9: Animals and Ethics

Animal testing has been a controversial topic for many years. You might already know about this topic, and you might not. You might be a supporter of animal testing and you might not. What are the pros and cons of animal testing? Is animal testing ethically correct? As a supporter of animal testing(to an extent), I will discuss the pros and cons of animal testing.

For all we know, you, the reader, and I, the author, might not even exist today if it weren't for animal testing. By using animals, scientists are able to create vaccines and medicines to help heal the sick. Many of us wouldn't be here today, as we, our parents, or our grandparents, could have gotten a life threatening sickness, but due to animal testing, we now have medicine and vaccines that can save lives. I support animal testing, but ONLY for medicinal purposes, I do not support the testing of any form of cosmetics on animals. Many people who oppose animal testing today, are ironically vaccinated, but hey, ignorance is bliss, right? The second to animal testing, is that it's the most efficient way of testing and developing medicine. Rats have a substantially smaller lifespan, grow much quicker, and reproduce much quicker. Testing on humans is far too risky, as if it doesn't work out, that person might die. People then argue that this is animal abuse and that humans are selfish. If you're someone who believes that, I would like to introduce you to the jungle. Please leave civilization and live out in the wild on your own and make your own medicine. We are the dominant species on this Earth because it's survival of the fittest. We sacrifice others to survive, that's how life works. Another pro of animal testing is that animals also benefit from it. Through animal testing, we have not only developed vaccines for humans, but we have made vaccines for animals as well. Through testing, vaccines for diseases such as rabies, distemper, feline leukemia, infectious hepatitis virus, and many more have been made.

Following the pros, I will now discuss the cons of animal testing. As I have said before, I only support animal testing for medicinal purposes and nothing else. 1 con of animal testing is that depending on what the animals are being tested on, they are going to be abused, as testing for things such as shampoo can be cruel. A second con in animal testing, is that we don't know if the test will have the result on both humans and animals, because if it doesn't, then that would just be a waste of funding and animal lives. A third con of animal testing, is that it costs much more to test on animals than it would to test on humans. Many of these animals tests would be more than 3x cheaper if we tested humans instead of animals.

Progress: I haven't made that much progress with this post, but I'd say I made more progress with this post than I did on my previous one. I talked about the pros and cons while using facts as I also integrated my opinions into the post, further explaining the facts. I do believe that animal testing for medicinal purposes is an amazing thing but it is looked down on due to other types of testing. Because of that, I attempted to defend my point in this post.

Reflection: I wasn't as confident in talking about this subject which discouraged me. Once again, there are challenges when you want to get better at anything but I think I might have peaked in this kind of writing. I want to be more passionate when it comes to discussing controversial topics but I feel like I'm lacking arguments.