Animal Testing- continued

I hope you have had time to consider the points I put forward in my previous post on the same topic.
What are the alternatives for drug testing if not on animals? On humans?you may ask. Not necessarily. There is no guarantee that drugs are safe—even if they have been tested on animals—because the physiological differences between humans and other animals prevent the results of animal tests from being accurately extrapolated to humans. Some drugs that have been approved through animal tests can cause serious and unexpected side effects for humans.
Have you ever heard of thalidomide? It was a drug which was thought to cure morning sickness, and considered safe for humans because it had been tested on monkeys. However,the thousands of women who took it while they were pregnant were found to have given birth to children with no arms and no legs. Testing on animals is not scientifically sound : just because something is proven safe on another species, it doesn't mean it's safe for humans.
A number of alternatives exist to animal testing. These include replacing animal tests with non-animal methods in toxicity testing, as well as modifying animal-based tests to reduce the number of animals used and to minimize pain and distress. Non-animal tests have been found to be generally faster and less expensive than the animal tests they replace. They also improve upon animal testing methods significantly. A few examples of these alternatives include :
○  An embryonic stem cell test, using mouse-derived cells to assess potential toxicity to developing embryos, has been validated as a partial replacement for birth-defect testing in rats and rabbits.
○ The use of human skin leftover from surgical procedures or donated cadavers can be used to measure the rate at which a chemical is able to penetrate the skin.
○ The use of a clinical patch test in human volunteers, which can confirm that a chemical will not cause irritation or allergic skin reactions.
Arguments exist of course, that some of the major advances and discoveries in the last few centuries have been due to the testing on animals. For eg., the polio vaccine. However, and I quote from the PETA website, "two separate bodies of work were done on polio: the in vitro work, which was awarded the Nobel Prize and did not involve animals, and the animal tests, in which a staggering number of animals were killed. Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg noted that for 40 years, experiments on monkeys who had been infected with polio generated “limited progress” toward a cure. The breakthrough came when scientists learned how to grow the virus from human and monkey cells."
Laws do exist to protect animals from such unprecedented cruelty but they have never been stringently enforced.
It is up to us as individuals, to take a stand for the rights of these animals. How do we do this? PETA, WWF(World Wide Fund for Nature) and many such other societies online, constantly update their websites to give news about instances of animal cruelty around the globe and also allow users to participate in working against such instances. PETA regularly publishes a list of companies that do and don't test their products on animals.
Simple steps such as joining a non-profit organization which concentrates their efforts on animal rights and animal welfare within your own community, and not buying products from companies who use animal testing to promote such unimportant products as mascara or shampoo, are a wonderful way to start.