After another lively, informed and incredibly close debate from DebSoc, Peter Tse outlines the main arguments in support of animal testing.
Following the fanfare of Exeter’s American election, DebSoc moved onto the more closely contested debate titled “Animal Experimentation cannot be justified.” The vote of conscience, used to determine the general consensus of the audience at the start of proceedings, resulted in an unusually large proportion of abstentions (voting neither ‘for’ nor ‘against’) and it was an indication of the evenly-fought event that unfurled.
The proposition was opened by the smooth speech of the animal rights lawyer David Thomas, who wasted no time in painting the shocking picture of the pain and suffering that animals go through in animal experimentation. From this he swiftly reached the crescendo of this speech, by aligning humans and animals in the same equation and thus posing the awkward question –we are all animals after all, why not just experiment on humans? With the idea of vivisection and injecting drugs into the animals still worming around the conscience of the audience, he concluded by revealing some myths, namely the “self-delusion” that animals do not suffer and he opened up the debate to the fact that animals are also tested for cosmetic purposes and not just in the name of research for life-saving drugs.
The esteemed Dr Richard Ryder followed Thomas by reiterating that humans are part of the animal kingdom. Admittedly this argument featured prominently in their collective effort to persuade the audience, with wider references to the role humans plays in the animal kingdom and that we must be responsible for our actions. Ryder expanded on this point, going as far as saying that the pain that animals experience from experimentation is one that is shared in a “community of pain” with us. He took another audacious step in asking the audience to envisage the possibility of the colonisation of our planet by aliens. We are faced with the scenario of aliens experimenting on us and with the same terrifying prospects that animals face, and he questions whether then we would agree with animal experimentation.
The proposition reacted incredulously to the opposition’s claim that “human beings are special”, as an argument to justify our Darwinistic superiority to animals, their next point that humans have every right to experiment on animals seeing that they do not fight back represented the dichotomy of the issue, between those that believe humans are indeed ‘special’ and those that hail animal rights. The final vote gave the opposition the, albeit marginal, victory, but the close contest was the greatest impression that remains.
exeposedev 