Animal Testing

haha Ok, well lets take a look at your claims, 1. "and actually if you look at the numbers, more has been discovered without animals then with" wow ok well I am not certain why this has anything to do with thy we should not test on animals, making a statement like this is sort of irrelevant and naive, in that sense we should stop oceanic exploration because we have discovered more things in space.. dose not quite make sense. 2. "Think about penicillin, radioactivity and the theories involving the earths rotation in copernicus' time. Animals were around, and it couldve been tested on them, but the bottom line was it wasnt neccesary." haha well first of all according to webmaster,Encyclopedia,Webster, and Bud Wolfons MD. Penicillin was tested on lab mice and sheep so that was something you either research and found the wrong answer or you just have no clue what your saying, personally I vote for the latter. 3."Radioactivity and the theories involving the earths rotation in Copernicus time" wow.... I'm sorry I thought this was almost to stupid to quote, first of all radioactivity and the theories involving the earths rotation have absolutely nothing to do with animal testing, the actual fact that you think that is some sort of ground to stand on is amusing, these theories did not and could not have been tested by using animals whatsoever. 4. "I have a dog, and all the dog people out there shiver at the prospect of their animal, their best friend, being tested for chanel no. 5." well..wow again, first of all you make it sound like the government breaks into houses takes little Annie's pet puppy and brings it to the mad scientists layers were he performs evil experiments on it....again this was a pretty foolish and naive claim.. according to RDS incorporated: "More than 80 out of every 100 animals used in research are mice, rats and other rodents. Less than one in every 200 research animals is a cat or a dog." Dogs, because of the size and similarity of their organs, are important for the development of new surgical techniques and for the study of the heart, lungs and blood vessels. Cats are important in the study of hearing and brain function. The use of both cats and dogs is subject to particular controls which require that they are specially bred for research. Stray cats and dogs or lost pets are not used for research in Britain. 5. "The point that I am trying to make is that no matter how much we create new drugs and test out new things, animals will always be there. We will not use them, however, because there is so much technology it is unnecesary. We are moving into an age of technology, and moving out of an age of animal testing." Ok well...I am either not dumb enough to understand what point your trying to make or I just cannot understand you. So I will just make a point on why it is necessary to use animal testing. Those who would seek to abolish animal research often claim that the use of animals in biomedical research is unnecessary because information can be obtained by alternative methods, such as test tubes and computers. What is often not realised is that scientists have strong ethical, economic and legal obligations to use animals in research only when absolutely necessary. A lot of effort goes into trying to reduce the numbers of animals used, and trying to develop new methods to replace animals. As a result, the number of laboratory animals used annually in the UK has almost halved in the last 20 years. Non-animal methods - tissue culture, computer modelling, studies of patients and populations - are very widely used. In fact, only about ten pence in every pound spent on medical research goes on animal studies. The word alternatives, often used to describe these non-animal methods, can lead to confusion because these methods are generally used alongside animal studies, not instead of them. All these techniques have their place, and it is rarely possible to substitute one for another. There are stages in any research programme when it is not enough to know how individual molecules, cells or tissues behave. The living body is much more than just a collection of these parts, and we need to understand how they interact, how they are controlled. There are ethical limits to the experiments that we can do using people, so the only alternative is to use the most suitable animal to study a particular disease or biological function. As science progresses, it may be possible to reduce the numbers of animals used in some areas. In other areas, the numbers of animals may increase. For instance, new and better animal models may be developed. It is now possible to breed animals with exactly the same genetic faults that cause some human diseases. So mice with cystic fibrosis, for example, have the symptoms as children with cystic fibrosis. These mice are the ideal way to test gene therapy, which may offer a medical breakthrough for the disease. Just as it is necessary to use animals in the study of normal body functions or the study of disease mechanisms, it is also necessary at the later stage of developing and testing treatments. It is unethical and illegal to expose patients to new medicines without being confident that they are likely to benefit and not be seriously harmed. Treatments must, therefore, be tested first in animals to establish their probable effectiveness and safety. They are then tested on human volunteers. The process is not perfect but testing in whole animals is by far the best way to protect people. Animal tests ensure that obviously toxic substances are not given to human beings and that doctors in charge of the human volunteer studies are made aware of possible serious side effects. For example, it is difficult to even imagine what range of test tube techniques or the complexity of computer systems would be necessary to mimic the amazing events that occur during the development and birth of a new baby. With present day technology, and even in the foreseeable future, this is simply not possible. By contrast, appropriate whole animal tests can detect potentially harmful effects of new treatments on foetal development and other events during pregnancy. Thus another thalidomide disaster is most unlikely. No one wants to use animals unnecessarily or to cause them unnecessary suffering. The guiding principles in animal research today are called the three Rs: * Refinement, to make sure animals suffer as little as possible * Reduction, to minimise the number of animals used * Replacement, to replace animal procedures with non- animal techniques wherever possible. Randomknowledge just a hint, get some facts in don't try and sneak lies or false information by me.