What is everyone's opinion on Pro-Test? For those of you who don't know, Pro-Test is an activist group standing up for animal testing for medicinal purposes.
Hmmm tis a tricky one. Testing humans can go horribly wrong (as we discovered back in March), but testing animals is cruel and immoral, especially as they're usually treated poorly.
I don't think polarisation of any debate helps. It's a very complex issue; I would be suspicious of anyone who says they are unequivocally either for or against animal testing in medical research (which animals? which research?)
Testing on humans rather than animals makes total sense to me. Test them on criminals. The only good point to cloning humans as far as i'm concerned is to provide third world countries with a decent bit of meat. We could clone humans without brains, so there's no suffering for humans or animals, a real winning suggestion all around. I'm not prepared to get worked up about either side of the argument though. Testing on animals IS cruel, but sometimes the results CAN be worth it, i'm too much of a realist to deny that.
as the vegan that i am, i'm completely against animal testing. did you know that every 12 seconds a non-human animal dies in a lab in the UK? in the USA, it's one every second, and in Japan it's every 2 seconds. Altogether one million animals will die in laboratories today. THAT'S 11 ANIMALS EVERY SECOND. add to that the number of human deaths caused by animal testing gone wrong, and you've got a huge amount of corpses there. we are animals too, and although we are more powerful than mice or dogs, i don't believe we have the right to slice them apart without anasthetic. here's a link you might find interesting: http://www.speakcampaigns.org.uk/faq.php/
Does this mean that if you were ill you wouldn't use medicines and treatments that have been tested on animals prior to them being used to treat the general public (e.g Chemotherapy)?
Sorry, but what's your point? Millions of animals die every day for no reason...Millions of people day everyday from famine, war and disease...You're more concerned about the number of rats that're dying than the number of people. Of which animal testing could help. Giving little 'facts' about animal testing isn't giving your opinion...It's giving your spoon-fed opinion.
Animal testing is unlikely to be able to help those who die from war or famine. I think a majority of deaths from diseases in the third world are caused by diseases for which we already have a cure. I'm not certain on the figures, but it is a very high proportion.
Either those we have a cure for like typhoid, dysentry etc or the main problem, particularly in African nations is AIDS and HIV.
actually no, i wouldn't. i believe it would be hypocritical of me to say i reject animal cruelty whilst poping a pill that caused many an animal to suffer. and also, i believe that any infliction i am to get was always going to happen anyway (you see, i'm a beliver in fate), and i don't ever wish to have to depend on a medicine to stay alive. i believe that all animals (bare in mind humans are animals too) are as special and important as each other, so the number of people dying and the number of rats dying share the same importance to me. my opinion? i think testing on animals is outdated. there are many other ways companies could test medicines out, but don't. (some examples of said alternatives) drug produced companies do not wish to invest in new methods out of fear of being taken to court by feisty Americans if something ever went wrong. and of course, if one never tries something new, one will never get furthur than he has already got, until there comes a point where he shall start going backwards. on the other note, no, animal testing would not help anyone if you were in the middle of a war or a famine. although i'm not sure that is quite relevent to this thread.
Such things are easy to say when you're not faced with the reality of the situation. Chemotherapy is here, it's already been tested, using it now would not cause any further animals to suffer. Rejecting it would be a senseless waste of life. If we as animals are equivalent to all other animals, why do you hold us to higher moral standards than them? Animals kill each other all the time to survive. Predatory mammals kill and eat thousands of prey over their lifetime. In fact, there's a thought - would it be acceptable to kill Lions to protect a greater number of antelopes? If your lifeboat had enough room for two people or four dogs, which would you save?
Few would be quite so hard-line as honeyfugle but animal testing has to be looked at more closely. Things have changed for the better in recent decades, and I think the UK is one of the most regulated places for animal testing, which is a good thing. Things can still improve; fewer animals, and fewer non-rodents need be sacrificed if it weren't for some outdated laws which require certain kinds of testing in spite of dubious scientific validity. I think extreme limitations if not a total ban should be put on testing on higher primates. They are so similar to us that it's very clear they are able to experience suffering in the same way humans can and that they are conscious of their suffering. It doesn't make much sense to repudiate knowledge which has already been gained even if you disagree with how it was got. There are good points on both sides.
@ L.A.Matthews: anasthetic certainly is useless if you're in a war in a third world country unable to afford it. do you mean if i was on the lifeboat too? if i was on the boat, i really do hope i would have the courage inside me to sacrifice my own space so more people could get to safety. although, i've never been forced in one of those situations, and hopefully i never will. @ Degenerate: no, i don't think it would be right to kill lions to save antelope. lions are natural carnivores and it is their instict to eat an antelope. what makes humans different from lions is that we humans raise meat-animals on farms (usually factory farms), and we wouldn't hunt for our prey in the wild in the same way as early man did.
That's a sweet little dance around the question. If you really meant what you said earlier, you'd save the four dogs and let the humans drown. Humans are natural omnivores. What moral difference is there just because we used our brains and became better at it?
