Animal Testing

My opponent makes two really simple, really flawed points. But before I start with them, I want to make a quick point. All of his arguments use statistics and other claims that he never sources at all. There's no way to actually verify he's telling the truth in this case. Insofar as he didn't do that, you're prefering my arguments over his because I'm at least providing citations and sources to voters so they can verify I'm being honest. And, don't let him just make up for it in the next round by retroactively providing them since I don't have another round to respond to them, which makes it inherently unfair for him to just save arguments and sources until I don't get a chance to respond to them. Animal Testing is cruel/inhumane:First, ignore his cosmetic testing example. I'll concede that animals should not be tested for the safety of different cosmetic products, but rather only should they be tested on for medical reasons (i.e. the development of different medicines/vaccines/techniques). Second, turn this argument in my favor. Animal testing gives us what we need to fight diseases and sickness in both animals and humans, leading to the reduction of pain and suffering for both animals and humans. I solve for long-term suffering. Still (1): "Biotechnology companies have depended on animal research to develop more than 160 drugs and vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ... Those discoveries have helped hundreds of millions of people worldwide and prevented incalculable human suffering. In addition, BIO has reported, animal research has led to 111 USDA-approved biotech-derived veterinary biologics and vaccines that improve the health of ... animals. ... Biotechnology has improved the way veterinarians address animal health issues through the use of biotech vaccines and diagnostic kits and improved breeding programs that can help to eliminate hereditary diseases."Third, his argument is just untrue. We do everything we can to ensure that animals aren't harmed and don't suffer. Still continues:"The USDA and National Institutes of Health regularly inspect research institutions to verify the well-being and care of animals ... animals used in research do not suffer more pain or distress than animals outside the lab. In fact, lab animals often receive the best of care because of their value to researchers. Today, animal research is predominantly research involving rodents and rabbits. ... only 5 percent of research and development involves animals – and 99 percent of those animals are mice, rats and rabbits. ... Computer modeling has reduced the amount of animal research. So has cell-based research. The use of animal embryonic stem cells in drug testing has dramatically improved the quality of such tests, and more quickly provided researchers with information about the safety and efficacy of drugs." Fourth, even if you buy his argument that animals are suffering from testing, the affirmative doesn't provide a single reason why this isn't something that can't be solved back for by proposiong tougher restrictions and oversight on animal research to make sure that any experimentation on animals involves the absolute minimual amount of suffering, if any suffering even needs to be inflicted, and that the suffering is applied in a humane fashion. Just because the way it's being performed in the status quo isn't optimal, that doesn't justify doing away with the entire system. That's like saying you need to buy a new car because you're headlights are starting to get dimmer. Just fix the faulty parts and you're golden.Fifth, there's no impact to his speciesism argument. All he says is that "Grrrr don't be speciesist, you speciesist!" like it's some fancy buzzword that awards him free elo. He's not actually giving any kind of reason why speciesism is bad, which becomes problematic since speciesism is just irrelevant. The "hunter in the woods" analogy is a good example of this: imagine you and you're hunting dog are out in the woods and you stumble across a rather angry bear. You're faced with two choices: run and have the bear catch you and kill you since you're dog is going to outrun you, or sic your dog on the bear and run. The choice isn't even debatable; as much as you love your dog and care about its wellbeing, we all inherently prefer our own wellbeing over the wellbeing of other animals. Sixth, his comparison between animals and the mentally challenged is faulty. There are certain categories that distinguish between the two. Frey (2):"to include the baby by means of the potentiality argument: the baby is potentially rational. ... to include the severely mentally-enfeebled by means of the similarity argument: in all other respects except rationality and perhaps certain mental accomplishments, the severely mentally-enfeebled betray strong similarities to other members of our species ... One might try to include both babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled by means of the religious argument: babies and the severely mentally-enfeebled possess immortal souls. ... the religious argument does separate both from Fido, who is not conceded an immortal soul by the argument's proponents."Seventh, we can't place animals on the same level as humans because they are incapable of grasping ethical premises, which makes them unable to enter a community of moral agents. Cohen (3):"Patterns of conduct are not at issue. Animals do ... exhibit remarkable behavior at times. Conditioning, fear, instinct, and intelligence all contribute to species survival. Membership in a community of moral agents nevertheless remains impossible for them. Actors subject to moral judgment must be capable of grasping the generality of an ethical premise in a practical syllogism. Humans act immorally often enough, but only they ... can discern, by applying some moral rule to the facts of a case, that a given act ought or ought not to he performed. The moral restraints imposed by humans on themselves are thus highly abstract and are often in conflict with the self-interest of the agent. Communal behavior among animals ... does not approach autonomous morality in this fundamental sense. Genuinely moral acts have an internal as well as an external dimension. Thus, in law, an act can be criminal only when the guilty deed ... is done with a guilty mind" Alternatives to Animal Testing: First, even if he's winning that there are better alternatives to animal testing, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't test. Just because there's a better way to get to work than walking (i.e. driving is preferable to walking) doesn't exclude walking from being a way we can travel to work. Second, alternatives just don't replace animal testing. Murali (4): "The list of proposed alternatives to animal research proposed in the article calling for an end to it include prevention programs, epidemiological studies, autopsies, in vitro research in cell cultures and computer modelling. The first three are not alternatives at all. They don’t actually lead to the development of novel treatments, just a better understanding of the efficacy of existing ones. Meanwhile the last two are already commonly used in most labs, but prior to and in conjunction with work with animals. And as powerful as modern computers are, there’s still simply no comparison – the idea of successfully simulating the complexity present in organism-level biological systems is a pipe dream at present."This has two impacts: one, that his proposed alternative of in vitro testing doesn't actually replace animal research, but rather is used in conjunction with it, so that's not actually a reason to get rid of animal testing, and two, that no current alternatives are as viable as animal testing is at present.Third, his claim that animals are bad test subjects to compare to humans is just blatantly false. Murali continues:"Researchers are very aware that animals aren’t people. Obviously animal responses aren’t the best possible predictor of treatment effects or side-effects in individual humans. But, what most scientists study are evolutionarily conserved physiological processes, that is, processes that are similar across different species. Say someone is developing a drug that should act on opioid receptors. The questions researchers ask are – does the drug target what it’s supposed to, and then, does that give rise to a benefit in treating a disease? To this end, mouse opioid receptors work just as well as human ones. Far from treating animals like small humans, individual animal models and even strains within individual animals are analysed many times over for their suitability to the research being done, and constantly improved until the best possible parallel is found. One strain of mouse, for instance, is very good for replicating a human-like pathology of asthma compared to others that barely develop any signs of respiratory illness. Instead of rejecting all mouse models of asthma as useless, researchers choose the strain that allows them to best approximate the problem."Sources:(1) - Tom Still [Tom Still is president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. He is the former associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison].Animal testing: Beyond the protests, instances of mistreatment are rare. WTN News. http://wtnnews.com... (2) - R. G. Frey. Animal Rights. Analysis, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Jun., 1977), pp. 186-189. Oxford University.(3) - Cohen, Carl. "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research", New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 315, issue 14, October 1986, pp. 865–870.(4) - http://theconversation.com...;