Animal Testing - Right or Wrong?

[Sayonara]

That would imply an awful long period of time for eating that plant. My example was metaphoric. It was meant to illustrate the action of eating less[/i'] meat.

I'm not sure which plant you mean. Afaik, vitamin B12 can only come from various animal sources. Vegetarians taking multivitamins or "natural" supplements as a means of replacing the shortfall are eating ground-up pig livers (or whatever they make it from). I am aware that there is a microbial product on the market, but I recall reading that the vitamin they produce is optically inverted.

 

Eating less meat is one way to go if society wants to reduce animal suffering (in agriculture anyway), but it will only work large scale. One person here or there isn't going to make much difference, unfortunately.

 

 

Hehe, true. It would look better with "unsure about whether someone can suffer", obviously. I was, of course, referring to mental pain, but I see that it was wrong put in the actual paragraph. Sorry about that.

The discussion on consciousness in animals that took place before you joined the thread may prove useful (although, at best, it will always be "inconclusive").

 

 

I see. In that case I neither have any feasible answer.

Nobody has been able to supply one yet. We'll see what happens I guess.

 

 

I don't find it unethical to have "enough", but to have "too much", in the sense of "more than needed", as this would harm others because it would deprive them of certain vital resources, leading to assymetric distribution.

But what I'm saying that it's totally subjective for you to decide how much is too much.

 

 

Again, the point was to show that even though humans are said to have consciousness, it might not be achievable to directly observe it for an outsider.

Likely true, but that's not really related to this discussion other than to point out that the same could hold true for livestock, which we already accept as being a possibility.

 

 

Morally, we shouldn't value one life over another, which implies that animal testing is wrong. Besides, not one rabbit is put through agony for saving one human. Being as inaccurate as they are, animal test require the pain of a greater number of individuals than the number of individuals that they save.

I'm sure some experiments are badly designed, leading to inaccuracy and unnecessary suffering. But I'm also certain many of them (if not most) take place under strictly controlled conditions.

Even falling back to the most basic reasoning, it's not efficient or helpful to conduct experiments on subjects that keep plopping down dead due to your crappy methods.

 

 

I see. I though it was to illustrate how cows have behaviour rather than consciousness.

It was more to highlight the role of reductionism in any given approach to this problem. Cows may have consciousness, but we have no evidence for it, and there is no reason to assume that behaviour will automatically lead to consciousness, or that it has done so in cows.

 

 

Okay, but we know there is a possibility for non-human animals to have consciousness, ergo feel mental distress. Therefore, we should base our actions on operating in accordance with this - i.e. where there is a possibility for discomfort, we should not carry out the operation - until proven wrong.

It's not that simple though. Companies exist to make a profit, and they aren't going to do that if their product killed the first round of human testers, maimed the second round, and turned out okay in the third.

 

 

What makes you think it would be illegal?

This:

Before the drugs even come close to the human testing, they must pass through animal testing and be deemed 'safe' for human trials through a VERY strict set of guidelines. The pharmaceutical companies don't just come up with a random mix of chemicals and then start injecting them into humans. That would be illegal.

[In My Memory]

Mokele,

 

Here's a tip: Do you know where rights come from? They don't come from any mythical god or any such thing. They come from *force*, from *power*. The only people that truly have any rights are those able and willing to rise up and fight for those rights. Those that cannot and or will not are merely living on the graces of the strong.

Oh my!

 

Sorry, but that's how nature works, including humans. "Morals" are something we talk about to make ourselves feel good about and justify our instinctive reactions.

A quick recap of what you've just said: first rights come from ability to dominate others without resistence, but then morals are rationalizations for our instincts.

 

I dont know if you've noticed the contradiction, but morality is implicitly relevant to whether something has rights (i.e. if it is immoral to cause gratutious suffering, then no person has a right to cause things to suffer, and all things have a negative right not to suffer). At least one of your statements is false.

