Conflict Is Always Present When Progress Happens

Gay rights supporters, feminists, and other civil rights groups have become known to most humans today. However there is another, equally as radical group, making itself heard. The anti-Animal testing groups. Some of these groups have burned down university buildings, broken into labs, flung open cage doors and freed cats, rabbits, rats, and dogs being used In medical research. Such actions, while great, have distorted the issue surrounding the use of animals in the search for cures for disease and for the development of new knowledge of the human body. The simple fact is that animal experimentation is necessary for the betterment of mankind. The anti-animal testing groups’ arguments range from the emotional to the spiritual and philosophical. They argue that experimental surgery causes pain and distress to animals. They belive that there are alternatives to the use of animals that are more humane. Some anti-animal testers claim that many of the studies conducted on animals could be programmed for computer use and thereby reduce or even abolish the need for experiments on living animals. Still others argue that all forms of life-including animals should be preserved and fostered rather than experimented upon.
I’ll say one thing the arguments put forward by the anti-testing groups do appear quite convincing. Why, after all, would anyone want to kill a defenseless cat or dog? However, the anti-testing stance is scientifically philosophically, and logically impossible. By their obsession with alleged pain and suffering of animals used in medical research, anti-testers are ranking animal life at thr same importance as human existence and improvement. It is interesting to note that most of them eat meat, yet the meat industry, which slaughter millions of animals annually, hardly finds it necessary to defend its activities against them. Animals serve as experimental subjects in teaching surgical operations and techniques; in testing the efficiency and safety