Animal Testing

I want to start off my conclusion by thanking my opponent. This debate turned out to be a lot more than I initially thought it was going to be. Thank You for posting such an interesting topic. It was an extremely interesting and educational debate. Animal testing has since its first use, been a controversial topic both pro and con. Both sides have excellent points that they attempt to bring across to prove they are right; however, the pro side has one fact that the con side cannot ignore. Animal testing has worked and been beneficial in the field of researching medicine. There are many drugs out today, that have been developed with the assistance of animal testing. For instance, insulin which is helping to keep alive close to thirty million people. Other illnesses have treatments thanks to the use of animal testing as well. Many treatments for cancer and HIV/AIDS also have there roots stemming from animal testing. The con side neglects to see that animal testing has been an important part of drug development and has assisted in saving the lives of millions of people. As I stated in my opening statements, we live in a society today that values human life over the lives of animals. This is not our doing, it is just the type of society we were all born into. With that, comes testing on animals. By testing on animals, we ensure that the drug will not have adverse effects on the humans it is testing on. Testing on animals is a trail that drugs undergo before they are tested on humans; by testing drugs on animals we are able to see how the drug will effect a living organism before we go and test it on humans. Through this method we are able to find and fix all the errors with the drugs before they are tested on humans. This method helps to limit and reduce human fatalities while testing drugs. Of all the methods of testing different drugs and medicines, animal testing has been found to be the most efficient and most useful. Most living animals bodies closely resemble the human body, therefore testing on them most accurately depicts what will happen when a drug is tested on the human body. The other methods of sampling such as cell cultures and human tissue sampling, are great new tools that have been created, but still do not yield the same results as animal testing. They are great for looking at how a drug will effect one aspect of the human body, but they neglect to show how it will effect the body as a whole. I discredited these methods in the first rebuttal and as you can see, no other solution was posted. Technology has come a long way in recent years, we have developed a method for human sampling by means of generating simulations on the computer. These methods are new, and have not been perfected yet. As of now, they are just like cell cultures, where as they are great for examining a specific portion of the body; however, we all know that the human body functions as a whole. The computer cannot effectively account for the body as a whole, and when it does it looks at a perfect example. We all know that our bodies are not perfect. The computer can only run a simulation of the "perfect" human specimen. It ignores the unknown variables that our bodies have. Discussion of technology while talking animal testing is a mute point. As of now, no technological solution to animal testing has been found. Or at least no technological solution that produces the same results as animal testing. Quite simply put, the technology needed to take animal testing out of the equation does not yet exist. We discussed the treatment of animals a lot through this debate. The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee or IACUC, have extremely strict guidelines regarding the safety and security of animals through animal testing. These guidelines are in place to protect the animals from being treated unfairly. Scientist should always follow these guidelines while testing on animals. These policies eliminate the unfair treatment section of the debate, because under them the animals will never be treated unfairly. Scientist are required to not let the animals suffer any pain, and if they do they are required to administer medication to stop the pain. Animal testing has been a controversial topic for a while now, but the fact of the matter is that it produces the most accurate results. I want to thank my opponent for this debate. Vote PRO!!