Animal Testing: Save the Animals, or Save the People?

Animal testing is causing a lot of heat in today's political climate. On the one side of the debate, the fact that testing of this nature has saved thousands upon thousands of human lives. On the other, the debatable argument that the testing has the same moral implications of torturing a person. How then will we decide our opinions on this very important matter? Let's hear the arguments:

Conservatives argue that Animal Testing has saved countless millions of human lives, reduced plagues of pandemic proportions to sticky-looking liquids in test tubes in microbiology labs, and is moving us closer to creating cures for horrific diseases, such as Ebola and cancer every day. Obviously, for these reasons, Animal Testing is something that we want to keep around.

On the other hand, liberals argue that animals have senses of touch as well, and can feel pain just as acutely as a human infant can. Since they can think and feel and (to an extent) reason, that they should get the same treatment as humans, even though they are, in reality, animals. Also, they argue that conservatives should look at this issue from a cosmic perspective; to ask themselves how important humankind really is in the universal plan?

What I consider interesting is that whenever I've ever asked a liberal who they'd rather have live, their family or a group of lab rats, I've gotten the same answer, and it's not exactly the one you'd expect from a person who would risk their lives to save a tree in an old-growth forest.

Also, liberals fail to consider one major point: animals involved in testing almost never feel pain. In fact, something like 94% of lab animals never even feel pain as a direct result of testing.

So now, it's time for you to make the decision: should we preserve our ways of testing animals to save countless human lives, or should we give it all up to save a few rats bred especially to be tested on? For me the decision is easy. How about you?




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