Experiments on Animals for medical research

[Vexen]

Anybody who does biology, the science that has saved billions of lives, knows that it is impossible to do certain biological experiments without animal models. Hopefully, we will be able to master the growth of human organs and avoid the use of some animal models.

 

The types of animals that we use depends on the experiment and the consciousness of the animal. For example, few people oppose engineering glowing mice but many would for glowing apes.

 

Also, we decide what is moral and our decisions change with time.

[Ten oz]

Anybody who does biology, the science that has saved billions of lives, knows that it is impossible to do certain biological experiments without animal models. Hopefully, we will be able to master the growth of human organs and avoid the use of some animal models.

 

The types of animals that we use depends on the experiment and the consciousness of the animal. For example, few people oppose engineering glowing mice but many would for glowing apes.

 

Also, we decide what is moral and our decisions change with time.

I am not entirely against animal testing. I just think that the government should make it expensive to do via fees. There are many different ways to problem solve. Industry prefers the less expensive ways. Make animal testing expensive and and industry will only do it when it is out of other options. It would also encourage different groups to share on research rather than each having to front the cost for their own.

[imatfaal]

I am not entirely against animal testing. I just think that the government should make it expensive to do via fees.

 

It is expensive.

 

 

There are many different ways to problem solve. Industry prefers the less expensive ways. Make animal testing expensive and and industry will only do it when it is out of other options...

 

Or it will decide (like in too many areas of medical research) that the potential gains are outweighed by the upfront expenditure. Testing and trialling is already fiendishly expensive - and getting permission for animal experimentation is a significant part of that; but adding a punitive level of cost would really hurt. Industry already avoids animal testing whenever it can - the process is difficult, expensive and time consuming; but in many cases it cannot be avoided. And it is just these cases where progress is most often needed

[hypervalent_iodine]

I am not entirely against animal testing. I just think that the government should make it expensive to do via fees. There are many different ways to problem solve. Industry prefers the less expensive ways. Make animal testing expensive and and industry will only do it when it is out of other options. It would also encourage different groups to share on research rather than each having to front the cost for their own.

 

The major issue I have with this is that it isn't industry that would suffer from it, it's academic labs whose budget is much, much smaller but whose research may rely on such testing. Getting ethics approval for animal testing is a very difficult and arduous process already (just to get my name on a list of approved researchers for a set of existing experiments would take me 2+ months after training), so I'm not sure how additional barriers would really help any.

[MonDie]

The major issue I have with this is that it isn't industry that would suffer from it, it's academic labs whose budget is much, much smaller but whose research may rely on such testing. Getting ethics approval for animal testing is a very difficult and arduous process already (just to get my name on a list of approved researchers for a set of existing experiments would take me 2+ months after training), so I'm not sure how additional barriers would really help any.

 

And should we really dissolve more of their budget if the research is for a good cause?

[Ten oz]

The major issue I have with this is that it isn't industry that would suffer from it, it's academic labs whose budget is much, much smaller but whose research may rely on such testing. Getting ethics approval for animal testing is a very difficult and arduous process already (just to get my name on a list of approved researchers for a set of existing experiments would take me 2+ months after training), so I'm not sure how additional barriers would really help any.

The government fees I mentioned, as with all government fees, can be waived or supplemented. I don't see any problem with making a lab wait months to start testing. Exemptions can be made for time sensitive cases. The emphasis for me is creating an atmosphere where other forms of testing become more desirable. Not blocking any specific group from access if truly needed.

[hypervalent_iodine]

They already wait months before testing. No one is saying otherwise and I don't think anyone is even saying that they shouldn't wait. As well, other forms of testing are more desirable, but they aren't always adequate. This is why we have animal testing at all.

 

What are you actually trying to suggest here?

[Ten oz]

Not all research is vital. For example the common good/health of humanity is not served by drug companies producing new drugs that help save or make huge profits. Prescription drugs are now the leading cause of drug deaths in the United States and prescription drug abuse if as bad or worse an epidemic as illicit drug abuse. These drug underwent animal testing and human trials before being approved to prescribe yet many serve no real benefit to society. They just help share holders.

