Animal testing has been responsible for creating products which have saved millions of lives. For example: Insulin, the cure for diabetes which had a 100% mortality rate prior to its discovery, completely resulted from the removal of livers and extensive observation before&after the procedure on a number of dogs. The fact that these otherwise healthy dogs had their livers surgically extracted and ground up may sound terrible, but consider the following numbers:
According to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/statsreport14/national-diabetes-report-web.pdf), there are an estimate of 29.1 million people who live with diabetes in the U.S. today.
The suffering of tens of dogs is responsible for the lives and happiness of millions. Even from a utilitarian perspective, such a thing as animal testing is not only morally permissible, but even morally obligatory.
I understand your point of view Howard. However, I disagree with what you are saying to a certain extent. We humans take advantage of animals just because we can. We have cause so much pain and suffering to animals for our own benefit. Yes, all these new discoveries have helped us find new cures but, have also cause the deaths of so many animals. Many of these test are being done to see "if" we are able to come up with a cure. There is no guarantee the test being done will actually result of something in order to help us humans. Meanwhile we are just torturing and killing animals.
ReplyDelete