animal testing

For starters, Con's link is broken (for me, anyway), and it strikes me as probably being an appeal to emotion anyway.Even though I have plenty of rounds, I might as well write my case now.Argument:Contention One: Animal testing of products is beneficial for humansIt is clear that we realize many benefits from animal testing, especially for medicines. The Royal Society argues:'Humans have benefited immensely from scientific research involving animals, with virtually every medical achievement in the past century reliant on the use of animals in some way.' [1]There is no doubt that we realize great benefits from testing products on animals, as the development of antibiotics, insulin, vaccines for polio and cervical cancer, organ transplantation, HIV treatments, and heart-bypass surgery all involved animals. It is even claimed that 70% of Nobel prizes for medicine were awarded for discoveries that in some way was tested on animals [2].Without animal testing, there is little doubt that we would not have made much progress medicinally. Since humans have gained so much from animal testing, and the medicines produced from animal testing have saved so many lives and improved quality of life so much, from a purely utilitarian perspective it makes sense to continue animal testing for science.After all, if you could save a thousands of humans by experimenting on a few animals, wouldn't you?Contention Two: Animals have no rightsAnimals (using the term colloquially, excluding humans) are generally considered to be inherently less valuable by many and most. In fact, there are few who would argue that all nonhumans are deserving of rights. For instance, if you swat a fly that's buzzing around your house, are you morally condemnable? Do you really have any right to turn that bear out of your garage? You might claim it's your property, but how did you get that property? Was it immorally seized from the bear's ancestors? Does the bear in fact have more right to your property than you?From a nontheist persepctive, you can view rights as a series of contracts:'The best means through which we enable all people to pursue their own ends is through individual, hypothetical contracts that we make to not violate each others' ability to pursue ends. We constrain our interests if others constrain their interests so that we do not violate each others' autonomy. From these contracts, we create the basis of rights like life, liberty, and property. If we did not accept these contracts, there would be no reason for other people to do so either, and thus we could very easily violate autonomy and eliminate the basis for self-worth.' [3]However, we cannot form these contracts with animals. If I say to a tiger that's looking at me hungrily 'Hey, you know what would be cool? If we both decided not to harm each other. That will maximize happiness for the both of us!', that's not going to stop it from gulping me down. Since animals won't agree to not harm us, we're under no obligation to agree not to harm them.Conclusion:Since animal testing is beneficial to humans and we have no reason to recognize animal rights, animal testing should continue.Sources:1. http://royalsociety.org...;2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk...;3. http://www.debate.org...;