Hey kevin, I'm kind of actually on your side, but 99% of the people who read the first post and your reply are going to side with the one that repeats the corporate propaganda that "animal testing is "science" and has led to medical progress and will do in the future... if we don't do animal research we're all going to die of horrid nasty diseases ... ad nauseum". You ask her to challenge her moral assumptions but YOU AREN'T CHALLENGING HER SCIENTIFIC ONES!
You are assuming that what she has written is true and can't be challenged... and that is where you, and all animal rightists fall into the trap of the animal research industry. They don't really care if you talk about morals and ethics, they don't care if you show people gruesome photos of experiments. In fact, they encourage this because by doing this you are creating smokescreen which prevents the public from doing what they really fear - that people start questioning their "scientific" propaganda
Myself, as an average person who had never thought to question what i had been spoonfed by school, university and the (drug lobby influenced) media, I used to think animal research was "science" and useful, though unfortunately cruel. That was until i read several books by medical historians Hans Ruesch and Dr. Robert Sharpe as well as books and articles by former animal researchers Prof. Pietro Croce and Dr. Christopher Anderegg. These guys, amongst many other scientists, expose animal research as a huge lie... an unscientific method that is done for commercial, not scientific reasons, which has retarded the progress of medicine countless times and been directly responsible for injuries and deaths to millions of people over the past century and a half - from the application of misleading results derived from animals.
As animal research is conducted on a supposedly scientific premise that is what HAS to be questioned! You'll never ever get anywhere or win over more than a tiny % of the population by accepting your opponents "scientific" assumptions and talking about morals and ethics. Vivisection is a human health issue, despite the suffering to animals. It is done supposedly to advance human health, but when you look more closely into it you'll find out that all the claims that the person you replied to, standard claims of the drug lobby, are propaganda that is easily argued against and exposed as baseless.
When you know the scientific facts, and the true history of medicine you can destroy all vivisectionist "scientific" arguments. Not only are you bringing the abolition of vivisection closer by challenging this corporate propaganda, but you are also encouraging people to take their health seriously, back into their own hands and out of the doctor-drug pushers. You'll also be helping to make the environment cleaner, by exposing how chemical companies get dangerous chemicals marketed after being safety-approved through tests on other species which react differently to humans.
Please e-mail me if you would like some good short articles e-mailed to you.
Please look at sites like that of Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research (http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr) and the links to organisations of anti-vivisectionist doctors and scientists linked from it.
