Animal Testing Is Unethical

Hello and I would like to start the rebuttal round Moral Community->While this is a valid argument, this can be refuted. While animals cannot show or "appreciate" human's rights, they are completely at our mercy. "The other animals humans eat, use in science, hunt, trap, and exploit in a variety of ways, have a life of their own that is of importance to them apart from their utility to us. They are not only in the world, they are aware of it. What happens to them matters to them. By insisting upon and justifying the independent value and rights of other animals, it gives scientifically informed and morally impartial reasons for denying that these animals exist to serve us."-Tom Regan. "The Philosophy of Animal Rights" "Even if we apply the notion of "dominion", and if we deprive animals of rights, the principle of "dominion" should be applied in a way that requires humans to see themselves as "stewards" of animals. As outlined by Matthew Scully in Dominion, humans should apply the principle of mercy to animals, which requires that they inflict no pain or suffering on them. He writes, "We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality but...because they stand unequal and powerless before us." -Dominion by Matthew Scully Con, if you were powerless before someone, would YOU want them to show mercy? A world without animal testing->However, these medical benefits are not due to animal testing. Humane Research Australia (HRA) reports that many discoveries made by non-animal methods were later verified by animal experiments, "giving false credit" to animal use. For example, HRA notes, "Ovarian function was demonstrated by physician Dr. Robert.T. Morris in 1895 in surgical procedures on women, yet history credits the discovery to Emil Knauer who reproduced the procedure in rabbits in 1896... [and] Banting and Best are often cited as having discovered insulin through animal experiments in 1922. However... the discovery of insulin dates back to 1788 when an English physician, Thomas Cawley, performed an autopsy on a dead diabetic." No complete alternative to animal testing-However, we could use the data already collected from animal testing to fuel these alternatives, which due to the irreversible effects of time we have. 3 R's-> R1-Con, does it matter what species is skilled if it is a sentient or sapient one? R2-Contradicting yourself. You said that the other alternatives where implausible, then, according to your argument, the 2nd R would be nonexistent R3-Here, I will give examples of testing conducted in the last 2 months Endotracheal intubation, a procedure in which a tube is passed through the mouth into the windpipe, is used on sick and injured children and adults who are experiencing breathing difficulties. Many cats, kittens, and ferrets are still tormented and killed in order to teach pediatric intubation to doctors, nurses, and others at a number of facilities across the country. During these training sessions, live animals endure repeated intubations by inexperienced students, and most are forced to undergo this trauma every few months, often for many years. Cats and ferrets often suffer bruising, bleeding, scarring, pain, chronic coughing, collapsed lungs, or even death . To determine the danger of a single short-term exposure to a product or chemical, the substance is administered to animals (usually rodents) in extremely high doses via force-feeding, forced inhalation, and/or eye or skin contact. Animals in the highest-dose groups often endure severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, convulsions, seizures, paralysis, or bleeding from the nose, mouth, or genitals before they ultimately die or are killed. The Draize eye and skin irritation and corrosion tests date back to the 1940s. In these tests, a substance is dripped into rabbits" eyes or smeared onto their shaved skin. Laboratory technicians then record the damage"which can include inflamed skin, ulcers, bleeding, bloody scabs, swollen eyelids, irritated and cloudy eyes, or even blindness"at specific intervals for up to two weeks. There is no requirement to provide the animals with any pain-relieving drugs during this prolonged process. The rodent carcinogenicity bioassay is a test in which rats or mice are forced to ingest or inhale a test substance or the test substance is injected into or spread on their skin. The substances are administered to the animals for up to two years before they are killed so that researchers can look for signs of cancer, such as abnormal cells or tumor formation. A 2002 review of existing data suggests a high degree of both false positives and false negatives when using rodents to predict carcinogenicity in humans For years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) conducted so-called "wound labs," during which conscious or semiconscious dogs and other animals were suspended from slings and shot with high-powered weapons to inflict injuries for crude medical training drills. Sources: Peta.org DOD Onegreenplanet Nytimes Thank you, and I await opposing rebuttals