Right, I completely understand your point, but we should stay on the designated topics.

I think we should focus less on trying to call people hypocrites in this thread because they eat meat, and just encourage the battle against testing on animals, for now.

Like I said, there are ways to kill live stock in a more humane manner (again, I don't agree with the slaughter of any animals and will never condone it) and with some more organic farms, they are able to live a decent life before being cut short. There is no middle ground or silver linings with animal testing, though.

Animal testing is cruel and bad science

It should not be allowed

I disagree on these points but fair enough, I'll digress.

For it. Utilitarianism etc.

Animal testing can be very useful and the vast majority of testing is done fairly humanely, so I support it (and most scientists agree with me).

only for medicine maybe. Not for cosmetic and luxury items tho.

"vast majority of testing is done fairly humanely" That's impossible.

I actually live in a farming community, and I know of many local farmers who let their live stock live a full cycle, or at least a decent one. That being said, I live in the middle of nowhere in Canada and not beside a McDonalds slaughter house, but that's besides the point.

What are the silver linings to animal testing? Don't digress, that's what this thread is about.

I can't find anywhere in that article that mentions about animal testing. The article is about engagement between scientists and the general public.

Completely against it but it's hard to avoid products that have been tested on animals. One of my shampoos said "final product not tested on animals." Cosmetics are easy enough but medicines are hard. I'd like to lead a lifestyle completely harmless to animals someday. There must be alternatives to each method.

Same. It's really hard to do while being completely dependent on my parents and having to use whatever they purchase, but I'm hoping to pick up on a lifestyle that is mostly free of any animal [tested] products.

I don't think it's needed. They should test the new potentially effective drugs directly on really ill people.

It's cruel, a waste of time, and many drugs which could benefit humans don't go forward because they don't work in animals...

Also, if we are speaking about make-up etc. I'm totally against it.

Medical research is a very big pro.
http://www.doc4net.com/doc/1538018765926
If you wanna hear concrete examples, here are a few excerpts from that article:
And it's currently being use to make medical progress on cancer and HIV/AIDS, among many other diseases.

and on the flip side of that, there have been products/drugs that worked on animals but resulted in harm (and in some cases, death) to humans. Talk about being counterproductive.

That's a silver ling for humans, though.

Plus, science is advanced enough now to test on isolated human cells.

I agree with one of the posts above, about how it should be done for medical purposes only.
It's difficult to see how a drug truly works unless you test it on a living animal, whether it's a human or not. I believe we do need it, as it's helped propel medical research and save lives. I guess it's kind of a loss for a gain...

I dunno. I'm torn because ethically, I do think it's quite cruel, but as i'm doing a science related degree, I've learnt how important it is for human survival. When it comes to cosmetics, it seems more inhumane to do it for human vanity

Against it.

I'm sure they're people willing to be tested on if they get paid enough.

Really ill people are already used as tests (with consent). The shear number of tests that can be done on animals is astronomically higher than the amount of tests we can perform on ill humans. You simply cannot make as much progress solely testing on humans, and you are also severely limited to what kind of tests you can perform.
Not every test is going to be successful. Formulating a treatment isn't easy, there is A LOT of trial an error.

I know scientists use new drugs on ill people, but they don't do it unless they have previously succeeded in animals. My point was they should just go ahead and try it in terminally ill people since there is no correlation in the drug's efficacy between animals and humans.

And as posh said, there are other alternatives to formulate a treatment:

I'm sorry but reading the part about abortion I'm actually feeling terrified @ stuff like a part of the woman's body becoming the man's, and I'm a guy You're all being serious here right

I'm off topic and really late tho so I'll just leave