Rant #3: Extremist Animal Rights Protesters

I should make a distinction here between people who think that testing cosmetics on animals is wrong - which I agree with, since cosmetics are essentially an unnecessary part of society - and people who think that testing medicines on animals is also wrong. Medicines that could save a human life sometimes need to be tested on animals to ensure that they work; this is an important part of the process. Yet some people think that this is wrong and that fluffy little bunnies should be allowed to run free in the open air while half of the population dies of preventable diseases. There is simply no way that the value of an animal´s life is even remotely comparable to the value of a human´s. Human beings can think, write, create art and philosophise, whereas animals simply hang around munching grass or other animals and look sweet. If one human life can be saved by killing a hundred bunnies, then they should be killed. Simple.
I´d like to meet some of these hardcore, tree hugging hippies. If one of their parents was dying of an illness that could be prevented by testing a medicine on a cat would they allow it to happen? Or would they allow their mother or father to slip into a painful death, knowing that they could have prevented it all along? And how about testing products on cockroaches? Would they be so opposed to that? Or do they only complain if people test products on animals that are cute and can be kept in a cage and fed carrots for the benefit of their children? Somehow I think the perceived attractiveness of the animal concerned is more of a factor than they would like to admit.
Attempting to prevent people from testing valuable medicinal products on animals is effectively saying that a puppy or a kitten is worth more than a human. Er, wrong. Sorry. And some of the tactics these fundamentalists are using are staggering: digging up the graves of deceased relatives of people who work in guinea pig farms? Issuing death threats? Alleging that their targets are paedophiles in an attempt to turn the local communities against them? Are those tactics justifiable in any way at all? Well, you know what I think....