Question
The latest question asked us to identify some important issue that is misunderstood by most of the public. I believe that such a topic lies within the region of using animals to test human drugs. Some, if not many people, believe that this is unethical and thus need to be corrected because we are in someway damaging the animal instead of letting it live its own life. However, animal testing is very much needed to allow humans to develop better drugs. About 80% of current drugs were made using animal testing and I think some people need to realize this before they complain about the killing of rats for testing the medicine that they are currently using to treat a disease such as small-pox.
posted by Anonymous @ 6:41 PM
1 Comments:
You could use this topic however I would caution you against using the "it has been done successfully/usefully in the past therefore it must continue" argument (which it looks like is where you're headed.) That's a pretty seriously flawed argument, as 1) there are other, perhaps better methods available now (which weren't available when much of the past research was done) and 2) success does not mean ethical "goodness." (In other words, we would also likely get good results if we experimented on people, but that doesn't mean it would be right to do so.) Morality is a tough thing to prove. It would probably be better to stay in the realm of things that are misunderstood scientifically rather than trying to show that they are misunderstood morally.
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