All the great medical advances in the last century have come about through animal testing. Yes, a lot of animal testing is wasteful and uneccessary, but lots of it also benefits medicine and science. While there are many serious and intelligent animal rights activists, a lot are not well informed and are emotionally driven. I expect some of the comments to this comment will be of the emotional badly informed nature. How can we find a cure for cancer?? For aids?? All the 'primitivist' nonsense is not convincing in the real world, and is ill informed about medical science to boot. So, no to unecessary cruelty, by all means, but an end to animal testing as such?? I don't think so.

Dr. who, you know nothing. Animals are equal to humans. Woould you set someone torture you mother so that it would benefit medical science?? I don't think so, you twat. So why torture rabbits, mice etc. They too are living creatures, and too deserve the chance of life.

The above comment is typcial of the emotionally driven nonsense that comes out of the mouths of so many animal rights activists. Yes, you are an emotional person, but you do not give a good argument. So, no, i wont fuck off and die. Get a life, and read your medical history. I fyou find a cure for aids, or try to find a cure for aids, i'll be impressed, but until then... we'll just have to keep trying. Also, animals are not the same as humans!! They are obviously of greater value. this does not mean that animals have no value, but any value that animals have is what we, humans, give them. Animals deserve respect, yes, but not at the cost of a human life.

The nature of your comment tells us that your brainwashing since birth has served the state well by yourself employing the silence at the crime permitted by the state.

I wonder how you would feel 'restrained in stocks' with toxic substances poured in your eyes without being allowed to blink for seven days? Or, have your mouth forced open with tube inserted into your stomach with 'weedkiller' poured down it?

Think about it you ignorant shit! The animals are our friends, we are their defenders, and we don't like people doing things like that to our friends, do we? 'Dr.Who'??

More emotional drivel. Even you, AK, use medicines, or someone you know use medicines that were developed through being tested on animals. AS i said, i am against unecessary animal testing, of which there is a lot, but not animal testing as such. Yes, i have thought of what the animals go through, but as i said, a 'necessary evil, still an evil tho. As for all this crap about brainwashed by the state, gimme a break. You and other people like you effectivle kill discussion on these issues by you emotional drivel and your quick labelling. You have not seriously given a good argument against animal testing. A threat to the state? You're not a threat to anything!!

Dear Dr Who ...

..as much as your emotional argument holds enough power to convince some ...

..it is based on debased reasoning.

Yes the majority of animal testing is useless ... why?

Because the products being tested are just that .. generic medicines and products that need their certificates of approval from the 'authorities'. Certainly no need in a rational world to test these agents twice, but in a commercial one .. over and over again , as much as the almighty dollar requires.

As for the suggestion that cutting up, burning, deabilitating animals will help find a cure for .. cancer, aids ... well it has had precious little effect so far. A more holistic approach, to both the investigation and relief of these ills, would uncover the root causes of these blights on humanity ... namely the very same anthrocentric arrogance.

The fact that those companies fighting for profit over our bodies are the same companies producing the hundreds of thousands of new chemicals each year that go on to produce these diseases they later 'fight', the fact that the reductionist capitalist approach of no money no drug/food produces the majority of the misery in the world doesn't get a look in.

In fact the approach of animal/human modelling is fatally flawed (literally) - witnessed by the very many occasions where 'perfectly safe' drugs, remorslessly and repeatedly tested on our little friends have a less than perfect effect on us. Witness the very real possibility that the use of monkey kidney/soft tissue serums to produce the vacinnes that were to save the world, in fact produced epidemics of disease and illness - including cancer and aids - because they were dubiously collected (money talks), dubiously tested (money talks) and dubiously authorised for production (money talks).

The argument that animal testing is a necessary evil to safe guard us humans is flawed ethically, flawed practically and an emotional response itself.

The thing that would safe guard us humans a damn site better would be to lose some of our ego .. the belief that we can use other lifeforms so carelesly and get away with it, the belief the money thrown at a problem will solve it, the belief that only some things are interconnected, the belief that technological fixes will help clean up the mess the last technological fixes made ... shear and bloody nonsense.