 

Here is a little information you might find useful:

 

Power isnt equivelant to rights in the way you think it is. Power-rights are defined as "A has a power-right to x with regard to B, if A may render B liable to some status connected with x (a policeman obtains a power-right to enter my home, when he gets a warrant)" (Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). These types of rights are most specifically related to social contracts and legal rights.

 

The word "rights" is wide and varied, having implications from individual rights, moral rights, legal rights, societal rights, civil rights, contractarian obligations, moral duties, etc. I could probably give a lecture all about the nature of rights, but at the moment I have neither the time nor the will to really explain the foundations of morality and the nature of rights - a topic with no shortage of literature available -, I'll limit what I have to say to simply "your concept of rights is simply wrong".

[Mokele]

I don't believe it's a worthy life for anyone with a somewhat evolved nervous systems to function as a machine, genetically produced or not.

 

Those are your beliefs. My beliefs are different. To each their own. Nobody is asking you to conform to my morals, so why should you ask me to conform to yours?

 

Yes, but I am quite sure negligence often occurs.

 

AFAIK, there have been a total of 3 cases in the last 20 years, and this is a *huge* university, with a very large attached medical school. Most of the citations are for BS beurocratic nonsense.

 

Dead animals can be used for that, unless locomotion is desired.

 

Or metabolism, or any form of behavior. Dead animals *are* used when they can be. That's why most places have such huge stocks of animals in jars. But they cannot be used for all things.

 

I didn't say that you do. I said "a lot of them" do.

 

Back up your claim. Show me a statistical study that shows over 50% of scientists do animal-studies (and put themselves through the utter *hell* of IACUC) just because they feel like it.

 

Until you produce such a source, I will dismiss your claim as exactly what it truly is: an unsubstantiated waste of space.

 

Alright, but for what purpose do you perform these studies? And how do they differ from examining humans?

 

Humans have legs.

Humans do not have 220 body vertebrae.

Humans do not have axial muscles that (with tendon) span 30 vertebrae.

Humans cannot coil themselves 360 degrees 7 times over without discomfort.

 

The purpose of the studies to help a robotics company, which is under contract from DARPA, produce a robot snake for infiltration purposes. However, the data is of more general use in helping to understand the biomechanics of multi-jointed systems which have muscles spanning variable numbers of joints.

 

Why would I even do anything with humans? They're boring. Snakes, on the other hand, are much more interesting.

 

Not *every* major advance in science involved animal testing.

 

Of course, but many have.

 

I know that is how nature (in your definition) works, and that it would seem logically and evolutionary correct to take advantage of the other species so that our species were spread everywhere. But say we manage to spread everywhere and "take over the world (universe)". Then what? I simply don't see much point in doing certain things only because they are by most people labelled "natural". I believe we have obtained intelligence enough to reach for other goals.

But, I don't want this thread to evlove into a debate on personal beliefs and philosophy.

 

How can it *not*? Everything here is about personal beliefs and philosophies. There's no emprical basis for claiming something is moral or ethical. You cannot build an instrument to detect and quantify the morality of actions.

 

It's *all* beliefs. The only empirical facts are the position we are in. What we *should* do is nothing but beliefs.

 

All I ask is not to have others beliefs imposed on me for the cause of "morality".

 

Whether species are parasites, predators or intellectuals, it is their way of living and surviving.

 

And this is our way of living and surviving. How is it any different?

 

Ok, so we may hurt or kill animals to help ourselves survive. So do tapeworms. So do lions. Death and suffering are part of life. You kill other things in order to live. Thems the breaks.

 

Sure, we have "intelligence" but what does that make us beyond a smarter predator?

 

A quick recap of what you've just said: first rights come from ability to dominate others without resistence, but then morals are rationalizations for our instincts.

 

I dont know if you've noticed the contradiction, but morality is implicitly relevant to whether something has rights (i.e. if it is immoral to cause gratutious suffering, then no person has a right to cause things to suffer, and all things have a negative right not to suffer). At least one of your statements is false.

