5 ms·

Primates are a very valuable resource for medical research. Lots of research programes would highly benefit from higher primates. But researches have been drive

by nnq 11y ago

Primates are a very valuable resource for medical research. Lots of research programes would highly benefit from higher primates. But researches have been driven to be even afraid to ask for access to such a resource if they want grants accepted anywhere in the world! Gould luck asking for any higher primate for any neuroscience research if you want it approved! By artificially making them prohibitively expensive (by, for examples, demanding higher quality of animal care and all sorts of authorizations) and by adding tons of ethical and regulatory concerns, nobody even asks for them because the cost/risk ratio for any project makes it not worth it. It's "probably" X times cheaper to go to a third world country and cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans as they are cheap and in some places "unwanted" anyhow. Governments/army probably have access to prisons for their needs also. I can imagine when cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces come to market with killer side-effects because of improper prior testing. Oh wait... they'll probably come 50 years later anyhow because they're too risky/expensive to develop and test. This kinds of stupid policy moves could have even nastier species-level consequences: imagine having a superhuman-AI pop up before we have human-mind-uploading capabilities and wipe out the whole goddamn human race before we get to upload even one human-intelligence to the cloud :| ...simply because the mind uploading stuff and its precursor technologies would've had to be developed through iterative testing on chimpanzees because it was illegal or too expensive (or the army/gov was not interested in it strongly enough to have the experiments done directly on humans). Sad...

igravious 11y ago
Your comment is: _strident/emotive_ very valuable resource, even afraid to ask, prohibitively expensive, etc. _melodramatic_ "cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans" _fantastical_ "cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces" _hyperbolic_ "wipe out the whole goddamn human race" Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on.
- nnq 11y ago
  > Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on. don't care that much about what you call "planet Earth". yeah, someone has to care about this too (we also need to survive the present in order to steer the world towards our visions) but I choose to not be one of them. my little "vision of future" is cool enough for me. and when back on "planet Earth" I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it. actually, the only reason I cared about this piece of news is because its consequences have the possibility to steer the future to a point that might be different from my vision, and this is something I care about, and I instinctively attack anything threatening my vision event potentially ...especially when bored enough to enjoy some trolling. ...but I sincerely appreciate you comment :) mine was a crazy-ish rant, but yours actually has useful copy writing style tips that I might find useful here on "planet earth". cheers!
  - igravious 11y ago
    I think your vision will come about whether or not we experiment on chimps and their like. It might take ever so slightly longer to arrive at your vision, but in the mean time we cut down on what some of us believe to be the unnecessary suffering of non-human animals. But think about it this way. Maybe it'll force us to ramp up computer bio-simulation, and that might be very successful, and that might mean that it might take ever so slightly shorter to arrive at your vision! I want to comment on this assertion of yours, "I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it." What happens if someone else's vision is at variance with yours? Or they disagree with the means to achieve your vision? No amount of pulling will make people move in your direction if they really don't want to go there. How are you going to get to where you want to go without conflict? Is there a place for the element of compromise along your path? :) Thanks for saying you appreciate what I wrote! Keep on dreaming big!
- imgabe 11y ago
  While true, none of those address or refute the points raised in the comment.
maxxxxx 11y ago
Do you have any consideration for the animals are suffering from this research? Just curious.
xenophonf 11y ago
This is wrong: It's "probably" X times cheaper to go to a third world country and cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans as they are cheap and in some places "unwanted" anyhow. Governments/army probably have access to prisons for their needs also. I provide network engineering/support for biomedical research in low- to middle-income countries, and I can tell you right now all of the controls that apply to human research ${here} also apply to human research ${over there}. You can't just round up a bunch of undesirables, perform a bunch of tests on them, and publish it as science. Any human studies that do not provide adequate human subject protection would not be allowed to be used in any kind of regulated clinical trial, and no regulatory authority or reputable scientific forum would accept as valid such a study's conclusions. To give some examples of the relevant regulatory frameworks: http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/RunningClinicalTrials/default.htm http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/RunningClin... http://www.niaid.nih.gov/labsandresources/resources/dmidclinrsrch/Pages/gcphsp.aspx http://www.niaid.nih.gov/labsandresources/resources/dmidclin... I am less familiar with medical research in the military, but I did find this: https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-19.pdf https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethics... These implement internationally agreed upon standards for good clinical practice: http://ichgcp.net/ http://ichgcp.net/

