Young Writers Society

Alright, so I can see some of the benefits of it. I mean, if we can cure full-body paralysis or cancer through it, great. Yet I have a hard time facing the fact that innocent animals are being subjected to this kind of pain....

But what really irks me is what I've recently found out. Unfortunately I can't find the original article (comes from the U.S. National Library of medicine online, though, and I'll add a link if I can find one). Anyway, what these group of scientists essentially did was drug one primate with cocaine, and put him in with a larger more dominant primate to see if, with the added aggression, the drugged primates could overpower their superiors. Not only was this proven wrong, but chimps were actually killed through this experiment. This seems really inhumane to me, and above everything else meaningless. What really horrifies me is that this wasn't a third-world country, but America, where you expect these things to be aborted from our system.

What do these animal experiments say about us? Do you support them or reject them? I'd really like to hear some opinions.

If there is a clear purpose to the testing, then definitely yes. That chimp experiment sounded pretty pointless, and I don't like the sound of it, but anything where it is helpful and necessary to do animal testing, I am in support of. I don't like the idea of animals being hurt, but I'm pretty sure they're treated humanely as much as possible, and it sure beats testing things on humans.

Pigeon pretty much said it. It's foolish to be absolutely against animal testing. The real discussion is what should be considered good testing ethics.

What Pigeon and inkwell said.

Oh well, so much for a debate. Complete agreement is boring, so let me play Devil's Advocate.

Animal testing is based on two main concepts. 1) Human beings are superior to animals, and our lives are worth more. 2) As a result, we are free to use them as we see fit. Both these assumptions are questionable.

Firstly, purely biologically, human beings are not more evolved than animals. The fact that they exist in the same time frame as we do tells us that. We have, however, evolved to be suited for different things. Human beings, for all our ingenuity with fire, technology and opposable thumbs are still weak, puny creatures compared to those that make up the rest of the animal kingdom. We are arrogant enough to think that our intelligence somehow elevates us to this special place, but put a human being in the middle of the Sahara desert, with no food, no water and no tools or clothes, and he will most likely die. Then do the same with a desert salamander.
Now the obvious refutation to this is the survival of the fittest argument - humans, as the top carnivore have the natural right to use animals on lower trophic levels. The reason this argument falls is our intelligence, and our morality. Human beings are the only creatures on the planet to waste. We kill indiscriminately, in excess, to satisfy vague comforts that are by no means required for survival. Conversely, we have developed a sense of right and wrong, and ourselves judge this to be wrong. Thus our own morality dictates that we have no right to use these animals, especially since it does not hinge on our survival.

A fundamental hypocrisy in the arguments above is that you would use animals as test subject only in certain situations, and not others. If you are willing to test on an animal at all, you necessarily consider its life of less value than the experiment it goes towards. In that case, why do we preach environmental conservation and biodiversity?

I agree with the first person on this that there should be a clear, legitimate reason. But like so many other issues, it has to be a yes or not. For example: we can't just say, only twelve year old girls that were violated and became pregnant can have abortions, because that would just upset a million more things, so it has to be a yes or a no. In my opinion, I think that animal testing, though their methods are sometimes inhumane, is better than the alternative. Its so hard to explain... because there really is no reason for animals to have ears grown on their backs, but its better than doctors and scientists releasing their inventions into the world and then having it kill off half of the population. It is really sad what they do sometimes, even when they use rats (I have two rats as pets) but, if cancer can be cured, and they're finding ways to save peoples lives in ways that they never thought they could do, then maybe a few rats, and even the occasional chimp, is worth the sacrifice.

Overall, I think that if the ethics and ways that they treat the animals would be more... ethical I guess. Then animal testing wouldn't be thought of as quite so bad by most.

Stephen Hawkings says that if an advanced alien species superior to us were to meet us, they would most likely be hostile. They would probably abduct us for whatever medical testing they needed. And of course the question arises, how would feel about that? And I think most people would say "well, that would kinda suck". But does that suck to the alien? The human being that they are testing on is of lower cerebral level than them as well as a lower consciousness. So I think the question is not whether it is right or wrong because obviously it would be wrong. I think the question is what are our priorities? Should we care about what the animal is feeling? And this may be cruel but I say no. We are the superior species in terms of intellect. And if a lower being has to die for our cause, I think that's okay. I don't think that is how it should go about but what is the alternative? Human testing? This may seem hyper-philanthropic, and it probably is, but I support Animal Testing. It's cruel, but it's the best solution we have.

tr3x wrote:Oh well, so much for a debate. Complete agreement is boring, so let me play Devil's Advocate.

Animal testing is based on two main concepts. 1) Human beings are superior to animals, and our lives are worth more. 2) As a result, we are free to use them as we see fit. Both these assumptions are questionable.

Firstly, purely biologically, human beings are not more evolved than animals. The fact that they exist in the same time frame as we do tells us that. We have, however, evolved to be suited for different things. Human beings, for all our ingenuity with fire, technology and opposable thumbs are still weak, puny creatures compared to those that make up the rest of the animal kingdom. We are arrogant enough to think that our intelligence somehow elevates us to this special place, but put a human being in the middle of the Sahara desert, with no food, no water and no tools or clothes, and he will most likely die. Then do the same with a desert salamander.
Now the obvious refutation to this is the survival of the fittest argument - humans, as the top carnivore have the natural right to use animals on lower trophic levels. The reason this argument falls is our intelligence, and our morality. Human beings are the only creatures on the planet to waste. We kill indiscriminately, in excess, to satisfy vague comforts that are by no means required for survival. Conversely, we have developed a sense of right and wrong, and ourselves judge this to be wrong. Thus our own morality dictates that we have no right to use these animals, especially since it does not hinge on our survival.

A fundamental hypocrisy in the arguments above is that you would use animals as test subject only in certain situations, and not others. If you are willing to test on an animal at all, you necessarily consider its life of less value than the experiment it goes towards. In that case, why do we preach environmental conservation and biodiversity?

I'll play along, and try to argue an extreme end here.

Bu this (quoted) is not the argument I would propose, so I can't relate to this. I suggest you formulate your own argument rather than tearing down this strawman.

My argument would go something like this:

Members of non-human species, so far as we know it, do not meet the standards for being moral agents, thus they have no, or at least limited moral rights.

What they lack specifically is the ability for free moral judgement.

To further insulate my argument, I ask why humans have moral obligations to animals when they don't have moral obligations to us? I also ask you to consider the implications of valuing all life equally.

Disclaimer: I do not claim that gratuitous animal suffering is justified by the above argument.