More lives could be saved and suffering stopped by educating people on the importance of avoiding fat and cholesterol, the dangers of smoking, reducing alcohol and other drug consumption, exercising regularly, and cleaning up the environment than by all the animal tests in the world.
And, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “You do not settle whether an experiment is justified or not by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments, but between barbarous and civilized behavior.” There are some medical problems that can probably only be cured by testing on unwilling people, but we don’t do it because we recognize that it would be wrong. We need to extend this same concern to other living, feeling beings, regardless of what species they may be.
