Animal experimentation is immoral.

It seems that we have very different views, but I've appreciated his arguments greatly. It's been a very intriguing debate and I've greatly appreciated the opportunity to have it. With that, I'll launch into some crystallization and concluding statements. First and foremost, let's briefly look back at the topic, because I think we've spent so much time on the details that we've gotten away from the overall picture. The topic is: "Animal experimentation is immoral. " It doesn't say "animal experimentation is immoral to wild animals," nor does it say "animal experimentation is immoral to laboratory animals" or even animals in general. So when we're discussing morality, we're discussing it for every form of life, though there might be some justification made for why morality towards a given species is better than another. I've provided some of this. I've stated that humans are the sole species capable of doing this research, and therefore the sole ones capable of treating illness and injury among any animal species. Pro's argument that this doesn't affect many wild animals is mitigation, not offense " the reality that the research we perform doesn't affect every living creature doesn't make it less moral, just less applicable. Moreover, this, once again, shows that Pro's views are focused on utility. Sure, he's against that utility being used solely to benefit human interests (though he has in no way stated why it's harmful to do so, just why it should be more broadly applied), but he seems to have no problem with using utility to assess morality in the animal context, something that seems awfully contradictory to me. Huh. Context. That sounds familiar. So let's talk on contextual morality. Even in this final round, Pro provides little in the way of response to using this as the most appropriate assessment of morality. He isn't responsive to my points about his view being simplistic, nor those I've made about his own points also being contextual, just stopping that context immediately after animal research occurs. In fact, his only response to my framework of evaluating morality is that we should think about the animals and not the humans. He provides absolutely no reason to prefer the outcomes for these animals over the outcomes for humans, nor does he explain why contextual morality cannot be applied to the animals as well. He just rejects the idea. That's not enough to make it unreasonable, nor does it prove his better. Pro essentially brushes off my points on the alternatives being nonfunctional, stating that they only show that humans are worse off in the absence of animal testing. Not true. I've already explained how at least some animals are benefited, something Pro conceded in the last round (it doesn't matter if those animals are under human interest) " all of the alternatives reduce that benefit. But, again, if it benefits humans, that's still a contextually moral good. Pro continues to concede this and treats it as a non-issue, but he's practically conceding the debate by doing so. Worse yet, Pro is completely non-responsive to my point in the last round that this research would never be pursued at all if it wasn't focused on human benefit (animals don't have money to pay for this research), something he admits from the start of this debate is a huge harm, even if it's just to humans and those animals of interest. I think Pro's second point showcases another gulf between our understanding in this debate. He's essentially stating that intent should not be factored into the morality of animal experimentation. I've already made this point, and I spent a good deal of time in the last two rounds explaining why, all of which Pro has misunderstood. The analogy I made with regards to injections is really key to this, and much as Pro claims he didn't contradict himself, the word "overlook" is still a problem here. Let's look back at the sentence in which this occurred: "Yet the moral cause is overwhelmingly beneficial to the subject that the immoral act can be overlooked. " In other words, the moral cause, something that Pro originally felt was unimportant to the morality of a given act, is important within the context of an injection. No, it's not a justification. It doesn't have to be. If you can overlook the immorality of a given act due to its moral cause, then the moral cause plays a role in assessing its morality in the wider context. The injection as a whole is moral because it treats illness, and the relative pain and damage of injection is a small immoral cost by comparison. Sure, some people may make value judgments that lead to them spurning the injection despite its moral benefits, but that's irrelevant. We're not looking at individual opinions, we're looking at wide moral frameworks. Across the population, it is more moral to receive treatment for a disease than it is immoral to receive injury from a needle. If we were to look at individual opinion, then I could call this debate over by simply saying that we disagree, that there is therefore no immoral or moral in this context, and therefore I win. I think that Pro would rather that didn't happen. Pro keeps on claiming that, so long as we are victimizing another species, we cannot be moral actors. He still doesn't warrant this claim. I've already explained multiple times that victims will exist no matter the circumstances. Pro never refutes this argument. Pro also never explains why victimizing another species is worse than victimizing one's own, something I've warranted as net harmful. As long as he's losing this point, he's losing any moral high ground he might have had in this debate. Lastly, Pro touches back on murder, again ignoring how these same arguments take things into context. It matters what the intent was, something my opponent contended had no place in an argument about the morality of a given action. It matters what the context of the action was, especially in the case of self-defense. He says animal experimentation should follow suit? I agree. It should follow suit, and intent and context should be major concerns when it comes to evaluating its morality as well. The only thing Pro says against this is: "The intent of doing so is immoral: to save more lives by research. " I think I've provided sufficient response to this. It's interesting that he suddenly cares about intent when the title of this section is "We must separate the morality of an actions from the morality of its intent," but I'm fine with it. Pro has simply never provided any warrants for why saving lives through research is immoral. Whether they're human lives or animal lives, they matter, and this research saves more than it kills. Pro never argues this " in fact, he argues that we cannot distinguish the importance between humans and animals. Even by that analysis, more lives are saved among humans than are lost among lab animals, which is reason enough to vote Con. Conclusion: I've already stated much of why I feel I should win this debate, but probably the biggest reason is that Pro concedes utility as an important measure of morality in R5. I really don't need anything more than my R2 post to win this debate in this instance, since Pro conceded all my points about benefits, even if he's attempted to mitigate it through this anthropacentricism argument. The utility arguments are all strongly on my side in this debate, and so long as Pro doesn't show a strong negative to utility that results from victimizing rodents, I'm winning the moral argument. It's simply not inherent that animal experimentation is immoral, especially when all of the alternatives are significantly more harmful to larger swaths of life on this planet. The world is too complex and the consequences of our actions, both good and bad, too important to declare inherency. We cannot side with simplicity over substance, especially on the subject of morality.