by nnq 11y ago

igravious 11y ago

Your comment is: _strident/emotive_ very valuable resource, even afraid to ask, prohibitively expensive, etc. _melodramatic_ "cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans" _fantastical_ "cool and useful stuff like implantable high-res-and-bandwidth brain-computer-interfaces" _hyperbolic_ "wipe out the whole goddamn human race" Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on.

nnq 11y ago
> Meanwhile back on planet Earth some higher primates in one corner of the world get to not be experimented on. don't care that much about what you call "planet Earth". yeah, someone has to care about this too (we also need to survive the present in order to steer the world towards our visions) but I choose to not be one of them. my little "vision of future" is cool enough for me. and when back on "planet Earth" I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it. actually, the only reason I cared about this piece of news is because its consequences have the possibility to steer the future to a point that might be different from my vision, and this is something I care about, and I instinctively attack anything threatening my vision event potentially ...especially when bored enough to enjoy some trolling. ...but I sincerely appreciate you comment :) mine was a crazy-ish rant, but yours actually has useful copy writing style tips that I might find useful here on "planet earth". cheers!
- igravious 11y ago
  I think your vision will come about whether or not we experiment on chimps and their like. It might take ever so slightly longer to arrive at your vision, but in the mean time we cut down on what some of us believe to be the unnecessary suffering of non-human animals. But think about it this way. Maybe it'll force us to ramp up computer bio-simulation, and that might be very successful, and that might mean that it might take ever so slightly shorter to arrive at your vision! I want to comment on this assertion of yours, "I strive to pull people and things as strong as possible towards my vision, and hopefully one day the future will get close enough to it, and at least my grandchildren will enjoy some of it." What happens if someone else's vision is at variance with yours? Or they disagree with the means to achieve your vision? No amount of pulling will make people move in your direction if they really don't want to go there. How are you going to get to where you want to go without conflict? Is there a place for the element of compromise along your path? :) Thanks for saying you appreciate what I wrote! Keep on dreaming big!
imgabe 11y ago
While true, none of those address or refute the points raised in the comment.

maxxxxx 11y ago

Do you have any consideration for the animals are suffering from this research? Just curious.

xenophonf 11y ago

This is wrong: It's "probably" X times cheaper to go to a third world country and cladestinely test any crucial biotech stuff directly on humans as they are cheap and in some places "unwanted" anyhow. Governments/army probably have access to prisons for their needs also. I provide network engineering/support for biomedical research in low- to middle-income countries, and I can tell you right now all of the controls that apply to human research ${here} also apply to human research ${over there}. You can't just round up a bunch of undesirables, perform a bunch of tests on them, and publish it as science. Any human studies that do not provide adequate human subject protection would not be allowed to be used in any kind of regulated clinical trial, and no regulatory authority or reputable scientific forum would accept as valid such a study's conclusions. To give some examples of the relevant regulatory frameworks: http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/RunningClinicalTrials/default.htm http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/RunningClin... http://www.niaid.nih.gov/labsandresources/resources/dmidclinrsrch/Pages/gcphsp.aspx http://www.niaid.nih.gov/labsandresources/resources/dmidclin... I am less familiar with medical research in the military, but I did find this: https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethicsVol2/Ethics-ch-19.pdf https://ke.army.mil/bordeninstitute/published_volumes/ethics... These implement internationally agreed upon standards for good clinical practice: http://ichgcp.net/ http://ichgcp.net/