 

Neither is contradictory. "Rights" and "morals" are illusions, nothing more. We are just another animal; a big, bald ape, acting primarily on instincts and primal drives. Those with power have the freedom to do what they want (the "right" if you will) simply because nobody can stop them. Any limits on their powers are self-imposed (likely for social reasons), and any rights given to others are similarly given merely on the "good will" of the strong.

 

Morality is nothing more than our attempts to rationalize the way things are, or to rationalize our views of the way things should be (views which are driven by deeper motives in reality).

 

So, you have not shown even remotely where I contradict myself. I contradict *your* view of morality and rights, but since I have dismissed both of these as fictions, there is no internal contradiction in my own views.

 

Seriously, if morals and rights were some real, effective part of the universe, why can those rights be violated and morals disregarded? All I see is self-imposed limits of behavior based on purely abstract rules.

 

The word "rights" is wide and varied, having implications from individual rights, moral rights, legal rights, societal rights, civil rights, contractarian obligations, moral duties, etc.

 

And all are equally fictitious, as described above.

 

I'll limit what I have to say to simply "your concept of rights is simply wrong".

 

I can say the exact same thing, and you know what? I have just as much basis. It's all a bunch of philosophical abstraction. All I have done is point that out.

 

Nothing stops me from killing, except society and the social acceptance of certain rights. Nothing stops me from doing anything else to violate anyone's 'rights', except society. Clearly, then, rights are nothing but a product of society. The fact that different societies have different concepts of rights and accord different ones is evidence of this; if there was some sort of true, underlying code, then why is that code not universal across societies.

 

If something does not exist, except in the form of nearly-arbitrary rules imposed by a society, I feel fully justified in calling it a figment of society.

 

Mokele

[albertlee]

God, we can write a book out of this thread

 

Any way, I am confused by you guys talking....

 

Some of you said that animal testing indeed saves millions of lives, but on the contary, some said that it isn't accurate enough, because they have different physiology......

 

So, how can an inaccurate test on for eg, medicine save millions of lives????

 

 

Secondly, a topic like cloning, why do we examine this unsophisticated-still technology on animals first instead of human??? if it is not going to be accurate, why do we continue, which could be very unprdoctive??

 

Albert

[albertlee]

Any body can help on my previous post???

[Sayonara]

Few people log in more than once a day. Be patient.

[albertlee]

And by the way, are we part of theory of evolution when we are actually exploiting animals to strengthen our species??ie, the stronger one survive, and the weaker one perish??

 

Can the theory of evolution explain something about animal testing???

 

thx, oh, and by the way, plz answer my previous post, thx

 

Albert

[jdurg]

The FDA is INCREDIBLY active in the drug development/discovery process. I work more on the Phase II trials with human beings so I don't get to work with the animal data at all, really, but all the SOPs and training I've been through shows that before the drug even gets to the animal testing phase, it has to go through numerous in-vitro tests to make sure that it will be even remotely effective. So it's not like they throw something together and shove it down the gullet of a chimpanzee. They create the drug, figure out its structure, look to see if any analogues of it exist, see what those other similar structures have done, etc. etc. The animal testing is done only after all of those tests are passed. Even if it passes the animal testing, if it didn't really provide any benefits or worthwhile results, it may not even get to the human trials. If you do a study and it doesn't work out on animals, you just start over. If you do the trial and it has bad effects on humans, then you have a bunch of legal problems which can results in bad things for the company which can result in layoffs and other 'problems' for employees of that company.

 

With animal testing, you only hear about the 'bad things' in relation to animal testing. you never, and I mean NEVER, hear the good stories about it. So if you're only hearing the dozen or so 'bad events' and not hearing about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 'good stories', you're going to get a biased opinion of it.

 

For me, I don't see any benefit in testing cosmetics on a group of animals. Whop-dee-doo. The lipstick worked on the chimp. Now that ugly old wench can look like a dirtier whore at the expense of dozens of animals. I don't believe in that. Then again, I also don't see how 'new' chemicals can be discovered for cosmetic use. That's an area that I don't think should be receiving any money. Now if someone came up to me and said that they have a potential cure for Type I diabetes, but a dozen animals would have to die for the cure to be found, I'd grab a gun and ask which dozen animals I have to slaughter. If there is a drug/compound that can extend my life and make my quality of life better, damned straight I could care less about animal test subjects. I'm a human being, therefore I am more important to myself than some random animals are. If you don't agree with me, fine, I don't expect everyone to. That's what makes us different and human beings.

