Animal Testing (Speech Outline)
Uploaded by petedogg16 on Apr 16, 2001
Specific Purpose – To persuade my audience that animal testing is wrong and how other safer alternatives should be taken.
Central Idea – By going the extra mile in using safer alternatives when experimenting with animals will not only prevent conflicts from pro-life activists, it will minimize lawsuits and morals will be preserved.
Introduction
I. Okay I got a riddle I made up for the class.
A. What was once cute and furry but becomes a bloody rotted mess?
B. You guys give up?
C. Well the answer to this question is an animal that has undergone chemical testing.
II. I know that wasn’t too funny but I needed some sort of attention-grabber and this hit home on the question of my topic; whether animal testing is right or wrong.
A. After all, the question whether animals should be tested is often hotly debated.
B. Through intense research I have discovered that the issue on whether animals should be experimented upon, or “vivisection”, has cropped up in history as early as the 17th century.
III. Although animal testing is much less frequent today than in the past, I will
reinforce the idea that alternatives to animal testing should be preserved today.
A. I will first explain the conflicts in the past where animal testing caused many problems.
B. Then I will reinforce the solution to animal testing by discussing the various alternatives that can be taken.
(Transition: Let us first look at the problem of animal testing.)
Body
I. As I have mentioned, the question on animal testing was posed even as early as the 17th century, according to the All For Animals Newsletter.
A. According to this newsletter, Philosopher Jeremy Bentham rejected philosopher Rene Descartes’ theory that because animals have no reasoning that humans have, they therefore cannot feel pain or suffering.
1. But Bentham went further in this issue, rejecting Descartes’ idea because the idea of reasoning was irrelevant on the moral issue whether animals should be tested.
2. Bentham’s philosophy on animals, instead, was: “The question is not can they reason? Nor can they talk? But could they suffer?”
B. Vivisection began early after Bentham’s time period as scientists cut open animals to learn about the functions of the heart, lungs, and other parts of the body.
C. The practice of testing cosmetics on animals started around 1933.
1. This began after a woman used Lush Lure cosmetics darken her eye lashes.
2. The woman’s eyes eventually burned, and later the woman became blind and eventually died.
3. Because of this incident, the Food and Drug Administration passed the Federal Food, Drug,...