I believe the system should be more discriminating. Unless there is a clear public benefit fees and long waiting periods should be applied to those looking to perform animal testing. The Government could waive barriers to research which serves a societal need. Of course the outcome of research can not be know in advance. Many discoveries are accidents. But the pharmaceutical industry has been 2 steps forward and a step back. Some might argue 2 forward 2 or more back. They produce an ever growing variety of pain killers for profit that are increasingly fed by recreational use. Animal testing should not support that and if it is going to companies should at least be unconvinced. The money from collected fees could be used to pay for research that does attempt to serve a societal need.

[hypervalent_iodine]

I would like to see some statistics on that, but in any case, it would be the abuse of prescription drugs rather than their intended use. That is an entirely separate issue.

 

I would also disagree with your claim that many do not serve a use in society. What are you basing that off? Chemotherapy agents have a benefit to society. The development of morphine analogs has a benefit to society.

 

Your problem here does not seem to be with animal testing but with Big Pharma, which is not the topic of discussion, so again I have to ask you what your point is? As has already bee said, the things you are suggesting are already enacted in some form and extending waits and costs won't make things better. A lot of Pharma companies already outsource animal testing and won't realistically be affected. The people who will be affected are academic researchers with already very limited budgets. Your proposition to move fees accrued into funds for more research is nice on its surface, but it's made entirely redundant by the fact that you are taking money away from research in the first place.

[Ten oz]

I would like to see some statistics on that, but in any case, it would be the abuse of prescription drugs rather than their intended use. That is an entirely separate issue.

 

I would also disagree with your claim that many do not serve a use in society. What are you basing that off? Chemotherapy agents have a benefit to society. The development of morphine analogs has a benefit to society.

 

Your problem here does not seem to be with animal testing but with Big Pharma, which is not the topic of discussion, so again I have to ask you what your point is? As has already bee said, the things you are suggesting are already enacted in some form and extending waits and costs won't make things better. A lot of Pharma companies already outsource animal testing and won't realistically be affected. The people who will be affected are academic researchers with already very limited budgets. Your proposition to move fees accrued into funds for more research is nice on its surface, but it's made entirely redundant by the fact that you are taking money away from research in the first place.

• Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2012. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle traffic crashes.1
• Drug overdose death rates have been rising steadily since 1992 with a 117% increase from 1999 to 2012 alone.1
• In 2012, 33,175 (79.9%) of the 41,502 drug overdose deaths in the United States were unintentional, 5,465 (13.2%) were of suicidal intent, 80 (0.2%) were homicides, and 2,782 (6.7%) were of undetermined intent.1
• In 2011, drug misuse and abuse caused about 2.5 million emergency department (ED) visits. Of these, more than 1.4 million ED visits were related to pharmaceuticals.2
• Between 2004 and 2005, an estimated 71,000 children (18 or younger) were seen in EDs each year because of medication overdose (excluding self-harm, abuse and recreational drug use).4
• Among children under age 6, pharmaceuticals account for about 40% of all exposures reported to poison centers.5
• In 2012, of the 41,502 drug overdose deaths in the United States, 22,114 (53%) were related to pharmaceuticals.6
• Of the 22,114 deaths relating to pharmaceutical overdose in 2012, 16,007 (72%) involved opioid analgesics (also called opioid pain relievers or prescription painkillers), and 6,524 (30%) involved benzodiazepines.6 (Some deaths include more than one type of drug.)
• In 2011, about 1.4 million ED visits involved the nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals. Among those ED visits, 501,207 visits were related to anti-anxiety and insomnia medications, and 420,040 visits were related to opioid analgesics.2
• Benzodiazepines are frequently found among people treated in EDs for misusing or abusing drugs.2 People who died of drug overdoses often had a combination of benzodiazepines and opioid analgesics in their bodies.6

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/overdose/facts.html

 

 

I was worried that my last post would seem like an attack on pharmaceutical companies. It was not. I tried to present an example of an industry that was doing animal testing where not all of that testing necessarily served the public's interest. Without question the pharmaceutical industry does important work that does serve the public's interest. My point was that ALL of it does not. Some of the animal testing they do is not necessary just as some of the drugs they create do more harm than good.