Health is not a commodity that can be traded, fooled or fixed without tracing the roots of the dis-ease to the way in which we live on this one earth we have. Animal testing is utterly useless in the face of human stupidity - only human compassion and holistic intelligence can save us.

Leave the animals alone.

"The animals are our friends, we are their defenders, and we don't like people doing things like that to our friends, do we?".

That is my line. There is no argument. For the animals, it is too late to 'argue'. You can debate about the rights and wrongs forever. For the animals their is no time. Their time is up. To the animals, you are dead in the water, of no use in the fight to liberate them.

Whilst cell culture experiments, common sense and other alternative tests can produce the results required for the progress ($$$) of the pharmaceutical industry, animals still die in agony with no pain relief in laboratories. Death is their only release.

I'd rather be emotionally involved with fighting for justice and liberation for those that cannot defend themselves, rather than merely rot on the planet with my head up someone elses (the state and the medical industries) arse.

Try getting a job as an animal technician, then maybe you can witness the agony and bloody suffering first hand, you never know, you may become 'emotionally involved' and awake the sleeping part of yourself that will help you complete the process of becoming a living, feeling, thinking, intelligent human being.

"The animals are our friends" - only a complete fuckwit could write such nonsense. Exactly how can you support this statement?

Domesticated animals are dependent on humans for survival. They have no concept of 'friendship'. Are malaria carrying mosquitoes your friends? Or is it only fwuffy lickle bunnie wabbits that are your fweinds?

Anarchism, hand in hand with animal liberation, is the path to liberty for all. No masters, no slaves.

By anarchism you mean 'breaking and burning stuff'

by animal liberation you mean 'smashing stuff up and releasing hundreds of mink into the countryside to decimate local wildlife'

Then you go back to mummy and daddy's big detached house and dream about the fwuffy ickle bunny wabbits (forgetting that they are being ripped to shreds by the mink).

Katelyn ... Are you for fucking real?

That the quality of most of the argument from the ALF-types is pretty low. Please - lets keep this discussion civilised.

How is this for a moral-quandry?

My friend works for the environment agency, investigating the effects of industrial pollution in UK rivers. In the course of her work she kills, disects, exposes to debilitating toxins all sorts of river animals...

Directly due to this work her team has exposed a number of heavy polluters who have been forced to cease and desist their environmentally damaging activities.

Before you say that her "evil" experimentation was not necessary, please get a degree in toxicology and biology.

Dogma is the enemy of enlightenment. Some experimentation on animals is necessary.

Dannyboy

Blah blah ... 'Some experimentation on animals is necessary'... Well let the well payed vivisector butchers experiment on you instead then! Leave the innocent out of it. Experimentation is aftet all,for "humanities sake" (sic). Why should innocent animals die miserable, painful, prolonged deaths to aid the destructive progress of humanity?

That doesn't make any sense, TiMed Dev|ce - why would people who accept the need for animal testing volunteer themselves? It would make more sense if you, as an opponent of necessary animal testing, offered yourself for testing lethal toxins.

Can someone explain to me how animal rights activists distinguish between 'good' animals and 'bad' animals? I'm assuming that no ALF type with a parasite - say ringworm - would avoid having it treated on the grounds it would kill the animal.

Am I wrong, and all animals, even parasites, are considered equal?

Or are some more equal than others?

Are animals that are popular as domestic pets more important than ones that aren't?

Are mammals more important than birds? If so, do ALF oppose attempts to limit the growth of populations of disease carrying rats?

Do the ALF and similar groups lobby for the elimination of meat and dairy based products from third world diets, or, for example, the Masai practice of draining and drinking cow blood mixed with milk?

I'd genuinely like to know, so if someone could be kind enough to answer I'll check back in a bit.

"Experimentation is aftet all,for "humanities sake""

Really? So preventing serious pollution to river systems is just for our sake is it? So we can enjoy a day out swimming and boating?

Get real you fanatics - my friend's work prevents MASSIVE environmental damage. She just has to kill and maim a few fish / water rats etc to do it.

Well paid? She gets £8000 a year...

Dannyboy, Katelyn , Dr Who - Your ignorance and non-compassion towards those who cannot defend themselves is appauling!