5 ms·

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 ab

by 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.
  - pingec 10y ago
    > We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. No, not at all. Ethics are relative. Sure, this is the a generally accepted opinion in our society, but so was slavery.
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      This is honestly one of the weirdest statements I've ever heard. Are you actually comparing the impact of slavery to the use of animals for research purposes? Please tell me that I misunderstood that.
      - 10y ago
icantdrive55 10y ago
Yea--and there's a lot of Master's, and budding Ph.D's who put animals through hell just to get that spinish behind their name. My last goth girlfriend was one of them. She went to this little university in Missouri. Forget the name. She so wanted to be called a Docter. She spent a year picking up rodents(not just rats)--holding them in her right hand, and then smashing their heads in a granite slab. Me, while in bed, "Why couldn't they at least anesthetise the animals before smashing their heads?" Her, "Oh, it would mess with the toxicology." Me, "Let's not talk about it." She never finished her Masters. She moved to San Francisco, became goth, and partied. She racked up a huge amount of debt. She said there's so many wanna be researchers, and so many cruel experiments done by graduate students. She said they were repeating know experiments just to get that degree. She then told me about a orthopedic researcher who took a bunch of pigs, and put them in the back of a pickup. He attached a sheet of plywood over the bed. He then went four wheeling. He then documented the orthopedic injuries that these animals substained. I didn't want to talk about this, put their should be more oversight in all animals in "research". Especially, at the smaller colleges that are just taking in money, and producing degreed students. Right now there's colleges, even high schools, and community colleges that are using animals in research. Real research--fine. Research just to get a degree--not fine. She became very liberal once out of college, but she still told people she had a Ph.D in neurobiology. She so wanted to be that person,and have that pretentious title--she would flat out lie? And she told me, I'm the one that needed therapy? When she aged, the liberalness went away. Now--she's just angry.
3131s 10y ago
But none of that really justifies animal experimentation. > 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. I don't buy it. These ethics committees are starting with the presumption that it's ok to use animals in experiments to begin with. Have they outlawed vivisection yet? I've talked to a researcher at a large US state school who routinely sawed through monkey's skulls and installed removable, screw-on skull caps so that they could poke and prod at their brains more easily. I mean, I'm a hypocrite for saying that though. I still eat chicken. But I don't delude myself about it.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  If you don't think it's an effective system, propose an alternative.
  - PerfectElement 10y ago
    http://www.pcrm.org http://www.pcrm.org
  - 3131s 10y ago
    I'm not talking about whether it is effective or not. If you want a maximally effective system, do away with ethical considerations altogether.
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      That's exactly my point. The alternative is to either throw all ethical rules out of the window or to never experiment with any living being for any reason whatsoever. What we have right now strikes a good balance between the two, at least the way I see it.

by Cyph0n 10y ago

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.
- pingec 10y ago
  > We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. No, not at all. Ethics are relative. Sure, this is the a generally accepted opinion in our society, but so was slavery.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    This is honestly one of the weirdest statements I've ever heard. Are you actually comparing the impact of slavery to the use of animals for research purposes? Please tell me that I misunderstood that.
    - 10y ago

icantdrive55 10y ago

Yea--and there's a lot of Master's, and budding Ph.D's who put animals through hell just to get that spinish behind their name. My last goth girlfriend was one of them. She went to this little university in Missouri. Forget the name. She so wanted to be called a Docter. She spent a year picking up rodents(not just rats)--holding them in her right hand, and then smashing their heads in a granite slab. Me, while in bed, "Why couldn't they at least anesthetise the animals before smashing their heads?" Her, "Oh, it would mess with the toxicology." Me, "Let's not talk about it." She never finished her Masters. She moved to San Francisco, became goth, and partied. She racked up a huge amount of debt. She said there's so many wanna be researchers, and so many cruel experiments done by graduate students. She said they were repeating know experiments just to get that degree. She then told me about a orthopedic researcher who took a bunch of pigs, and put them in the back of a pickup. He attached a sheet of plywood over the bed. He then went four wheeling. He then documented the orthopedic injuries that these animals substained. I didn't want to talk about this, put their should be more oversight in all animals in "research". Especially, at the smaller colleges that are just taking in money, and producing degreed students. Right now there's colleges, even high schools, and community colleges that are using animals in research. Real research--fine. Research just to get a degree--not fine. She became very liberal once out of college, but she still told people she had a Ph.D in neurobiology. She so wanted to be that person,and have that pretentious title--she would flat out lie? And she told me, I'm the one that needed therapy? When she aged, the liberalness went away. Now--she's just angry.

3131s 10y ago

But none of that really justifies animal experimentation. > 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. I don't buy it. These ethics committees are starting with the presumption that it's ok to use animals in experiments to begin with. Have they outlawed vivisection yet? I've talked to a researcher at a large US state school who routinely sawed through monkey's skulls and installed removable, screw-on skull caps so that they could poke and prod at their brains more easily. I mean, I'm a hypocrite for saying that though. I still eat chicken. But I don't delude myself about it.

Cyph0n 10y ago
If you don't think it's an effective system, propose an alternative.
- PerfectElement 10y ago
  http://www.pcrm.org http://www.pcrm.org
- 3131s 10y ago
  I'm not talking about whether it is effective or not. If you want a maximally effective system, do away with ethical considerations altogether.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    That's exactly my point. The alternative is to either throw all ethical rules out of the window or to never experiment with any living being for any reason whatsoever. What we have right now strikes a good balance between the two, at least the way I see it.