My view is not that animal testing should be illegal. I would just like to see the Government more actively work to discourage it. Animal testing should only be used when the tests are attempts serve the public good. and that public good shouldn't be profit.

[hypervalent_iodine]

Perhaps this is a useful time to define what you mean by not good, so we aren't talking past each other. Usefulness of a drug to society is more or less considered when animal experiments are put forward for review and approval (note that I am strictly talking about the pharmaceutical industry, not the cosmetic industry; I have very different opinions on cosmetic testing).

 

It is not really possible to predict whether a marketed drug will be subject to the serious abuse that results in those statistics and I don't think that it would be productive to prohibit animal testing based on those sorts of, 'what ifs.' Halting drug development because of the possibility of abuse would almost certainly stymie useful research. I don't think that potential for abuse unrelated to a drug's intended use should really be considered in drug development to the extent you seem to think it should. How addictive a drug is should be investigated in the same way that other potential side effects are (and I imagine it is), but this would usually be part of the investigation anyway and would probably require animal testing of some sort (though I'm not familiar with how addictiveness is tested).

 

Anyway, abuse should certainly be addressed, but in other ways and by other avenues. I mean, you can overdose on any drug. You can overdose on water. That's not the water's fault, though, and it's not the fault of the government faction supplying the water if it was found to be safe for normal use. The opioid pain killers that are mentioned are very useful tools for a large number of people. Many of them could be better and new things are always on the way, but they are all we have for now. Cancer sufferers, for example, would be in unbelievable amounts of (additional) pain were it not for drugs like morphine. Should we not have tested those drugs on animals and therefore not marketed them because some people chose to misuse them? Specifically what drugs are you talking about to lead you to this opinion?

[MonDie]

• Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2012. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle traffic crashes.1
• Drug overdose death rates have been rising steadily since 1992 with a 117% increase from 1999 to 2012 alone.1
• In 2012, 33,175 (79.9%) of the 41,502 drug overdose deaths in the United States were unintentional, 5,465 (13.2%) were of suicidal intent, 80 (0.2%) were homicides, and 2,782 (6.7%) were of undetermined intent.1
• In 2011, drug misuse and abuse caused about 2.5 million emergency department (ED) visits. Of these, more than 1.4 million ED visits were related to pharmaceuticals.2
• Between 2004 and 2005, an estimated 71,000 children (18 or younger) were seen in EDs each year because of medication overdose (excluding self-harm, abuse and recreational drug use).4
• Among children under age 6, pharmaceuticals account for about 40% of all exposures reported to poison centers.5
• In 2012, of the 41,502 drug overdose deaths in the United States, 22,114 (53%) were related to pharmaceuticals.6
• Of the 22,114 deaths relating to pharmaceutical overdose in 2012, 16,007 (72%) involved opioid analgesics (also called opioid pain relievers or prescription painkillers), and 6,524 (30%) involved benzodiazepines.6 (Some deaths include more than one type of drug.)
• In 2011, about 1.4 million ED visits involved the nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals. Among those ED visits, 501,207 visits were related to anti-anxiety and insomnia medications, and 420,040 visits were related to opioid analgesics.2
• Benzodiazepines are frequently found among people treated in EDs for misusing or abusing drugs.2 People who died of drug overdoses often had a combination of benzodiazepines and opioid analgesics in their bodies.6

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/overdose/facts.html

 

If I'm not tripping, their definition of "drugs" includes "illicit" drugs and/or any "compound used for [...] the feeling it causes".

[Ten oz]

@ hypervalent_iodine, I was not looking to belabor the big pharma angle. You had asked for stats so I provided them. I feel compelled to disagree that there is no way to predict which drugs. Pain killers and opiods have been the usual suspects. I also believe the government has a role to play. Sure a person can overdose on anything but when specific drugs are almost exclusively creating havoc to a specific society I believe the issue is beyond personal responsibility.