[kotake]

I'm not sure which plant you mean. Afaik, vitamin B12 can only come from various animal sources. Vegetarians taking multivitamins or "natural" supplements as a means of replacing the shortfall are eating ground-up pig livers (or whatever they make it from). I am aware that there is a microbial product on the market, but I recall reading that the vitamin they produce is optically inverted.

The Vegan Society gives out this information:

Vitamin B12, whether in supplements, fortified foods, or animal products, comes from micro-organisms.[...']In choosing to use fortified foods or B12 supplements, vegans are taking their B12 from the same source as every other animal on the planet - micro-organisms - without causing suffering to any sentient being or causing environmental damage.

Eating less meat is one way to go if society wants to reduce animal suffering (in agriculture anyway), but it will only work large scale. One person here or there isn't going to make much difference, unfortunately.

I have heard this argument countless times.

Of course it will only work in a large scale! I keep thinking, if all the countless people saying so did in fact eat less meat, then it would make quite a big difference, in total.

 

Imagine if a person didn't vote during elections because he felt that his single vote didn't have much to say. Certainly one single unit of vote cannot change much. Now imagine if all the voters thought so. Many small units put together make up the "large scale".

 

To change the world one must start somewhere. It cannot all be changed over night. A good point to start is with one self.

 

But what I'm saying that it's totally subjective for you to decide how much is too much.

Sure is. I could keep expressing my definitions of "too much", but then again, much of what we are discussing is subjective. Unless we manage to stay entirely objective as some of you admirably manage to, it is, as Mokele said, about our personal beliefs.

 

It's not that simple though. Companies exist to make a profit, and they aren't going to do that if their product killed the first round of human testers, maimed the second round, and turned out okay in the third.

Yes, well that is of course an ethical conflict.

 

 

 

Those are your beliefs. My beliefs are different. To each their own. Nobody is asking you to conform to my morals, so why should you ask me to conform to yours?

I cannot change your beliefs. I am merely expressing my own.

 

AFAIK, there have been a total of 3 cases in the last 20 years, and this is a *huge* university, with a very large attached medical school. Most of the citations are for BS beurocratic nonsense.

I don't know specifically about your university, but there are many cases all around. On this page you can find a collection of incidents at various places. It holds the introduction:

While vivisectionists and pro-vivisectionists repeatedly claim that (i)all animal experimentation is necessary, (ii)animal suffering is kept to a minimum, and (iii)Government inspectors ensure that vivisectors comply with legislation and guidelines which exist for the protection of laboratory animals, such claims are shown to be untrue due to those undercover investigations and subsequent exposures of laboratories which take place.

 

There is the somewhat obvious point, invariably overlooked, that it is difficult to envisage how any individual, willing to use and kill animals in the manner described in other parts of this website, will actually be capable of behaving towards an animal as modern ethical standards demand. Indeed, the very idea that companies who use animals as nothing more than laboratory tools will also behave towards them in a responsible and responsive manner is an obvious self-contradiction. In sum, how is it possible that someone who makes a living from poisoning, burning, electrocuting and/or killing animals will nonetheless be concerned about their well-being and welfare? Such a suggestion is obviously wholly absurd.

 

Although vivisection laboratories continually increase their security to ensure the outside world is not allowed any idea of what occurs beyond the security cameras, the barbed wire and the locked doors, the fact remains that undercover investigations do take place and reveal the horrors inside as the following examples reveal.

 

Back up your claim. Show me a statistical study that shows over 50% of scientists do animal-studies (and put themselves through the utter *hell* of IACUC) just because they feel like it.

