"In my junior year, I attended a class in which the professor made a compelling argument for conducting animal research related to punishment."

"He promoted it as having the noble goal of finding ways to minimize the use of punishment in humans while maximizing its effect. When he announced he was looking for a student to work in his lab for class credit, I took the job. First, I had to learn how to shock a pigeon.... As I look back on this nearly 50 years later, I am astonished that the daily grind of depriving, shocking and killing these animals did not move me to leave my job...."

From a NYT op-ed by Paul Gazda — "a visual artist and an advocate for animal rights and pesticide-free environment."

Here's the top-rated comment:

As a neuroscientist with over 25 years experience designing and conducting animal experiments to develop medications for psychiatric and neurological disorders, I have seen these sorts of comments my entire career. They describe all experiments as torture and either say or imply that there is never useful data generated. But they rarely discuss alternatives to animal experimentation. Before you condemn us, please consider these points.

Animal research is very expensive. If a company can use an alternative method, first it is required by regulation. Second, companies do not spend money needlessly. If you don't trust us not to inflict needless pain on animals, at least trust us to be greedy. Also, animals that are stressed or in pain yield worthless results.

Ask yourself, what are the alternatives? A cell culture or computer simulation is not even a simple organism, let alone a mammal. Would you volunteer yourself or a loved one to be the first human to receive a drug or surgical procedure never tested on an animal? When your parent, child, spouse or you are diagnosed with a debilitating and possibly deadly disease, would you prefer that your doctor shrug and say, "we have no treatment for that except these untested drugs" because nearly all modern drugs and procedures have been developed using animal experimentation?

Please beware simplistic, binary arguments for or against animal research. They are difficult choices that we make. One day, we will all need to make them.