Animal Testing Should be Banned

1/ Animal testing is unreliablePro insisted that "If if there were 100 products that WORKED in testing, then 92 will fail later on, and a mere 8 will pass". He ignored my point that just because the products pass the first test and fail the second test, doesn't mean the first test is useless. My argument stands: This doesn't prove that animal testing is unnecessary and should be abolished. Pro said that the alternatives are far more reliable, I said: Prove it. Show me that less than 92% of the products passing those alternatives fail in human clinical trials.Pro said that "Animals have different bodies to ours, and are unreliable". It is incorrect. Many animals have similar DNA to human, such as pigs share 98% of human genes [1] or mice share 99%. [2] Thanks to the genomic revolution, we have realized that there are much more similarities between humans and animals than there are differences. Genomic knowledge has made it so that animal research can be much more specifically targeted and accurate when representing a human, thus correctly predicting a how a human will react. [3] For example mice are actually considered the best model of inherited human diseases. [3]Pro said that "There is no doubt that the best test species for humans are humans". While it is true, we can't use human experiment (that's why we need animal testing before human clinical trials). If Pro consider "human cell" of "human skin" as "human" then it's just ridiculous. Such models can not tell us what the likely effect of a drug will be on blood pressure - because neither of these things has a circulatory system, blood, heart, ... or they could predict how a drug might be metabolised without introducing it to an organism with a liver. We must trial drugs on whole living organisms at some stage. [4]Pro said that "52% of the new drugs marketed in the US between 1976 and 1985 caused adverse reactions that were not predicted by animal studies". It's 30 years ago. It doesn't prove that animal testing is unreliable now.2/ Animal Testing is CruelThere is no difference between killing animals for food and killing animals for drugs. In both cases animals die unnaturally and in pain. It's hypocrisy to say one case is OK while the other is not. Pro questioned my point that "Human right is above animal right". Isn't that obvious? Right is a concept created by human. Why should we give other species more rights than us? Therefore it's totally OK for us to "murder" animals for our own benefit (by the way I also want to remind Pro that "killing animals" doesn't count as "murder" [5]). On the other hand, what Pro suggested is we should save animals' lives and leave sick people to die in pain because it's natural. This kind of reasoning is absurd.Pro said that animal testing is not only for making drugs and saving human lives, but also for cosmetics and toiletries. This is irrelevant. While animal testing is not always about saving lives, it does save lives in many cases. Just because it doesn't save lives in other cases, doesn't mean we should ban it as a whole. Pro could have just suggested the ban of animal testing for cosmetics and toiletries, however, his resolution is to abolish all kinds of animal testing. Proving that animal testing for drugs shouldn't be banned is enough for me to win this debate. 3/ There are AlternativesPro mentioned cell/tissue tests and human skin model tests. I said above that such models can not replace the whole body and "we must trial drugs on whole living organisms at some stage".Pro presented various examples of the alternatives. However, he only showed that some specific non animal tests can replace some specific animal tests. In order to abolish animal testing, he must show that all kinds of animal testing (or at least most of them) can be replaced. In Round 1, I have said that animal testing "helps us in our fight against cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, birth defects, ...". I would like Pro to present the alternatives for the experiments for such diseases.[1] http://www.abc.net.au...[2] http://www.sanger.ac.uk...[3] http://www.pro-test.org.uk...[4] http://www.pro-test.org.uk...[5] http://www.merriam-webster.com...