sploitable

Would you support experiments on live humans?

The greater good is the slipperiest slope in the history of slippery slopes. Plus, this only "applies" if you are a utilitarian. The same rationale was used by the Nazi Scientists and the Japanese Unit 751 during WWII to justify psychopathically sadistic human experiements on POWs.

Sentient beings do not want to be brutally experimented on. This self-selecting industry of sociopaths belongs in the 19th century.

In fact there are many counter examples. Thalidomide had no negative effects on non-human animals, but created notoriously deformed children in humans. Similary, I think it was paracetamol which when tested on some non-human animal is 100% lethal, and had they tested on those species then this common, essential medicine would never have progressed to the human trial stage. A classic case is the link between lung cancer and smoking. Millions of dollars of public money went to the big tobacco companies in the name of "cancer research". Dispite being able to induce lung cancer in dogs by restraining them and forcing the to chain smoke for hours on end, these were not the results they wanted. IIIRC, it took research with human volunteers before the scientific consensus that we have today came about because the "animal models" did not represent human physiology.

According to the pre-print, these researchers are based at "Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China" - a country with a terrible record of human rights violations and an even worse record when it comes to animal rights. Of 3,000 people surveyed in China, approximately 2,000 hadn't heard of the concept of "animal welfare". I'd be surprised if regulation on non-human animal experiements even existed in their jurisdiction.

The reason it is controversial is because people who perform experiments on non-human animals are supposed to have be able to justify the necessity of doing such experiments, and "I was curious" is just not good enough. I expect the reason the birth rates are down in these countries is sociological. There are already too many people, I don't think we need more. There are literally millions of children in the world who need adopting.