 

Until you produce such a source' date=' I will dismiss your claim as exactly what it truly is: an unsubstantiated waste of space.[/quote']I didn't say that most vivisectors do that, but "a lot", which doesn't necessarily mean avobe 50 %. As for sources, I suggest you visit the site linked to above.

 

How can it *not*? Everything here is about personal beliefs and philosophies. There's no emprical basis for claiming something is moral or ethical. You cannot build an instrument to detect and quantify the morality of actions.

 

It's *all* beliefs. The only empirical facts are the position we are in. What we *should* do is nothing but beliefs.

I (almost) agree to that.

 

All I ask is not to have others beliefs imposed on me for the cause of "morality".

Again' date=' most of us here are expressing our own beliefs. It is as you said, we all have our own perception of morality, and in times it might lead to conflicts. But imagine that someone's beliefs invovle the act of persuading others to their own, because they see it as the only right thing to do. That being part of their belief.

 

And this is our way of living and surviving. How is it any different?

 

Ok, so we may hurt or kill animals to help ourselves survive. So do tapeworms. So do lions. Death and suffering are part of life. You kill other things in order to live. Thems the breaks.

 

Sure, we have "intelligence" but what does that make us beyond a smarter predator?

As we have no empirical facts for that (meaning of life etc), it once again comes down to beliefs.

 

But as you said, it is the society that forms our morals. Then I may claim that it is a flaw in society, that it holds animal testing as morally right, whereas it holds the killing of a human as morally wrong.

 

 

If some of my answers in this post are found dissatisfactory by being incomplete, imperfect or inconsistent, it might be caused by the fact that it's late and I am very tired.

[albertlee]

Am I really that "insignificant" ?!

[atinymonkey]

I'm sorry, I'm not really sure what your questions are.

[albertlee]

Questions from my post:

 

1.

Some of you said that animal testing indeed saves millions of lives' date=' but on the contary, some said that it isn't accurate enough, because they have different physiology......

 

So, how can an inaccurate test on for eg, medicine save millions of lives????

 

 

Secondly, a topic like cloning, why do we examine this unsophisticated-still technology on animals first instead of human??? if it is not going to be accurate, why do we continue, which could be very unprdoctive??[/quote']

 

are we part of theory of evolution when we are actually exploiting animals to strengthen our species??ie' date=' the stronger one survive, and the weaker one perish??

 

Can the theory of evolution explain something about animal testing???[/quote']

 

Does that make it clear?

 

Albert

[albertlee]

In addition to that, I would like to know two things:

 

1) Do scientists still test medicines/drugs on animals??? what is the extent of the value of the result?? How do we know it is accurate???

 

2) If we don't test drugs/medicines/cosmetics on animals, how do scientists test them?

 

Albert

[kotake]

albertlee,

 

Yes, medicines and drugs are still being tested on animals today.

 

Animal tests are not accurate, yet they may happen to give drug developers a general idea of how a new drug interacts with organisms, and sometimes this can lead to the development of a drug which indeed saves many human lives. But it is then looked apart from the lives wasted under the tests. If a medicine is meant for humans, yet is being tested on non-humans, it requires the painful involvement of a bigger number non-humans than it would if it were tested directly on humans, obviously, in order to increase the accuracy.

 

But, of course, a given test is accurate for one particular species when performed on that species. The inaccuracy lies within the generalising of the results onto humans. For instance, if vivisectors find that a drug kills 3 out of 5 chimpanzees two hours after dosage, it does not necessarily mean that the same will apply to humans.

 

One of the reasons drugs and cosmetics are being tested on animals is because a number of people believes that humans can experience suffering in contrast to, or to a bigger extension than, other non-human animals.

There are many reasons. Several of them have already been expressed in this thread.

[malagen]

animal testing,huh??

 

i think it's barbaric(do i spell it right)...

why don't they just simulate those dangerous chemicals with computers(it won't b the same, huh?)

[Aardvark]

why don't they just simulate those dangerous chemicals with computers(it won't b the same' date=' huh?)[/quote']

 

When and if computers are created that are powerful enough to map all chemical reactions in the human body then that would be a good idea.

