Animal experimentation is immoral.

I very much appreciate my opponent's style of debate as well, and am glad to see someone new to the site showcasing such a high level of debate prowess. That being said, I'm going to go through and rebut his case and rebuild mine. Pro starts off by essentially conceding utility. This makes this debate a question of whether morality can and should apply mainly to a specific action taken (as my opponent argues), or whether the context of an action should determine its morality (as I argue). This is the basis of the debate. When Pro states that I've misinterpreted the topic, he's really misunderstanding the purpose of my points regarding alternatives. The purpose of these arguments was to showcase other possibilities that exist in a world where we accept that this practice is immoral and decide to act upon it. Every single one is immoral in its own right. By not responding to these specifically, Pro is tacitly conceding that no alternatives exist that are morally superior. He's welcome to provide some response in the final round on this point, but as it stands now, all three alternatives I've discussed are morally reprehensible by comparison. Just to remind everyone what those alternatives were, they were human experimentation, allowing limited experimentation (in vitro/simulations), and no experimentation. My opponent is right. We aren't discussing the actual practice of banning animal experimentation. What we are discussing is its morality, and that morality only exists in comparison to other available actions. Harms exist in any case, therefore we must evaluate by comparison. Of course, this assumes that we're looking at the overall picture, something my opponent is adverse to " as well he should be, since deontology doesn't look at the overall picture. Pro provides a number of false analogies that I will get to in a moment, but let's look at how deontology would evaluate similar medical situations. First, you really wouldn't have to get to animal experimentation. You could call the needle sticks that are necessary for this research morally reprehensible, since it punctures the skin and injects something foreign into the body. Given Pro's line of reasoning, every single injection would also be immoral. Context is necessary. We don't view the injection as immoral because we know that the purpose of that injection is to assist the person. Even if that person is unconscious and unable to consent, that's not necessarily immoral, but more importantly, that's context. You need to know more than just what that leg of the experiment looks like in order to find immorality. Second, every evaluation Pro provides of harm is utilitarian as well, and therefore can be compared to others. Pro impacts every single one of his points very logically by stating that there are physical harms done to these animals and ultimately, most are euthanized. Thus, we're not evaluating this actually as a means. We're evaluating it as an end. All Pro has done is shift the end point to somewhere earlier than the actual one, focus on the animals, and function with the same utilitarian principles in evaluating it. Pro is tacitly accepting that utilitarianism is most appropriate, he'd just rather it function in a vacuum. Now, I'm going to get into some specific refutation. 1) Anthropacentracism It's a nice critique, one I've seen before in live debates. Pro never impacts this, at all. He never explains why this is a bad thing to engage in (hypocrisy alone isn't an impact, nor is it harmful in and of itself), or what is a feasible moral alternative. I would say that any alternative is completely unreasonable " it's hard to get funding to support research that aims to treat something not associated with humans. The only way research gets funding is if human beings fund it " much as I think a buck is a majestic animal, it is not made of actual monetary bucks. Beyond that, Pro makes a wrong assertion. Yes, we do have treatments that we've found for pet rodents, but more importantly, we've grown to understand a number of preventative methods that keep rodents from suffering from all manner of disease.[1] So yes, they have benefited. 2) False analogies Under "flaw 2," Pro provides a number of these. Let's go through them individually. No, Hitler was not less immoral than Stalin based on the number of dead. Again, context. Hitler was trying to eradicate multiple populations of people entirely and was killing to make the world pure and Aryan. That's a mitigating factor that makes them more or less the same morally. But more importantly, it doesn't matter whether one is more or less moral. We accept them both as immoral, and recognize that neither lacks for alternatives that were moral. The same thing applies to the dropping of the atomic bombs. Pro is just stating a false dichotomy. I don't have to defend the choice to do so " diplomacy existed as a moral alternative. The justification for the removal of emotions may be valid, but there are too many mitigating factors to be certain that it's actually beneficial. Ambition/greed are not the only emotion expressed by humans, nor are they solely harmful. It is simple to argue the utility of emotions to the population at large. Pro essentially states that this is all a part of the moral math, yet he leaves out any and all variables that can modify that "math." Pro asserts that focusing on the "greater good" has been demonstrated as wrong, but simply ignores all of the mitigating factors that affect that evaluation. Pro compares to the French Revolution. Again, the reality that alternatives existed modifies our ability to evaluate the outcomes. He tries to distinguish between a moral cause and an immoral act, but doesn't recognize that they are one in the same in this instance: both the cause is a moral one, and, when context is applied, so is the act itself. Lastly, Pro discusses a comparison of human clones bred for organ harvesting and the use of oncomice and transgenic pigs in research, assuming my position. He's wrong. I think both are morally reasonable, and not that one is better than the other. Again, the key words are context and alternatives. The context here is that these are lives created specifically for the purpose, and saves the life of people who would otherwise lose theirs. That's not to mention that Pro doesn't state how this would occur " many have considered clones made without a brain, and as such ones that cannot suffer. The alternative is that many people lack for organs, and there is no other way to acquire them adequately. I'll quickly respond to Pro's questions. 1) In some instances it becomes fuzzy, though even in chimps the life cycle is shorter than in humans, providing faster results. In most instances, no. I've provided strong and specific rationale for why rodents are used that Pro left untouched. Pro doesn't state how to solve for this double standard. As alternatives have larger moral quandries, any double standard here is morally preferable and therefore moral. 2) Not sure where you're getting that quote, but no, I don't. Viability doesn't make it moral. Its contextual morality makes it moral. 3) I don't know who or what allocates this "right," but every living creature on this planet makes a determination that their species is most important. Lions don't have a "right" to disembowel and eat other creatures, but it does anyway. Just as we shouldn't expect them to starve to meet a specific concept of morality, we shouldn't expect people to suffer and die because of that same concept. The reality that we have a larger effect than a lion does doesn't alter the inherent morality of saving lives for the purpose of perpetuating the species and improving quality of life. It's not about any right, and if you feel it is, explain where it comes from. I hand the debate back to Pro. 1. https://vetmed.tamu.edu...