like the Romans, who unknowingly poisoned themselves
with white lead used for makeup foundation.
All for the sake of beauty.
Ultimately, moving away from animal testing will require some innovative changes, as do
most
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A lot of research depends on using animals, particularly lab mice.
But why mice?
Trace explains here.
Though cosmetic testing on animals gets more attention, most animal testing is done for
pharmaceutical or biomedical research.
Is using animals ok for one and not the other?
Share your thoughts in the comments and remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode
of DNews.
Thanks for watching.