Rats for experiments

I'm not sure how I feel about this topic. Half of me understands why rats are used for so many experiments, because they do have a lot of similar qualities to us humans. But that's why they're special, they have similar illnesses to us, they like attention, etc, so in a way it makes sense to say "well if a few rats dying ends up with us finding the cure to cancer it's worth it", I can respect that, but are these tests honestly ever going to do something near that? We can't really know. With the technology scientists have, we can find out so much without even having to hurt another animal. Also, to my knowledge, the philidomide drug (not sure on the spelling) was tested on rats, and it worked fine on them, but when used on humans their offspring were born without some of their limbs, so although we do have similarities, we are not the same, the tests aren't defiant. If we tested possible cures on a rat, and they killed the rat, we would probably throw that cure away, but it COULD still work on a human. Anyway that's my thoughts on it.