We should have lab rats in labatories

Alright, thanks again, and let"s get into this. Just a note: Pro and Con are often confused in this round, but I"ll straighten it out. Observations: OV1. Actually, my point here was defining the bounds of my arguments, which Con isn"t responsive to. Again, I don"t have to defend animal cruelty, specific labs, or certain types of experiments. As long as the use of rats is net beneficial in any laboratory setting (and I"d argue it is in most settings), it"s sufficient reason to affirm. OV2. "The burden of proof is shared equally, but mostly on me." I agree with the latter " the BoP is mostly on Con. I pointed out that his case applies to all animals. This is going to become important as I go back through it, but he essentially has two choices. He can either argue that just rats should be excluded, in which case he has to explain why rats are special, or all animals should be excluded, in which case he has to provide some meaningful alternative. I"ll show how he accomplishes neither goal. Now, onto Con"s rebuttals of my case. 1. Harm to other animals "Even though it harms any other animals, why do we need to harm rats? Right now Pro missed that case and just said it harms other animals not how those things that harms those rats." I think Con"s misunderstanding the burden that he"s taken on his with arguments. It"s not my burden to show that rats are widely used in research sciences, though I have done that. It"s not my burden to show that rats are special, though I would argue that I have by pointing to the numerous advantages of using them (namely, short lifetimes, genetic variability, and the ability to model a large number of human diseases). None of this gets any response from Con, but even if he did, Con would still have failed in his burden. It"s up to HIM to show that there"s something special about rats that should preclude research scientists using them in lab settings. Why is that? Because without doing so, all Con"s managing is to replace rats with some other creature. Since he"s no longer defending mice with his argument, I could easily say that mice will replace them. Then they"re the ones that will be suffering through these experiments. Why is that world better than the current one? But I don"t have to argue that. I could argue that they"re replaced by dogs, primates and pigs that aren"t bred in the lab. That means some will have to be captured, meaning that they will go from a free state to a captive state. I"ve already argued that this is worse than being bred in captivity, something Con has not addressed. "Right now Pro is saying they don't care of those rats if they die or not in the labs" I never said this. I admitted that harms to animals like rats are a moral hazard. Again, I"m not arguing for animal cruelty, and I think that any animal in a research science setting should be treated with the utmost care and, if they should have to suffer, have that suffering reduced as much as possible. I"m not a monster. That being said, animals do have to be used in a lab setting at some point. Something"s going to be subjected to experiments, and that something will suffer and die sometimes. All Con"s doing is changing which animals will be subject to this. 2. Importance of rats to studies "the rats can't really change. They can't really make them good for experiments, it is just that they are better than others." Again, Con concedes that rats "are better than others", and thus that their widespread use as a research subject is justified. All he questions is whether we should be treating them cruelly. That"s not the point of this contention. There are clear benefits to using rats in a number of pharmaceutical studies and studies of various treatment methods. Con grants that these are true. The loss of these animals from research laboratories is therefore a major harm to these studies. 3. Why we should care "In the Status Quo I forgot to write about, these days the rats are in danger with these labs, he is saying there is no much of an choice to change the Status Quo. Our team will change it." This is unclear. What options is he providing? So far, his alternatives have been to use humans and robots, yet the former is clearly more difficult to employ in a research setting, presents major financial concerns, places a number of new and significant moral hazards into the fray, and the latter doesn"t exist and won"t exist for the foreseeable future. What will Con"s "team" change about this situation? How will he solve for it? He"s simply not going to be able to do so, and all he"s doing is changing which animals get tested on. Con"s really dropping this entire contention. He"s not explaining why it"s beneficial to drop research off for the sake of this moral hazard, which I"ve pointed out is a major risk of implementing his case. He"s providing no reason why rats are special. He doesn"t respond to the realities that this research saves many lives, both human and animal. These outweigh any nebulous moral harm to rats. Now, onto Pro"s case. His defense of his case is extremely threadbare. He doesn"t respond to any of my arguments directly, and just leaves us with some questions I"ve already answered. "Why is people's living the most important." Because human beings are capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. Because human beings are the only ones capable of making these drugs and thus protecting both human and animal populations from dangerous diseases and disorders that could wipe us all out. Because we"re human and self-preservation should be first and foremost in our minds " we can"t protect the animals if we"re not here, anyway. But it"s not like Con"s even arguing that human lives are of equal importance to all other lives. He"s just arguing that the lives of rats are more important, and treating all other animals as lesser. "How about other animals like us?" Again, this is not a question for me to answer. It"s up to you to explain why we shouldn"t do any animal testing if that"s your argument. Up til now, you"ve made it clear that you"re just arguing against using rats. I would argue that animals like chimpanzees, which do have cognitive abilities similar to ours, should be spared as much death and suffering as possible, and yet Con risks subjecting them to more by removing a much simpler organism from labs. "Just to say that is really rude and we are not taking care of these animals at all." I"m not sure what Con is referring to here, though nothing I"ve said is rude, nor have I spurned care for any animals. What Con drops, however, can be seen as an unwillingness to care. He doesn"t care about safety testing of drugs, either wanting that testing to come to a complete halt or have it occur in humans who cannot consent to unknown safety hazards. He doesn"t care that there are many drugs that have come from studies in rats that would no longer be pursued or would be less effective in other animals. He doesn"t care that many future rats won"t even exist " won"t even know what life is " without these labs constantly breeding them. Moreover, since Con is dropping the view that they spread disease, not to mention his own alternatives, we can see that he"s not providing any meaningful reasons for voters to negate. With that, I await my opponent's final round.