Instigator / Con
7
1520
rating
6
debates
66.67%
won
Topic
#601
Animal testing
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
0
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
1
After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
Brendo
Tags
Parameters
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 3
- Time for argument
- One day
- Max argument characters
- 30,000
- Voting period
- One week
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Pro
4
1484
rating
1
debates
0.0%
won
Description
Animal testing is commonly used to test products such as drugs. The argument is that testing on animals is very similar to testing on humans. I disagree and believe that animal testing does not work as much as people believe it does.
Round 1
Con
#1
Animal testing has proven to be uneffective and a complete waste of taxpayers money. Most of the time, the test performed on rats and other animals did not relate to human trials at all. In one dramatic case, a test worked perfectly on animals and was authorised for human testing. That test ended up with all of those people in hospital with emergency treatment.
I propose an alternative. Instead of testing on animals, test on humans. If you want a product that works on humans, test a product on humans. The more dangerous products will be tested on death row inmates. If the product works, then that is a big leap forward for that product being distributed. If it failed, then nothing of high value was lost since that person was going to die anyway.
Pro
#2
Well for a start yes it might not relate to humans and because it worked on as per say rats and not on humans it would only be a small amount of people that it didn"t work and it"s only been a small handful that it hasn"t worked. Most animals they do testing on are rats and smaller animals which there organs and stuff work the same as us humans so most of the time when they want to do testing they do it on smaller animals which will work when they release it but they don"t release it after one test they do multiple test for months and months.
With the fact you should test it on humans, The reason they don"t do it on humans because a person has to be willing to give it to them and people in the prison on death row might not have the current disease that they need for testing which if it"s import like cancer you want to make it quick to find a cure to that more people don"t die. If you have people on death row is takes years sometimes till they get killed so if they finally find a cure they won"t be able to test if it the guy doesn"t have cancer so it defeats the purpose.
Therefore if they test if on rats and smaller animals they can see if it might work, Not to say it will it might then people who get the drug will have to sign a agreement saying there could be side effects during the testing and you could die but that"s where the animals come in so they at least know that yes in some cases it might not be safe but they can test it fries for months to make sure that should not cause any harm.
Round 2
Con
#3
It is not a small amount of people it did not work on, The tests done on rats and other animals failed to work on humans over 80% of the time. That means over 80% of research is wasted and the whole process starts again. Because of this, A large amount of money is also wasted because the research was completely useless.
As for finding people to test on. Death row inmates can choose either the death penalty, Or human experimentation. They will be given a short explanation as to how the experiment can benefit society. Either way, They will die. However this system allows for the science industry to move forward significantly as they are able to test products a lot more accurately.
When you stated that the reason they do not test on humans is because the human may not have the disease, The same goes for rats. The scientist gives the rat the disease, Then proceeds to perform experiments on that rat. For humans, The scientist would give the death row inmate the disease in order to start the experiment. Neither the rat or the human needs to already have the disease in order to begin an experiment.
This new procedure may cost more, But the benefit of more accurate results would benefit society dramatically.
Pro
#4
For a start I would like I you to find the statistics for the first point that you made since most of the trials that get tested don"t work since they haven"t found the proper drug to work and would not be a large waste of money since if they end up finding a cure to cancer I don"t think testing on an animal would be as bad.
Yes I understand that you can choose your death on death row and they have a choice on what they want done, But if we are looking at Australia you won"t be able to find anyone to kill or who will be willing to take it because we have lots of research labs in Australia but the only thing we can test it on is animals.
But if the scientists gave the disease to an death row inmate then they would have to choose it they might not want to do it, Because as you said they have the right to choose what they want to get done.
Round 3
Con
#5
The statistics from my previous statement came from Steve Perrin. He wrote multiple articles about animal testing. A direct quote from one of his article reads, "more than 80% of potential therapeutics fail when tested in people. "
The link for the article can be found here.
He follows this stating that, "The series of clinical trials for a potential therapy can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "
The article clearly shows that hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on research when only 20% of that research can be used. 80% of those funds are simply washed away and wasted because rats are not humans.
Who thought it would be a good idea to test on animals in order to get results on humans? Rats and humans are two completely different creatures. If you wanted to get results for humans, Test on humans. It is that simple.
Pro
#6
The reason you do testing on animals is because they have the same organ structure so most of the time when you test it on animals it works and yes they might not work all the time on humans but that"s why they can get it right the first time.
Well most results come up the exact same just have different affects on different people in my opinion it"s fine to do testing on animals it"s only been done on rats and smaller animals with the same type of organs and blood as humans.
Criterion
Con
Tie
Pro
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:
So, cons main argument, supported by sources, argued that 80% of drugs that work on animals don’t work on humans. While I don’t feel that this was fully explored by either side, pro didn’t give me any reason to discount cons position here. Pro needed to either disprove this position - or justify why 20% of drugs working justify the usage of animal testing. While pro came in the right ballpark by saying that animal testing doesn’t guarantee the drug will work - pro fell short of overturning this point
In the absence of this, I don’t feel pro offered enough of a justification in support of animal testing otherwise - as the arguments were predicated on arguing that animal testing is useful (which is directly opposed to cons sources argument)
I felt that cons arguments about death row inmates were largely irrelevant as they did not affirm or negate the resolution, so these held no weight.
I think if your a murderer, you should die by a formula I call PL^3. If you killed 1 person by shooting, then getting experimented on while conscious is too harsh. If you killed 10+ people or enough people to the point that it would be almost impossible to accurately prescribe pain, then death by experimentation sounds like a good idea. If you murdered less people, then PL^3 sounds like a good formula.
P is the amount of pain the victims died with.
L is the number of lives the murderer took.
If you murder 1 person by a shooting, such a murderer deserves to be shot.
If you murder 2 people by a stabbing, such a murderer deserves to be killed by a method 8x as painful as getting stabbed.
I would want these executions to be public in stadiums so ticket sales can pay for the execution and can provide the government with more money.
This is my idea. Let me know what you think of it.