"The number of prescriptions for opioids (like hydrocodone and oxycodone products) have escalated from around 76 million in 1991 to nearly 207 million in 2013, with the United States their biggest consumer globally, accounting for almost 100 percent of the world total for hydrocodone (e.g., Vicodin) and 81 percent for oxycodone (e.g., Percocet).

This greater availability of opioid (and other) prescribed drugs has been accompanied by alarming increases in the negative consequences related to their abuse. For example, the estimated number of emergency department visits involving nonmedical use of opioid analgesics increased from 144,600 in 2004 to 305,900 in 2008 treatment admissions for primary abuse of opiates other than heroin increased from one percent of all admissions in 1997 to five percent in 2007; and overdose deaths due to prescription opioid pain relievers have more than tripled in the past 20 years, escalating to 16,651 deaths in the United States in 2010."

http://www.drugabuse.gov/about-nida/legislative-activities/testimony-to-congress/2014/americas-addiction-to-opioids-heroin-prescription-drug-abuse

 

 

This thread is not about prescription drug abuse. I do not want to steer it off topic. I am also not looking to rage against big pharma which does do a lot of good. So perhaps we can agree to disagree and I will post later on when I have something more pointedly animal research to post.

[CharonY]

 

This thread is not about prescription drug abuse. I do not want to steer it off topic. I am also not looking to rage against big pharma which does do a lot of good. So perhaps we can agree to disagree and I will post later on when I have something more pointedly animal research to post.

 

Sounds like a plan, I really do not see the connection between animal testing and drug use/abuse. Whether drugs serve a good for society depends on many factors, and sometimes the most useful ones are a byproduct of a different intention.

One could, as a whole, question whether the development of new drugs is beneficial, especially when the target the same condition. However, one should be aware that different people may react differently to a given drug, so to have diversity there can greatly benefit the individual. Moreover, many developments are aimed at reducing toxicity and other harmful effects.

[Arete]

Unless there is a clear public benefit fees and long waiting periods should be applied to those looking to perform animal testing.

 

Being in an ecology and evolutionary biology department, a huge percentage of our basic science research is done on animals, with no "clear" benefit to humans (.i.e, it's basic research - and has no direct applied outcome). E.g. My PhD research looked at speciation in geckos, as a result, I sampled a large number of them from wild populations. My wife's research looks at sexual selection in agamids, and as such she both samples wild populations and has captive populations for mating experiments. We also have a group who looks at behavioral ecology in fish, sexual selection in birds, etc, etc.

 

Basically, under the model you're proposing, none of this research would be done, or at least it would get a lot more costly and bureaucratic to obtain permits (it's already non- trivial to get animal ethics permission for animal research). I know the type of research you're thinking of is clinical trials involving animal models and not the observation of natural populations, but that idea already does permeate ethics boards and generates misunderstanding when we apply for permits.

 

I don't think the answer is to create more red tape in the way of scientists trying to do research. It's already tough on graduate student timelines that it takes months to get approvals to work on animals. I can't see any way that deliberately making that time longer and more costly would do anything but waste a lot more time and money. If anything improving the time/financial efficiency of the approval process would get the public more value per dollar spent by granting agencies on research.

[ZVBXRPL]

We should experiment on prisoners instead of animals. Prisoners are a bit like normal people, so they would give mrore accurate results anyway. Plenty of countries still have the death penalty too so if there was some lab accident, it wouldn't matter much. We could also extend the death penalty to include sexual crimes and violent crimes. Then you only have prisons full of people who are convictd of money crimes or petty crimes and who are capable and deserving of going through a rehab program.

You improve the justice system and save the animals all in one go.

[hypervalent_iodine]

We should experiment on prisoners instead of animals. Prisoners are a bit like normal people, so they would give mrore accurate results anyway. Plenty of countries still have the death penalty too so if there was some lab accident, it wouldn't matter much. We could also extend the death penalty to include sexual crimes and violent crimes. Then you only have prisons full of people who are convictd of money crimes or petty crimes and who are capable and deserving of going through a rehab program.

