Wierdman's Tourney- Animal Testing

Before beginning, I would like to ask Cobo to treat this as a rebuttal round, as will I. We will skip the fourth round. I am asking this so that we can finish the debate today and not become disqualified. New sources for rebuttals will be acceptable this round, but please no new arguments, as that would mean I would not have a chance to respond to them. Also, I will be posting my sources in the comments section to save room. My opponent can do this as well if he wishes. My apologies for creating such a vague resolution: I created the first round hastily without pausing to think about the wording of it. Anyways, since animal testing is immoral, then I would say that counts as a “con”. Because I created such a vague resolution, I guess I will be trying to prove there are more cons to animal testing, making it unacceptable. On the other hand, my opponent will have to prove there are more pros, making animal testing acceptable. Thus, without further ado, let us get back into the arguments. Pro’s Case- Ct.1-Animal Testing has saved countless Human Lives and is saving more While my opponent has shown how animal testing has saved lives, he has failed to provide evidence that animal testing is still saving lives. Animal testing may have once been useful to us; however, it is time that we move on to better alternatives, because animal testing is evidently unreliable and deadly. My opponent also provides the polio disease as an example to show how animal testing played an important role in curing it. However, he neglects to tell you that animal testing simply delayed the vaccine to this disease [6]. Sure, animal testing created a “vaccine”, but because it was manufactured from monkey tissue, this so-called “cure” resulted in six human deaths and twelve cases of paralysis. Thus, this was abandoned, and they attempted to create a new vaccine through nasal treatment, but that just caused permanent olfactory damage to the children tested. (At the time, scientists did not realize that monkeys contract polio nasally whereas humans contract it orally. ) Luckily, Dr. Albert Sabin studied human autopsies to disprove the nasal theory. Then, he announced himself that, “. .. prevention was long delayed by the erroneous conception of the nature of the human disease based on misleading experimental models of the disease in monkeys. ” Afterward, a vaccine for polio was able to be made. Once again, animal testing has failed and endangered human lives. As for the list you provided, some of those diseases do not yet have a cure and simply have a treatment. In other cases, the cost was simply too high for the pay off. For example, lab animal tests threw diabetes research off track for decades, all the while killing thousands of animals [7]. Ct.2-Animal Testing has saved countless Animal Lives and is saving more While this may be one of the pros to animal testing, this does not make it acceptable. It would be similar to saying that it is acceptable to experiment on poor children to benefit the rich ones. Furthermore, scientists are still doing the same thing: they are inflicting suffering to those who are at their mercy (the animals). Lastly, this pro to animal testing is relatively small compared to the cons, which will be summed up in the conclusion. Rebuilding- 1. Animal testing is immoral and causes much suffering on the animal’s part. My opponent claims my argument is what I believe; however, I gave sources to back my arguments up, and much of what I said was facts and statistics. In addition, I did not give a poll or statistic for the people animal testing has saved because this argument has to do with animals, not humans. Otherwise, my argument would have been, “Animal testing is immoral and causes much suffering on the human’s part”. Then my opponent states I did not provide any sources showing that animals are experiencing suffering or being tortured. Contrary to his claim, I did provide a source showing how animals are poisoned by chemical warfare agents, subjected to blast injuries, and deliberately wounded and killed by bacterial toxins [4]. Another source I provided shows how REACH tortures and kills approximately 200,000 animals [3]. However, since my opponent does not find these sufficient, then please look at these two links: [8] and [9]. In both, it displays the cruelty that goes on in laboratories. For example, animals are surgically mutilated, genetically modified, deliberately tormented, starved, poisoned, have chemicals rubbed into their eyes, scalded, maimed, shot, and blown up. In link [8], you can see some pictures to give you a little idea of what goes on in laboratories. Afterward, my opponent claims there are laws protecting animals in laboratories; however, not only are these laws not sufficient for animal protection, but many scientists break these laws. The AWA only requires that animals have a minimum sized cage and clean food and water [10]. There are little to no limits as to what scientists can do to the animals. They can shoot them in the head or chop them up, but as long as they have a cage, food, and water then everything is okay. Moreover, this law does not cover animals such as birds, rats, mice, livestock, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates. It is evident that these laws are ineffective and do not give protection to animals. 2. Animal testing is not reliable. Before beginning, I would like to point out that my opponent simply refuted my three examples. This does not disprove the fact that 92% of the drugs that passed animal testing fail in human clinical trials [2]. In my third argument, I also showed how animal testing was unreliable, so I suppose that is one purpose of my third argument. Anyways, let us get back to the examples. A) In my opponent’s source, it says, “CQL could, however, have been involved in the causation of SMON as an optional enhancer of some other necessary cause; the history of post-war environmental pollution in Japan is compatible with this hypothesis. ” Thus, it is possible that it was involved in the cause of SMON. Even if Clioquinol did not cause SMON, this is simply one out of many examples of how animal testing is unreliable. B) Nevertheless, Opren was a result of animal testing. It still killed 62 people and caused 3,500 deaths. Simply because they broke a law (which happens numerous times), that barely protects animals in the first place does not change the fact that animal testing was the cause of Opren. C) Once again, this does not change the fact that Thalidomide caused tens of thousands of deaths worldwide and caused permanent nerve damage in adults. 3. There are alternatives to animal testing [5]. I realize that the resolution was badly worded, so this argument is not entirely useful. However, it does have some value. When comparing other forms of testing to animal testing, we find that animal testing is extremely ineffective, crude, and costly. I can also use this argument as examples of the alternatives I mentioned when refuting your first argument. Other than these two points, I admit this argument has no value to me. Animals Life vs. Human Life- Your analogies should be a bit more like this, “Would you kill 200,000 animals for your toothpaste? ” Alternatively, “Would you kill thousands upon thousands of animals to get a false vaccine that will endanger your child’s life? ” After all, THAT is what animal testing really is, since it is unreliable, deadly, and inhumane. Conclusion- Animal testing kills approximately 100 million animals, and this does not include all the animals not included by AWA (with the exception of invertebrates), which make up approximately 95% of all tests. It has also endangered human lives and produced faulty results which throw us off track for decades when we could have gotten the correct results much more quickly and without killing so many living things. Thus, animal testing has more cons than pros, making it unacceptable.