People for Ethical Treatment of Animals

An interesting observation. My opponent has literally copy-pasted this entire argument from another debate; albeit while on the same topic, I would prefer my opponent to write some original material. From reading his argument, it seems as if he has just copy-pasted an article. I ask my opponent to next time cite his sources. "Like every species, humans have the inherent nature to protect members of their own species, and, therefore, have a predilection for other humans. But does that signify that the value other animals' life is any less? No. And why should animals not have a certain degree of rights?" Animals cannot be held on the same moral platform as humans. Rights are a human invention used to moderate human social interaction. Animals are amoral creatures; they do not have free will. To have a right, you must have free will. Humans are sapient; we have rationality. This is what distinguishes us from animals. "Apropos fur farming and usings animals for entertainment, why should such unsignificant things be done at the expense of animals? Like I said, in fur farming, an animal is literally stripped of its skin, so that its coat can become the latest fashion vogue for humans. Regarding animal entertainment, I think it is horrible to remove an animal from its habitat, so that it be used as some form of amusement." I have already stated that while I agree with animal rights groups that such treatments of animals is unnecessary suffering, we can still have these practices but with guidelines, with restrictions. "The most famous example of the dangers of animal testing is the Thalidomide tragedy of the 1960s and 1970s. Thalidomide, which came out on the German market late in the 1950s, had previously been safety tested on thousands of animals. It was marketed as a wonderful sedative for pregnant or breastfeeding mothers and it supposedly caused no harm to either mother or child. Despite this "safety testing", at least 10,000 children whose mothers had taken Thalidomide were born throughout the world with severe deformities." The reason this happened was because of inadequate research. Especially since regulations back then aren't as righteous, such a thing was bound to happen. However, after ample research, the FDA has approved it since 2006 for its affect in treating multiple myeloma patients. http://en.wikipedia.org... "Clioquinol is another example of a drug that was safety tested in animals and had a severely negative impact on humans. This drug, manufactured in Japan in the 1970s, was marketed as providing safe relief from diarrhea. Not only did Clioquinol not work in humans, it actually caused diarrhea. As a result of Clioquinol being administered to the public, some 30,000 cases of blindness and/or paralysis and thousands of deaths occurred." As yet, no explanation exists as to why it produced this reaction, and some researchers have questioned whether clioquinol was the causative agent in the disease, noting that the drug had been used for 20 years prior to the epidemic without incident, and that the SMON cases began to reduce in number prior to the discontinuation of the drug.[7] Theories suggested have included improper dosing, the permitted use of the drug for extended periods of time, [8] and dosing which did not consider the smaller average stature of Japanese. Researchers have also suggested the SMON epidemic could have been due to a viral infection with a Inoue-Melnick virus. http://en.wikipedia.org... I would like to point out how animal rights groups like to cherry pick incidents such as these two, and publicize it as if everything else were the same. As I have shown, these cases were either from inadequate research, or a case of where the drug was probably not the causative agent, but in fact some other reason causing deaths. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scientists working on polio in monkeys up to the late 1940's had found out a lot about the polio virus but they're were seriously hampered by the fact that it was thought that polio could not be grown outside a living organism, which made it extremely difficult to obtain the quantities of virus necessary for vaccine research. John Ender's breakthrough discovery that polio could be grown in tissue culture enabled scientists to grow large amounts of many different strains of polio in tissue culture which could then be assessed for their potential as vaccines. What anti-vivisectionists don't point out is that Enders relied on testing in monkeys to verify that the virus was indeed growing and to examine the pathogenicity of different strains (1,2). http://speakingofresearch.com... In 1998, the National Cancer Institute undertook a large study, using cancer case information from the Institutes SEER database. The published findings from the study revealed that there was no increased incidence of cancer in persons who may have received vaccine containing SV40.[46] Another large study in Sweden examined cancer rates of 700,000 individuals who had received potentially contaminated polio vaccine as late as 1957; the study again revealed no increased cancer incidence between persons who received polio vaccines containing SV40 and those who did not. http://en.wikipedia.org... Also, note that even if the polio vaccines containing SV40 did cause brain tumors and such; this wouldn't be because we used animal testing to discover this vaccine, but because one of the strains of vaccines was not checked thoroughly enough. This is not an issue of animal testing, but of regulations and safety. If there were such "better alternatives" to treating cancer and AIDS that does not involve animal testing, then what is it? It seems as if my opponent makes the claim that scientists prefer to take the longer and more expensive pathway of animal testing instead of doing the easier and faster better alternative. If this was true, the only reason I could think of to explain such a bizarre practice was because they like hurting animals. This, I find preposterous. While humans and every non-human animal look vastly different in appearance, we share a very close physiological structure. We have all the same organs, and all the same inner body systems such as the digestive system and so on. From mice to monkeys, our bodies work surprisingly the same, and this is why they are so effective for medical advancements. While there are still some few differences, the similarities far outweigh. In fact, even mice share 99% of the same DNA as humans. This enables us to manipulate mice DNA by turning "off" or "on" a gene or two, and testing the mice. 1. PCP is a sedative for chimps 2. Penicillin kills cats and guinea pigs but has saved many human lives. 3. Arsenic is not poisonous to rats, mice, or sheep. 4. Morphine is a sedative for humans but is a stimulant for cats, goats, and horses. 5. Digitalis while dangerously raising blood pressure in dogs continues to save countless cardiac patients by lowering heart rate. An important thing to note is that all these claims are not cited. Animal rights groups have a tendency to not even indulge themselves in some real science, but just choosing what they think will support their view. For instance, for #4, it has been shown that morphine works on cats, etc. This seems to stem from a paper reporting the effect of morphine on cats. 3mg/kg caused no excitement, whereas 20mg/kg produced marked excitement. A normal human dosage is 0.1-0.2mg/kg. This is about 50-200 times the normal dosage! http://speakingofresearch.com... PETA's involvement with ALF can cause potentially detrimental results for medical science. This is why I am against PETA and