Resolved: An alternative for animal testing should be found.

Thank you, Blah. Unfortunately, every single one of my opponent's sources in his first constructive round fail to lead to relevant source material. Link [1], for example, leads straight to the wikipedia homepage, link [2] and [3] leads to its respective homepages, etc. Most of my opponent's links are simply inaccessible. However, I will still address my opponent's points despite its not having real source material to give them the weight they were intended to have. My opponent can attempt to reproduce the links in the next round if he so wishes, but I will refute his points here and now.ClarificationsFirst I would like to address what I perceive to be an attempt at a semantic exploit of the resolution. My opponent, in an attempt to refute the relevancy of my negative case, says "An alternative is different to a replacement because alternatives are not permanent changes to the status quo, and we can alternate through alternatives."However, in his constructive round, my opponent explicitly states: "we need to find another method to replace animal testing in biomedical research"That we are debating a replacement to animal testing is also very clearly stipulated by the resolution as it asks whether or not we should find to find an alternative for animal testing. It does not as whether or not we should be looking for alternatives. The resolution clearly asks for one method to replace animal testing altogether, and my opponent's first constructive round indicates the same.So to reclarify: this debate is about whether or not an alternative for animal testing should be found. The negative case argues that animal testing is both necessary and irreplaceable; that there is nothing that can make up for animal testing.==C1 - Mistreatment of Tested Animals==My opponent claims that scientists 'aren't at all careful' when testing on animals. This is an assertion that I will disprove in a couple moments. He then gives us an anecdote of a primate having its eyelid sewn shut. While a trial may or may not have been conducted with care, a trial's procedural result, i.e. i.e. having a sewn eyelid, does not say anything about whether or not the procedure is executed with care. "One of the most important, but unknown facts about biomedical research is that just like at your pet’s veterinarian’s office, there are research veterinarians, husbandry specialists and animal health technicians – people who care deeply for animals – ensuring that animals in research receive the highest quality of care. These well-trained professionals work directly with researchers to minimize discomfort or distress, two factors that affect the well-being of animals as well as the quality of the data collected in the study."[1]"Research institutions are required to have an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). IACUCs approve and review research protocols, ensure that anesthesia and postoperative medications are used when appropriate, and that alternatives to animals are sought out and integrated into studies whenever possible. Most institutions go above and beyond regulatory requirements by volunteering to have their programs reviewed every three years by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International (AAALAC). This accreditation process is very stringent and institutions with AAALAC accreditation are known for their commitment to excellence and humane animal care."[1]The scientific community is neither careless nor inhumane. It already uses as many non-animal alternatives to testing whenever possible. However, there exists no single alternative that can completely supplant the entirety of living systems provided by animals. I'd like to reinvoke the following passage from my previous round: "contrary to animal rights claims of alternative methods being better, the truth is that 94% of drugs that pass animal AND non-animal preclinical tests will fail in human tests."[2]Non-animal pre-clinical tests include all those that animals rights activists believe should be used. However, no proponent of animal testing ever declared that 94% of drugs that pass non-animal tests fail in human tests. Such a statement would be an inacccurate lie that ignores the fact that preclinical tests include animal testing.==C2 - Animal tests are unreliable=="I have not failed, Ive just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas EdisonThe lightbulb was known to have taken about 1000 trials before it was successfully invented. That is 1 trial of success out of about 999 trials of failure, a measly 0.1% success rate or a monumental 99.9% rate of failure. That's what trials are for: testing every possible facet that needs testing until it works. Compared with the 90% rate by which the FDA rejects drugs that pass clinical trials, the biomedical community is working with relatively reasonable odds.And again, I refer to the inaccuracy of the 90% statement on failure of clinical trials as it ignores what the preclinical trials actually are.While preclinical trials do produce practical products only 10% of the time, this 10% has saved the lives of countless millions. Insulin, for example, currently sustains the lives of over 20 million human beings in the United States alone. Again, I would like to elicit the following passage from my previous round: “Without animal research, millions of dogs, cats, birds, and farm animals would be dead from more than 200 diseases, including anthrax, distemper, rabies, feline leukemia, and canine parvo virus, according to Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), a nonprofit group that supports the responsible and humane use of animals in biomedical research. Today, those diseases are largely preventable, thanks to vaccines and treatments developed in animal research. In human terms, research with animals has led to vaccinations against smallpox, measles, mumps, diphtheria, and tetanus; development of anesthesia, antibiotics, and insulin; use of cardiac pacemakers and heart bypass surgery; surgical advancements for organ transplants, hip replacements, and cataract surgery; and treatments for a host of diseases, including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, AIDS, and children’s leukemia.”[4] Whatever harms animal testing might bring upon the human or animal community may or may not be an issue, but the benefits of animal testing saves the lives and livelihood of an immense quantity of animals and people. I believe on a cost benefit analysis, the benefits greatly outweigh the costs.==C3 - Despite...costly==C3 is reliant on C2, which is based on tests' failures. I believe my response above addresses most of C3. Is money put into animal testing actually wasted? My opponent claims that there is 16 billion dollars put into animal testing, but I've shown that animal testing is clearly beneficial. What it provides to society more than justifies its costs.Blah's Rebuttals"human testing is another alternative to animal testing" - BlahNo. Humans are animals, and all arguments that can be made against animal testing, such as pain, suffering, etc. can be made with human testing. In suggesting this, my opponent presents us with a massive double standard which favors animals over humans. This suggestion severely undermines my opponents case. We as humans generally value individual humans more than we do other individual species, and subjective or not, human lives are more important than, say, the lives of mice.“There is no doubt that the best test species for humans are humans. It is not possible to extrapolate animal data directly to humans" - Neavs, MacLennan and AmmosI've presented clear examples, i.e. surgical tests, that show that animal data can and has been extrapolated directly to humans."we should rely on alternatives that are much more trustworthy and productive"And what alternatives are these? "My adversary's entire contention relies on one single event, yet he attempts to use this to prove his entire case correct. But this is completely irrelevant."I refer to my refutation to my opponent's C2."humans and non-human animals have different internal immune systems and system structure, not about the genetic makeup, which defines what a living thing looks like." - BlahHumans may differ from non-human animals, but if they were so different as to be unreliable, how come we've been able to derive real results from them? In fact, petri dish cells have no internal immune system and system structure. My opponent later goes on to declare that other methods, such as petri-culture testing, is more accurate and better than animal testing. I declare this a false assertion. Even if non-animal testing methods may be more effective in some cases, not all cases can dispense with animal testing. There is no replacement that can duplicate the results of an entire living system besides another whole living system. It is impossible to ascertain whether a heart bypass works, for example, without conducting an actual heart bypass. Computer simulations and petri-dish examinations can only show so much."all living things are animals" - MeIn context to my rhetoric, this refers to all living things with animal functionalities and systems which are obviously animals. My opponent attempts a negation with a grammatical technicality. I refer to rule number 3.ConclusionC1 and C2 fail under countercases. C3 fails from the failures of C2. Moreover, I believe the negative constructive case is insufficiently addressed thus remains affirmed.[1] http://www.amprogress.org...[2] http://www.understandinganimalresearch.org.uk...[3] http://www.uky.edu...[4] http://cvma.net...