You improve the justice system and save the animals all in one go.

This has already been argued. It wasn't convincing then either.

 

 

I am neither entirely against human testing but I believe that it should be done on the guilty not the innocent. Also does being under someone/something give you mean they deserve to be abused? If there is a dog and its not bothering anyone does it seem right to randomly go beat it to death with a shovel? I do not agree with animal testing since I believe if you harm something that harm should be earned and that if you must harm an innocent it should be necessary not for fun. we also kill animals for food but that is not killing for the pleasure of killing. Its killing for food and its something that is necessary. Same with if a person is trying to kill you its ok to kill them in defense. I am saying that needless harm is dangerous and if we must harm it needs to be necessary harm. Not for the fun of it. they have also made a burger in a lab by growing muscle and cooking it but it was never a full living cow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/a-lab-grown-burger-gets-a-taste-test.html?_r=0

 

We can assume for the sake of the argument that any sentencing of a prisoner to be passed on for medical experiments would have to be equivalent to the death penalty, since there is every chance that some unforseen side-effect will cause individuals in a given experiment to die. These experiments can be lengthy and presumably, painful (studies may involve, for instance, inducing cancer in individuals), which I would think falls in the category of human rights violations. As well, our justice system is imperfect and you cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that every person sentenced to death is guilty of the crime that put them on death row (especially when considering some of the charges that put people on death row in certain countries). As a punitive measure, it has been shown that the death penalty is largely ineffective at reducing crime rates and I doubt that the threat of medical experiments would be any better in that regard. Finally, using a population of death row prisoners for medical experiments is hardly going to give you statistically valid results for most studies. Not only do you not solve any ethical dilemmas, you create a few new ones and you struggle to generate any decent data.

 

Yes killing animals or plants for food is done out of necessity. If we do not eat we die.

 

 

I do not see why you cannot extend this to the medical advancements that stem from animal testing (which encompasses most, if not all of the more modern ones from the past ~ 100 years). If we didn't develop chemotherapeutics, as an example, a lot of people that have otherwise survived their cancer would be dead. In a way, the animals we sacrificed to develop these drugs is a necessity and it will continue to be so until we can develop methods that are as robust and translatable to human models as the various animals we currently use are.

[ZVBXRPL]

This has already been argued. It wasn't convincing then either.

 

I have not read the whole thread.

I don't need to convince myself of my own opinions and thoughts and my intention is not to convince you or anyone else to have the same opinions and thoughts as me.

[Arete]

This has already been argued. It wasn't convincing then either.

 

Not to mention that many of the reasons for e.g. mouse models specifically are used - short generation times, existence of transgenic lines, ability to house many individuals for replication, cost, etc. would be discounted entirely if you used prisoners. In fact, you simply couldn't do a lot of medical research with humans as opposed to animals.

 

For e.g. a lot of immunological research is done on T and B cell knockout mice - i.e. mouse lines that have been genetically modified to not have functioning immune systems. If you wanted to recreate a human equivalent, you'd have to engineer a human embryo and raise it in a sterile environment. It could never be done using an already adult human, as a death row inmate would be. And that's just one example of how the idea is fatally flawed, without invoking any ethical concerns.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Arete

[hypervalent_iodine]

I have not read the whole thread.

I don't need to convince myself of my own opinions and thoughts and my intention is not to convince you or anyone else to have the same opinions and thoughts as me.

You should at least be willing to discuss your opinions, however, or else all you're really doing is soap boxing.

 

Not to mention that many of the reasons for e.g. mouse models specifically are used - short generation times, existence of transgenic lines, ability to house many individuals for replication, cost, etc. would be discounted entirely if you used prisoners. In fact, you simply couldn't do a lot of medical research with humans as opposed to animals.

 

QFT

[ZVBXRPL]

You should at least be willing to discuss your opinions, however, or else all you're really doing is soap boxing.

