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Why do people do such things or even talk about such stuff? This is so depressing that such experiments are conducted to just know the fact how long a rat can s

Why do people do such things or even talk about such stuff? This is so depressing that such experiments are conducted to just know the fact how long a rat can survive :(

markholmes 10y ago
No kidding. What a sad experiment, to deprive an animal of oxygen and see how long until it stops breathing.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Maybe you missed the part where they say that these animals naturally live in oxygen-deprived environment in their nests? They stop breathing because they evolved to do so in those situations. Would you say it's sad to freeze carp to see at what point they stop breathing, even though carps naturally do that every winter?
- nkrisc 10y ago
  What would be an alternative way to learn this that would be more acceptable to you?
Cyph0n 10y ago
The state of medicine today is built on top of similar experiments. Countless people -- yes, people, not just animals -- have died for us to discover so much about the human body and its inner workings. It's unfortunate that most people are either oblivious to this fact, or simply take the immense work going on behind the scenes for granted. Keep this in mind next time you visit the hospital ;) Performing this experiment could have far-reaching implications. Perhaps it ends up helping scientists understand whether or not such an adaptation could transfer to humans. Or maybe it ends up being crucial in helping us understand the function of a seemingly unrelated process in the human body. It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are extremely strict when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats. If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or publication.
- marricks 10y ago
  When you talk about people dying for science is it Marie Curie and the radiation poisoning, or Nazi's testing hypothermia? One is someone boldly (of her own volition) pushing the bounds of science, the other is an oppressive group performing horrendous experiments. Perhaps cancer patients on the verge of death opting for a potentially life extending drug? When humans test on humans (in modern societies where things haven't gone horribly awry), care is given as to whether it's safe for the individual and would help them. Consent is a big word you'd never hear in an animal study. Animal testing is weighed against what benefits "science" in some way and some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric which doesn't seem to account for much. Anecdotally, my girl friend is a neuroscientist and has heard about things going on in labs that would make your skin crawl. One study that came to mind is on rats defending their territory based on how much food they were given, led to rats basically ripping each-other apart on camera. We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    What I had in mind were the people who volunteered for experimental medical procedures. Transplants, blood transfusions, neurosurgery, skin grafts, etc. The techniques were only perfected through the suffering and death of a vast number of nameless people. > Animal testing is weighed against what benefits us in even the slightest way and is some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric. > We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small. That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. But exactly how much more valuable is it? Can we accurately quantify how many mice can die so one human can live? Does it depend on the animal and its intelligence, at least as we perceive it? The questions can go on and on with no end in sight. Now, I'm honestly not intimately familiar with what goes in the life sciences, particularly when it comes to experimenting on live subjects. Nonetheless, I am convinced that modern ethical standards are a good way to set universal limits to what can be done to animals in a laboratory setting, while also ensuring that we as humans benefit from the results. The alternatives would be either to delay the discovery of new procedures because we don't want to hurt animals, or to just experiment on humans directly. Neither of these sounds like a better option to me.

Why do people do such things or even talk about such stuff? This is so depressing that such experiments are conducted to just know the fact how long a rat can survive :(

markholmes 10y ago

No kidding. What a sad experiment, to deprive an animal of oxygen and see how long until it stops breathing.

gambiting 10y ago
Maybe you missed the part where they say that these animals naturally live in oxygen-deprived environment in their nests? They stop breathing because they evolved to do so in those situations. Would you say it's sad to freeze carp to see at what point they stop breathing, even though carps naturally do that every winter?
nkrisc 10y ago
What would be an alternative way to learn this that would be more acceptable to you?

Cyph0n 10y ago

The state of medicine today is built on top of similar experiments. Countless people -- yes, people, not just animals -- have died for us to discover so much about the human body and its inner workings. It's unfortunate that most people are either oblivious to this fact, or simply take the immense work going on behind the scenes for granted. Keep this in mind next time you visit the hospital ;) Performing this experiment could have far-reaching implications. Perhaps it ends up helping scientists understand whether or not such an adaptation could transfer to humans. Or maybe it ends up being crucial in helping us understand the function of a seemingly unrelated process in the human body. It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are extremely strict when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats. If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or publication.

marricks 10y ago
When you talk about people dying for science is it Marie Curie and the radiation poisoning, or Nazi's testing hypothermia? One is someone boldly (of her own volition) pushing the bounds of science, the other is an oppressive group performing horrendous experiments. Perhaps cancer patients on the verge of death opting for a potentially life extending drug? When humans test on humans (in modern societies where things haven't gone horribly awry), care is given as to whether it's safe for the individual and would help them. Consent is a big word you'd never hear in an animal study. Animal testing is weighed against what benefits "science" in some way and some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric which doesn't seem to account for much. Anecdotally, my girl friend is a neuroscientist and has heard about things going on in labs that would make your skin crawl. One study that came to mind is on rats defending their territory based on how much food they were given, led to rats basically ripping each-other apart on camera. We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  What I had in mind were the people who volunteered for experimental medical procedures. Transplants, blood transfusions, neurosurgery, skin grafts, etc. The techniques were only perfected through the suffering and death of a vast number of nameless people. > Animal testing is weighed against what benefits us in even the slightest way and is some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric. > We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small. That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. But exactly how much more valuable is it? Can we accurately quantify how many mice can die so one human can live? Does it depend on the animal and its intelligence, at least as we perceive it? The questions can go on and on with no end in sight. Now, I'm honestly not intimately familiar with what goes in the life sciences, particularly when it comes to experimenting on live subjects. Nonetheless, I am convinced that modern ethical standards are a good way to set universal limits to what can be done to animals in a laboratory setting, while also ensuring that we as humans benefit from the results. The alternatives would be either to delay the discovery of new procedures because we don't want to hurt animals, or to just experiment on humans directly. Neither of these sounds like a better option to me.