 

But i think we are going to be waiting for quite a few years before thats a possibility.

[Guest animal lover]

why the hell do we use animals why can't we pay humans to test the stuff animal testing is wrong if it's for make up and other sh&t like that but if it's 4 a medicine that could save lives it's not AS bad but still wrong these animals are forced to suffer for make up and deodrant wat the hell is up wit dat

 

 

written by an enraged 11 (12 in august) year old boy

[Dak]

in contries that have the death penalty, eletrocution seems a bit wasteful... could we use death row criminals for human trials? (in the most humane way possible, of course)

 

im against animal testing, but only very quietly, cos i know that if i had cancer id accept any treatments offered even knowing that they were tested on animals.

 

animal lover (tee hee) - the reason that we test on animals before humans is incase the treatment proves fatal. its more acceptable to kill an animal than a human. harsh, but there you go.

 

it is apparently a legal requirement to investigate the possibilities of non-animal experimental alternatives before testing on animals, and lots of research is being performed to find alternate methods, such as cloned animal-cell cultures, plants, lesser-animals such as insects etc. so please dont think that scientists are given to wanton and casual mass-slaughter of the cute and fluffy. but i do agree that their use in testing, for eg, deoderant is pretty unjustifiable.

why don't they just simulate those dangerous chemicals with computers(it won't b the same' date=' huh?)[/quote'']When and if computers are created that are powerful enough to map all chemical reactions in the human body then that would be a good idea.

and every single chemical reaction is known and fully understood so that it can be input into the simulation. having said that, computers are already used to predict the interactions between molecules (eg drug and cell-surface receptor) if the molecules involved have had their 3D structure mapped.

[Sayonara]

why the hell do we use animals why can't we pay humans to test the stuff animal testing is wrong if it's for make up and other sh&t like that but if it's 4 a medicine that could save lives it's not AS bad but still wrong these animals are forced to suffer for make up and deodrant wat the hell is up wit dat

written by an enraged 11 (12 in august) year old boy

Perhaps if you read the thread you might find some answers to those questions are already here, on account of that being the topic of discussion.

[jdurg]

The computational power needed to simulate a full human body is way out of reach at this moment in time. Remember, if you are looking at a drug designed to help out a liver problem, you need to also make sure that drug doesn't have any adverse effects on the nervous system, digestive system, reproductive system, cardiovascular system, etc. etc. The majority of drug testing is actually performed on human subjects. That's because, as has been stated numerous times in this thread, you can only gather so much information from animal subjects that are applicable to human subjects. The important things you can find out is whether the drugs are immediately toxic or not. If you give a drug to an animal test subject and it dies shortly after ingesting the drug, then you have a pretty good idea that it will be toxic to humans.

 

Thankfully, the instances of that occuring is pretty slim as before a drug is even attempted to be tested on animal subjects the chemical structure of the drug is conclusively determined and it is compared to known drugs and substances. The use of computers and the knowledge about the properties of chemical substances that we have today has cut back dramatically on the 'cruelness' factor associated with drug testing.

[Sayonara]

It's not even a matter of mere computation - we simply lack the required knowledge.

[Kleptin]

I have no doubt that it was written by a 12 year old boy. What the...did he seriously mean that we should fetch actual humans to test potentially deadly drugs instead of mice that were BRED in a LABORATORY? 1 human life for 1 bred mouse's life. seem like a fair trade?

[crazybean]

haha as if he says 12 in august thats sooo funny its like i'm 11 and three quarters. oh the hilariousness

[Commie_Pinko]

we should not only test on other animals. We should test on humans who are the mental equivalent, or roughly so, of animals we do tests on. Perhaps the extremely mentally retarded infants, for example. However, if this negatively affected the tests results in some way, then obviously this is a poor choice. If not, it really doesn't matter.

[Mokele]

I propose we test drugs on creationists. They're very similar to humans, but lack all higher brain functions, including the ability to feel pain. I kick them just to watch them cry.

 

Mokele