[Jennifer]

Would you still oppose animal testing if you knew it could bring about a cure for a disease that affected you, or a family member?

Rights aren't real, you know. Society invented them. As such, it is up to society whether or not we extend them to non-human animals. I would rather see a cure for a human disease than see a rat happily frolicking in the undergrowth, regardless of 'what nature intended'.

My own personal take on this rights thing: Rights don't exist. If anyone had the intrinsic right to life, they would never die. What we DO have is an agreement among members of our society to not kill each other. If you don't believe in an objective moral construct, then we have no intrinsic responsibilities - all we have are the ones we agreed to when we accepted our place in this society, and the ones we impose an ourselves, eg not drinking, not shagging before marriage, vegetarianism. So all we end up with, apart from a small set of rules that we each apply to ourselves individually, is a set of rules that we all have to follow, and that set of rules is decided by society.

You say that you believe in a 'treat others how you would like to be treated' morality. That's really cute, but I think life isn't so black and white. I see people suffering with diseases that could be cured if we searched for a cure using animals.

On one hand, there are suffering humans. On the other, some suffering animals. Unless we can objectively decide who would be suffering more, the only difference between testing and not testing is that one is an action and the other an inaction, which makes no differnce, morally speaking. Then what?

The 'right' thing to do is a matter of opinion, and you are not involved (you're not doing the testing, being tested on, or in need of the cure), so what business is it of yours anyway? Undoubtably, you'll say you're a 'voice for the animals'. But you aren't really all that well qualified to speak on the matter, unless you, say, do research studying pain. Chances are you've never seen the inside of a lab. You just don't like the thought of cute likkle bunnies being cut open. And, tbh, the distress that thought causes you is nothing to the suffering of the humans who need treatments. There are people in our society willing to work on these treatments, so I say good luck to them. Obviously I am skimming somewhat over the issue of the animals' pain. I don't like them suffering either. But I like the thought of suffering humans even less. And at the end of the day, people and animals all over the world suffer all the time. All you're doing by stopping/allowing testing is redistributing that pain to ease suffering for part of the group. Mine's a vote for the humans. Yours is a vote for the animals. We'll have to beg to differ.