ANIMAL TESTING DEBATE?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Arnon V
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Arnon V

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Me and a guy from school are doing this debate thing as our summative. Our topic is animal testing, and i am on the side for animal testing and he is on the side against it. We need some help though thinking up of topics to argue each other. We need ideas for both sides, but if you are passionate about one side if you have any suggestions that would help.
 
For your side - I'm a cancer patient. Animal testing is absolutely necessary for testing of chemotherapy medications - chemo drugs need to kill cancer cells without killing the person or animal they are used on. You can't replicate this in a petri dish or on a computer - you have to see how it affects all the systems in a living organism. I owe my life to these drugs - without them I would have died. I am on the board of my local humane society - helping animals every day. Also, the advances made in human cancer treatment have lead to advances in cancer treatment for pet animals as well. My sister is diabetic - and also involved with her local SPCA - and without the medications she uses, she'd also have died by now and not been here to help animals.

Anyone who has ever had a serious illness or a loved with one with a serious illness has benefited from animal testing. I know of no one who has refused cancer treatment on moral grounds because the drugs were subjected to animal testing. It's very easy to be against it when you are young and healthy and have never faced illness yourself or a member of your family.
 
I am against it and will not buy any products that are tested on animals. My approach to it is very different, mostly because I work with animals on a daily basis - I am a Vet Tech.

The amount of suffering endured during animal testing is very cruel. It ranges any where from respiratory damage, liver and kidney failure, lumps/abcess for animals that are extremely painful, eye infection, loss of vision and fur and even death in some cases.

Using rabbits as an example:

Rabbits are currently used mainly for the development of polyclonal antibodies and for the controversial Draize test, which is used for, amongst other things, testing cosmetics on animals. Rabbits have been used in the past for many ground-breaking experiments, including the development of the first oral contraceptive in the 1950s by Pincus, Rock and Chang at the Worcester Institute in Massachusetts, a finding that revolutionized the concept of contraception.

Fortunately, testing on rabbits has greatly declined over the past decade.

To me, it is not worth the pain and suffering put on animals for the sake of science. If you want to test birth control pills, test them on human subjects, not animals, as the humans system is greatly different from animals.
 
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