This house would ban animal testing

Why Not Testing on Animals is Bad:This one is simple enough: think of all the great medical advances we've had in the past century or so. For pretty much every medical advancement in the past century, there's been an animal behind it. Let's just take a look at how far we've come just from animals alone.The University of Minnesota actually published a small, but not insignficant, list of medical advances due to animals, along with what animal was credited for the discovery[1]. I won't cover them all, but let's just get some of the highlights for the road:1990 - We developed more advanced organ transplant technicques thanks to dogs, pigs, sheep, and cows.1982 - We developed a treatment for leprosy thanks to the armadillo.1964 - We discovered ways to regulate one's cholestoral, thanks to the rat.1956 - We developed ways to perform open-heart surgery and invented pacemakers thanks to the dog.1954 - We made a vaccine for polio thanks to mice and monkeys1921 - We discovered insulin thanks to dogs and fish.It even goes back further than the past century, going all the way to 1881 where we developed a vaccine for anthrax because of sheep and 1796 where we developed a vaccine for smallpox thanks to cows.Furthermore, the impact of animals in medical testing is incredible. The medical breakthroughs that have come as a result that have drastically improved the quality of life of both humans and animals. The road to a better life for both animals and humans is is through animal testing. Still explains[2]: "Biotechnology companies have depended on animal research to develop more than 160 drugs and vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ... Those discoveries have helped hundreds of millions of people worldwide and prevented incalculable human suffering. In addition, BIO has reported, animal research has led to 111 USDA-approved biotech-derived veterinary biologics and vaccines that improve the health of ... animals. ... Biotechnology has improved the way veterinarians address animal health issues through the use of biotech vaccines and diagnostic kits and improved breeding programs that can help to eliminate hereditary diseases." With that, I'm going to respond to a few claims my opponent makes.He says: "partially because the world doesn't need a new soap or erectile dysuction pill so badly it results in the deaths of innocent animals."I agree. My position is that the only times we should be using animal testing is when it's for medical research. Cosmetic research and other uses shouldn't apply.He claims: "you cannot possibly justify testing on these animals with little to no advances."Look back at my case and see the multitude of advances and achievements that have been made on the back of animal research. Saying that we can't justify testing animals on "little to no advances" is just living under a rock.He claims: "chances are it won't work on a human."This is just a blatantly false claim. Animals exist whose organ systems share very close similiaries with humans, allowing us to target those systems for testing. This gives us accurate results. Murali explains[3]: "Researchers are very aware that animals aren’t people. Obviously animal responses aren’t the best possible predictor of treatment effects or side-effects in individual humans. But, what most scientists study are evolutionarily conservedphysiological processes, that is, processes that are similar across different species. Say someone is developing a drug that should act on opioid receptors. The questions researchers ask are – does the drug target what it’s supposed to, and then, does that give rise to a benefit in treating a disease? To this end, mouse opioid receptors work just as well as human ones. Far from treating animals like small humans, individual animal models and even strains within individual animals are analysed many times over for their suitability to the research being done, and constantly improved until the best possible parallel is found. One strain of mouse, for instance, is very good for replicating a human-like pathology of asthma compared to others that barely develop any signs of respiratory illness. Instead of rejecting all mouse models of asthma as useless, researchers choose the strain that allows them to best approximate the problem." He then finally claims: "You must understand that there are better ways out there, to find cures for medecine, to test products, and that animal testing isn't even close to being the answer to our problems."This is also blatantly false. Alternatives, when compared to animal testing, just fail to compare. Murali continues: "The list of proposed alternatives to animal research proposed in the article calling for an end to it include prevention programs, epidemiological studies, autopsies, in vitro research in cell cultures and computer modelling. The first three are not alternatives at all. They don’t actually lead to the development of novel treatments, just a better understanding of the efficacy of existing ones. Meanwhile the last two are already commonly used in most labs, but prior to and in conjunction with work with animals. And as powerful as modern computers are, there’s still simply no comparison – the idea of successfully simulating the complexity present in organism-level biological systems is a pipe dream at present." With that, I think the case for animal testing is fairly well put from here: medical advances justify animal testing, and all my opponent's problems with animal testing have been answered. Sources:[1] - http://cflegacy.research.umn.edu...[2] - Tom Still [Tom Still is president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. He is the former associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison].Animal testing: Beyond the protests, instances of mistreatment are rare. WTN News. http://wtnnews.com......[3] - http://theconversation.com...;