[colanderman]

"What if there were no animals? Or no animals with the specific condition?"

Two can play at the hypothetical game. It's stupid. The same reasoning leads to moral acceptance of human organ harvesting. ("There's no willing donors, and those prisoners don't need an extra kidney anyway, and I do!")

(Though the concern that so-called animal "models" don't reliably predict the effect of treatments on human is very real.)

[p1esk]

This is not a "hypothetical game". There are plenty of animals that we can use for testing, and we can create any necessary conditions in them to test our experimental treatments. Yes, this is cruel and sad, but if the alternative is to let humans die, I'll choose animals any day.

This is not the same as human organ harvesting, because that would result in death of humans, and we are trying to prevent that.

The concern that animal test results don't necessarily apply to humans is real, but it's much better than no tests at all.

[colanderman]

Um, you don't have to kill someone to remove an organ. Many people donate them voluntarily while alive. But if there's no match or no-one willing to donate, we don't extract them from, say, prisoners against their will. (Though some countries do.)

[p1esk]

It seems like the fundamental difference in our worldviews is that you give equal significance to humans and animals, and I don't. That's why for me human organ harvesting is not the same as pig organ harvesting, and that's why experimentation on pigs is acceptable for me if it results in fewer human deaths.

[colanderman]

Yes, that's my original point. I don't see the difference between humans and animals, especially intelligent social beings such as pigs, as so great as to justify actions which would be considered grossly immoral against a human, and I don't understand how others can.

A human and a fly? Sure, I see how one can apply vastly different moral judgements (I certainly do). A human and a pig? No, it's a matter of degrees.