Purchasing vaccines endorses animal cruelty

I'll jump right in. Vaccine Testing and Chicken HatcheriesThis first point isnt so much an argument as it is a point that needs to be made. A large part of my opponent's central argument relies on the cruelty that occurs in chicken hatcheries and the suffering that animals go through because of chicken production hatcheries. It must be noted that hatcheries largely exist not to supply animal testers with animals, but to service the food industry, especially here in the US. If animal testing were outlawed today, these hatcheries would continue to exist just as effectively as they do now. Consider that some 9 billion chickens are killed every year in the US. [2] Now consider that only 2.5 million animals die per year due to vaccine testing. [1] Vaccine testing account for less than .03% of the total chicken production in the US, and that assumes that every animal who dies in vaccine testing is a chicken. Knowing this, it is logically unsound to bring the cruelty of chicken farms into this debate and the reader should not consider them a valid point. Justified Cruelty is not Cruelty, In FactThe central idea behind my argument will be that vaccines (and the methods in which we produce them) are justified, on balance. As such, the animal testing portion of this cannot be considered cruelty, but a societal necessity. First, I want to start with a bit of definitional analysis. While the definition for "animal cruelty" the oppponent provides is, in many cases, valid -- it does not provide us with the frame of mind in which we have to approach this specific problem. Consider the definiton of cruelty -- the desire to cause harm of suffering to others. [3] Now imagine a scenario in which a man has been marrooned on an island and must hunt in order to survive. In hunting an animal, he will likely cause it suffering and undoubtedly will cause it harm. However, his action is not cruel because it was not his ultimate goal to hurt the animal, but rather to survive. Hurting the animal was simply the only reasonable way to accomplish that goal. Consider another example in which someone's pet gets cancer and needs to be put down. The animal is not suffering yet, and putting it down will cause harm. However, putting the animal down would not be cruel because the ultimate goal was not to harm the animal, but to prevent the animal from suffering in the future. Killing the animal was simply the most reasonable way to achieve that goal. Understanding this, I am arguing that vaccine research is not cruel. Even though animals will die and likely suffer, the ultimate goal is not to cause this suffering, but rather to create medicines that protect humans against disease. Animal research is simply the most reasonable way of meeting this goal. It is necessary now to prove that vaccines are a significant human good and that they prevent death and suffering. The Good of VaccinesLooking at infants and young children alone, more than 732,000 deaths are prevented because of vaccines. What's more, vaccines save society about 1.3 trillion dollars in damages. [4] Additionally, without vaccines, we see more and more cases of deadly diseases, like the measles, resurfacing because people do not vaccinate at the rate they used to. In a world without vaccines, diseases like this would resurface at a much higher rate, increasing the number of people who might also catch these diseases. From this data alone, it is clear that vaccines are a significant societal good and that their implementation directly saves lives. With these lives in mind, we are justified in killing animals for vaccine research, provided this is done in the most humane possible while still doing what is necessary to meet our goal. Sources(1) . http://www.peta.org...;(2) . http://advocacy.britannica.com...;(3) . http://www.merriam-webster.com...;(4) . http://www.usatoday.com...;