Mike Bacon: "It's not so much as "wanting to live forever", but I'd personally like to stay on this earth as long as I can. Do you want to die before you're 40?"No, but it has almost happened to me before. What these situations taught me is that certain avoidable circumstances put my life at risk. I am fortunate not to (as far as I am aware) be currently afflicted with a terminal illness. If I were I would be very upset and my whole life would change (needless to say.) I am glad that I have made certain lifestyle choices which likely preclude me getting certain diseases early in life. Other diseases are, unfortunately, less avoidable. They are sad, but to say they are unfair and unnatural, or that they must be cured is short-sighted and arrogant.
MB: "Many of the experts say that animal testing is a necessity that has to be dealt with if we have any hope to soften the blow or actually find cures for our current crop of terminal illnesses."
Why do we need to find cures for terminal disease? If we do, won't we just become increasingly overpopulated? Won't we have a large population of unhappy old people? It seems to me the happiest seniors are usually those people who have chosen healthy lifestyles, not those who contracted illnesses which were subsequently cured. These seniors also often remain more independent and more active in society. Again, what are we meant to die of? What is an acceptable way to die? There must be a few to choose from, right? We don't all just wake up one day and decide we have lived long enough and then die (though surely some individuals do do this.)
Humans seem to have created a culture around death. They have attempted to explain death by denying it. Religions and western medicine have done wonders with this. Who pays for this? The animals we insist on testing on.
