Animal experimentation in the context of medical science

I would prefer not to continue debating what is and what is not common knowledge as it is completely irrelevant to the current debate. However, I will say that my opponent may have missed the point I was making. If something is common knowledge it is not necessary to reference it. This is common practice. Furthermore, one would expect that those involved in, or at least debating this area, would have a general knowledge of the way medical tests are conducted. If animal tests were not conducted before human tests, my opponent's argument is invalid, as animal trials would be largely pointless if human trials were conducted before or at the same time as animal trials. I will not say more on this matter as it is not relevant to our current discussion. My opponent asserts that animal testing does not pull dangerous medicines. This is incorrect, as not every drug developed is released into human clinical trials, and animal testing always occurs before human trials. 5-25% does not sound like 0% to me. Sadly, it's not really easy to get stats on this, as the drugs are quickly forgotten and abandoned if they don't work in animals. If you have a look at the UK Home Office statistics (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk...), you will notice that, in 2007, there were 193258 procedures performed in mice. This includes drug testing, toxicology and method development etc. If you consider the 48550 tests conducted into drug safety, and calculate, say 20% of that, that is 9710 effective tests into whether or not a drug is safe to use in humans. If you use the total number of procedures for this calculation, you get 38651 relevant procedures. I have stated previously that animal testing is not perfect, but there are a huge number of relevant animal tests performed every year, which, unless you consider that 100% of new drugs are safe to use, spare human subjects from adverse effects. For your interest: "Today's announcement regarding the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine underscores the importance of laboratory animals in health research. Americans for Medical Progress congratulates Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies as they are honored by the Karolinska Institute for their animal-based research that pioneered gene targeting, technology now being used to develop treatments and cures for countless serious ailments." "Ms. Calnan noted that the three scientists who share this year's Nobel Prize created the toolkit by which scientists are able to use mice to study heart disease, cancer, cystic fibrosis, hypertension and many other diseases. Already, several treatments have been developed and many more medicines are in the pipeline." "Gene targeting has pervaded all fields of biomedicine. Its impact on the understanding of gene function and its benefits to mankind will continue to increase over many years to come." Quotes are from http://www.amprogress.org... Not all animal tests are for the purposes of drug development. Furthermore, I would challenge my opponent to defend his position in regards to some of his previous statements, which have been refuted by myself. I.e. - "Thus ... there is a clear alternative." Which alternative would not expose humans to additional dangers from previously untested drugs/procedures? - "...the death toll from human testing is relatively low." - "Animal testing brings us down to the level of the animal..." I would suggest that my opponent occupy himself in defending his position and refuting my arguments, rather than debating irrelevant points. It is a bit strange that my opponent asserts he is able to refute all my arguments with the single quote "animal tests are not effective for studying human conditions/drugs" when I have proved that they are (using my opponent's own statistics), and when I have stated time and again that animal tests are not perfect, but that they are the best alternative to human testing we have at the moment.