Animal testing does more good than harm.

Just for anyone confused (including my opponent), my opponent's round 3 speech will be to refute my contentions and defend their own, and round 4 will be for defending against refutations made in round 3 as well as summarizing why they should be the winner. Now to refute. In my opponent's Contention A, they state that animals are heavily mistreated while being tested on, and explain how animals are capable of feeling pain - before I refute that, I would just like to mention that their source for "more than 100 million animals are killed for testing purposes" is PETA. Keep in mind that PETA is a completely extremist group. It is pretty well known, but just in case one of you may not know I will give an example of their extremism, having to do with dogs and cats. PETA says that they are committed to a future in which people would not be able to own pets, claiming on their website "the selfish desire to possess animals and receive love from them causes immeasurable suffering". Their wish includes a future in such our dogs and cats would be completely neutered into extinction. Furthermore, they make the claim that cats should be on a vegetarian diet to be healthy, even though it is very common knowledge that cats are natural carnivores, relying on diets filled with protein. Hopefully you can now understand the unreliability of PETA as a source. Enough of that, now here is my refutation: Now while I agree that yes, science shows that animals feel pain, the pain is not nearly as common as people think. Animal research is actually very highly regulated, with many laws to protect animals. In addition to local and state laws and guidelines, animal research has been regulated by the federal Animal Welfare Act (AWA) since 1966. As well as stipulating minimum housing standards for research animals (enclosure size, temperature, access to clean food and water, and others), the AWA also requires regular inspections by veterinarians. (Animal Welfare Act, Title 7 - Agriculture) These are just a couple examples of how the research facilities are actually much more humane than people think. Even so, this is an extremely small price to pay for huge medical advancements. When you think about it, a much bigger problem is using animals for food. U. S. statistics show that we consume much more than we use in testing. For example, with pigs, we eat more than 1,800 times the number used in research. If you want to avoid animal death and harm, animal testing is not the culprit. In my opponent's Contention B, they state the differences between humans and the animals that are tested on - to refute that, I ask to cross-apply my C2. I would specifically like to talk about chimpanzees. My opponent states that chimpanzees are different in many ways, and they bring up a few examples, but if you look into my evidence, derived from the California Biomedical Research Association, it shows that "chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans". Let me give an analogy to explain what my point is. Let's say my friend has $100 billion, and I have 99% of what he has ($99 billion). While the $1 billion gap between us may seem large, I still have nearly the same amount of money as him. Now look at chimps. While the many differences my opponent shares may seem like a very large amount, chimps are still 99% similar to us, which means they are nearly completely the same as us. Hopefully this gives you all some insight on how similar the testing subjects are to us. Even still, non-human primates (such as chimps) make up a quarter of 1% of all testing done on animals, which is an extremely small amount. I would also like to point out that my opponent gives no other methods besides animal testing. Are you saying that we are just going to let these millions of people and other animals die, instead of saving them for a very, very small cost in comparison? In my opponent's Contention C, they further explain the unreliability of the results in animal tested products, and gives two examples, which I will refute in order: -First is Thalidomide, which caused birth defects in humans, yet not in animals. I would like to look at the time in which this drug was tested on and given out in - the 1950s! More than 60 years ago! This is a completely unreliable example, because since the '50s there have been more medical advancements than we can count - testing back then was unreliable in general, and that is completely outdated in current times. -Second is Vioxx, which had good effects on mice, yet bad effects on humans. Again, Vioxx was distributed in the late '90s, and soon withdrawn. If something has a problem, we make sure it isn't being used before any real damage can be done (ie. millions dead). This is yet another outdated example of unreliability. -Lastly, to refute both of these, is the numbers. In Thalidomide and Vioxx, they only harm a small amount of humans: 10,000 and 27,000 respectively. However, if you compare that to the number of people (as well as animals) saved by animal testing, it comes out to much, much more. For example, according to the American Cancer Society, the fight against cancer has seen 24 significant biomedical advances in the past 30 years - none of them could have occurred without animal research. These advances are helping us in the cure for cancer, which is the second largest factor for unnatural death in the United States after heart disease. This is just a single example of the many contributions to society done by animal testing. That is all for my refutations.