 

 

QFT

I am willing to discuss my opinions and thoughts if someone else wants to discuss them. Your reply to my post wasn't to start a discussion though.

[hypervalent_iodine]

 

It provided valid counterpoints to your post, as did Arete's. I'm not sure how that isn't starting a discussion?

[Graeme M]

I have browsed this thread in rather a cursory fashion and probably should have read it in more detail. However, the underlying question seems to be whether one can consider an animal to have sentience and rights similar to a human. In discussing this, most seem to consider automatically that the human mind is intrinsically 'better' than that of say a dog or a rat.

My question would be, why do you assume this to be so? What qualitative property do you assign to a human mind that gives it a moral superiority over other species?

It seems to me that a human is not the right character to make the assessment - after all, this is something akin to the examiner assessing his own work. The argument seems to be, "I am aware of myself, but cannot know what another animal knows of itself and therefore it must not know enough of itself to be my equal".

How can we judge the human mind to be 'superior'? That it has a subjective experience of itself? Our minds may make us more successful as a species in the broader environment, but what if this mind had arisen in a creature without hands? Say we were a form of dolphin? We could do no more than existing dolphins do, other than perhaps becoming better at surviving and reproducing.

Humans do this, but more besides. And that is not due intrinsically to our minds being superior, rather it is the combination of mind and manipulative limbs. So is it manipulative limbs that distinguish us and make us better? Perhaps we can be entirely handist about this?

My view would be, given that it is we ourselves making the assessment and that we have some notion of right or wrong, good and bad, better and worse, that there is lttle one can show of human behaviour that elevates us above other life.

If the evaluation is based purely on adaptive advantage, then clearly we as a species are more successful than most. But if we wish to invoke the qualitative properties of behaviour that we hold make us so wonderful, what are the benefits we have bestowed on the world? How have we improved it?

Or is improvement ultimately only a selfish matter? Is it that we can live longer, live better, enjoy life more, than other species that makes us better? That's a pretty weak argument in my view. As is the argument that it is fine to hurt other life purely for human gain.

The lion may be unable to choose not to eat the gazelle - at least, not for any great length of time - but equally he does not imprison gazelles and do terrible acts to them. He may also not realise or uderstand his relationship to the gazelle, or what his acts mean. But we have the capacity to do this it seems. We can empathise, we can feel another's pain, and we can observe the way that other creatures experience the world. And yet we choose to deliver suffering to other life in so many ways, just for us. This is an ethical and moral superiority?

[Ten oz]

@ Graeme M, the idea that animals is nature generally only kill out of necessity and that humans kill fand any more and often meaningless reasons has been made. Because this thread focus of scientific research involving animals and not hunting or other activities that result in the death of animals most posters are taking a cost vs gain view. I do not believe the human mind is being valued as greater but rather science and what can be gained is being valued as greater. A nebulous distinction perhaps but one that would probably still exist even if the expirements were being performed on humans.

[Graeme M]

Ten that's not really my point. Not being a philosopher or scientist I am probably not going to be able to express my view well enough but hey.

What I am driving at is that in assessing the value of an animals rights to not be experimented upon, we are relying on the judgement of those doing the experimenting. You cannot get an objective judgement in that case.

Many of the comments I did read seem to come at it from the angle that we cannot be confident that animals are sentient beings or that they have an awareness of their experience. Yet that clearly is a nonsense. That we can think in words doesn't mean that our mind is necessarily that different from an animal.

I am posing the question on what basis can we judge the human mind to be superior to that of any other species? Because we can manipulate our environment, we can do things that many other animals cannot? OK, maybe, but qualitatively, what are we doing that makes our actions necessarily better?

The cost versus gain argument is driven by human need. it is not evaluating the cost from an animal's perspective at all, and many comments seem to me to expose an underlying prejudice - that humans are better and deserve to be able to do such things. Why is the human experience to be given preference to others? Animal experiments are in the main to imporove human lives. But we are the ones making the call that human life is that important.

I am saying, on what basis?