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"For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne
by biofox 10y ago
"For more than a decade, neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine has been flying every few months from his lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne to another lab in Beijing, China, where he conducts research on monkeys with the aim of treating spinal-cord injuries.
The commute is exhausting — on occasion he has even flown to Beijing, done experiments, and returned the same night. But it is worth it, says Courtine, because working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States"
I personally know researchers who have to take similar measures to be able to do their research.
When we are happy as a society to slaughter billions of animals every year for food (usually keeping them in appalling conditions beforehand) I don't understand how we can justify the restrictions we put on scientists.
- tn13 10y agoA lot of people feel a moral distinction between a quick death to more primitive traditional needs of food v/s slower death for uncertain gains. It is some kind of cognitive dissonance I feel. A lot of Americans who are perfectly happy eating a cow make fun of Indians for referring to cow as holy and outrage at Chinese killing dogs for food. I personally think eastern world and more paganic religions like that of native Indians are perhaps more right to not see these issues as black and white based on fixed line but instead see our relationship with nature as much more flexible co-dependence. Like a mother who uses her own metabolism to feed her little child and the child who eventually tries to get rid of that dependence.
- drumttocs8 10y agoMany people would consider torture worse than murder, basically.
- Waterluvian 10y agoBecause it's creepy and weird so we will consider a quick slaughter more ethical than experimentation because bacon and steak is so delicious. That's my guess.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoI agree. Logically, it should be more acceptable to have animals as test subjects that can benefit all mankind vs being a tasty treat for an individual. But we all have are cognitive dissonances, without exception. Thats just a quirk of being human
- jobigoud 10y ago> we all have are cognitive dissonances To be honest I haven't found a bigger cognitive dissonance than the love animals / eat animals one.
- pinkrooftop 10y agoI think the dissonance is more pronounced in love animals / eat mistreated animals. Empathy developed presumably along with the enjoyment for taste of animal fats and protein
- comex 10y agoThat dissonance can be resolved relatively easily by throwing money at the problem and eating non-mistreated animals. Love/eat is a harder moral problem IMO because there is no acceptable workaround, at least today. Someday there will be one: we'll be able to buy synthetic meat that's truly equivalent to animal meat (maybe grown with animal stem cells), and eventually the harvesting of real animals will end. But that won't mark any kind of moral evolution, only a newfound ability to not have to make a choice.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoMost people "solve" it with love cute animals, eat animals I don't care about.
- rudolf0 10y agoThe real cognitive dissonance is testing on them or slaughtering them for food vs. pampering them and trying to save endangered species, etc. The testing is often worse since it may involve torture and/or mutilation.
- popol12 10y agoWe are much closer geneticaly to monkeys than to cows, I would'nt do experiments on something that has 99% genes in common with me.
- adrianN 10y agoChimpanzees are at ~98%, mice are at about 97% similarity [1]. Where do you draw the line? Genetic similarity is imho a poor measure. The capability of suffering is more difficult to assess, but more useful. I'm reasonably sure that the animals we eat can suffer sufficiently to make the way we raise and kill them problematic. [1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2352-just-2-5-of-dna-turns-mice-into-men/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2352-just-2-5-of-dna-...
- rudolf0 10y agoGenetic similarity is definitely a poor measure, but keep in mind many (including myself) consider testing on mice highly unethical as well.
- adrianN 10y agoEven fruit flies share ~60%, and I guess most people agree that insects are fair game.
- Something1234 10y agoGenetic similarity is bs measurement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbY122CSC5w
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y agoI would assume it's because monkeys are more intelligent than the animals we tend to eat; cows, chickens, sheep & pigs. Also, intentionally paralysing a creature, leaving it to live in that condition, and then performing experimental surgery/procedures on it is significantly different than slaughtering it. Whilst I appreciate the scientists mean well, and I do understand how this could benefit humanity; this sort of research still seems unethical to me, and at the very least makes me feel sick. As a software developer and reverse engineer, this feels like hacking anyway. It's not particularly scientific just to "capture and replay" data without much understanding of how it works.
- kakarot 10y agoSomeone else already debunked your intelligence argument, but I would like to add something. Think about how the medical field developed... for biological science you often are going to have to break a few eggs. It sucks... I really understand the motivations you have behind your feelings about hurting animals for human gain, but there isn't any "manual" for biology, hacking away is often the only way to test hypotheses.
- snowwrestler 10y agoTrying things and seeing what happens is the essence of science; the only way we have to try to figure things out. Scientists have to get replication of an effect before they can design further experiments to dig into its details. As to whether it's unethical--it sickens me too. It's horrifying but what if it gives us the key to solving spinal paralysis? It's a classic moral dilemma. I highly recommend this short story, which explores this sort of dilemma: http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.pdf http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.p...
- Benjamin_Dobell 10y agoScience starts with observation, not experimentation. Honestly, if this was software, I'd consider this sort of approach as nothing short of pathetic. When I first reverse engineered firmware flashing software for mobile phones, experimentation was the absolute last thing I did - and all that experimentation could do was damage my phone, not another living creature. Instead I recorded observations of software operating under normal use (USB traces) and identified patterns in this. Only once I'd spent a long time determining patterns and built a model did I decide it was safe to perform some experimentation. To be fair, biological systems are much more complicated than computer systems written by other humans. However, observation should always come first! This study seems crude to me.
- ekzy 10y agoI recommend this recent podcast episode about the controversial topic of animal testing http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/animal-testing.htm http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/animal-testing.ht...
- stinos 10y ago>working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States I'd argue in cases like these the European regulations are actually a good thing, mainly considering the animals' welfare: in China rules like minimum cage size are either a fraction of European standards or non-existing/not checked. Of course there's always the argument 'I keep my monkeys healthy otherwise they won't work well for the experiments' but if experiments must be done, wouldn't we rather have the animals housed in a spacious area with daylight vs in a cage of 2m^3 in a dark basement?
- mtw 10y ago"working with monkeys in China is less burdened by regulation than it is in Europe and the United States" It reminds of the skeptics about China achieving fusion for one minute, as well as China's new rocket capable of landing taikonauts on the moon. It seems to me China is doubling down on scientific research. Their methods or ethics might be frowned on the West, but it is clear from recent news that pace of scientific discovery is accelerating in China.
- lostlogin 10y agoThis doesn't bode well for political prisoners. There has been plenty of talk and evidence of forced organ harvesting in China, and experimentation could occur in this environment. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-carrying-out-millions-of-illegal-organ-transplants-annually-report-finds-a7107091.html
- crisnoble 10y agoRegulatory ethics questions aside, why wouldn't he just live in China?
- logfromblammo 10y agoProbably for the same reason that I don't sleep under my desk at my workplace. When I'm not working, I would rather be home. For some people, home is a place, and for others, home is people. Either way, if you can't move home to China, but you can move your workplace there, you will have to commute there at intervals.