Sunday, December 4, 2011

Body Shop and Animal Testing

Early morning I had reached Mumbai airport to leave for Kolkata. As I looked around for gate A7 in terminal 1A, I found next to it a shop called the "Body Shop". It had a lot of things that the affluent need for pamper their bodies. I was looking around to see how many things are there in life without with I still remain contented. As a background of the shop there was a huge wallpaper which had these words, "Against Testing Animals".  "What does this mean?", I asked the lady who was "manning" the shop. She said she didn't know....may be it had something to do with the commitment of the company against testing of animals for medical research and cosmetics etc. I began to wonder then what are we supposed to test on? Humans? 

How can we test on humans for possible adverse impacts of medicines in research? How can we test if a medicine would work or not in the first place? Not utilizing animals for tests in certain critical areas can actually push certain researches backward by decades. 


I believe Body Shop did not educate its staff as well on what else is in the shop, other than the materials that they were selling for the well-being of people who can afford. The philosophy behind it, literally, is however not the appropriate one per se.

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