Should Animal Testing Be Banned

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Resolution: All Animal Testing Should Be Banned Team: Opposition I have one word for you, Polio. The Polio virus is an infectious viral disease that can occur at any age and affects a person's nervous system. In the late 1940s to the early 1950s, polio crippled an average of more than 35,000 people in the United States each year; it was one of the most feared diseases of the twentieth century. Thanks to the effective vaccine, the United States has been polio-free since 1979. How did we develop this life saving vaccine? Animal testing. In the 1950s, after 40 years of research using mice, rats and monkeys, polio vaccines were developed and used to treat the disease. Animal testing has contributed to many life-saving cures and treatments, like Polio, as previously mentioned. The California Biomedical Research Association states that nearly every medical breakthrough in the last 100 years has resulted directly from research using animals. (CBRA, Oct. 15, 2013). Experiments in which dogs had their pancreases removed led directly to the discovery of insulin, critical to saving the lives of diabetics. Chris Abee, Director of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's animal research facility, states that "we wouldn't have a vaccine for hepatitis B without chimpanzees," and says that the use of chimps is "our best hope" for finding a vaccine for Hepatitis C, a disease that kills 15,000 people every year in the United States. (Associated Press, July 22, 2013). Animals are appropriate research subjects because they are similar to human beings in many ways. Chimpanzees share 99% of their DNA with humans, and mice are 98% genetically similar to humans. (CBRA, 2013). The United States conducts more research on primates than anyother country in the world, approximately 58,000 versus 11,000 annually, more than 5 times the number used in the entire

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