8 ms·

From what I heard, the pig lived a relativity good life. It was well cared for by the large animal veterinary school on campus. Had more space and better food t

by dexwiz 5y ago

From what I heard, the pig lived a relativity good life. It was well cared for by the large animal veterinary school on campus. Had more space and better food than any factory raised pig. All experiments passed an ethics review. The pig was anesthetized before any procedure. The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. Modern medicine would not be possible without animal trials. Lab-on-a-chips may reduce the need in the future, but animals will still be required for device testing that needs an entire structure, not just a few cells. Different people may weigh the ethical dilemma differently, but when it's your loved dying due a heart defect I am willing to bet you will still choose a treatment tested on animals.

tcgv 5y ago
Thanks for your clarification. It's good to read that the pig was well cared and experiments passed ethics reviews. To be fair your original comment was lacking this information, hence when I first read it felt (unintentionally as we can see now) a bit cold-hearted to me as well.
- nsonha 5y ago
  lol that's it? If they said something like "how you feel about it is inconsequential" I would accept it as a pragmatic/stoic way to look at it. There is no way a life in a lab can be even remotely good, well cared or not, but it's hard to compare when a typical life of a pig ends with being slaughtered, only to end up expired pieces of meat most of the times.
  - cheese_goddess 5y ago
    How do you think a life of a pig would end if it wasn't being slaughtered? Most likely it would be half-eaten alive by a predator and the rest left to rot or be taken by scavengers. The same thing will happen now (the expired pieces of meat will mostly become food for insect larvae) except it's a human doing the slaughtering and the animal is killed before being eaten.
    - nsonha 5y ago
      the life of such pig would not even begin, which is a good thing, if wasn't for human to have so much meat on display that it gets expired.
      - cheese_goddess 5y ago
        Sorry, I didn't understand what you mean. Can you type more carefully? English is not my first language and I can't guess what you're trying to say.
      - snovv_crash 5y ago
        Wishing you had never been born is one thing, wishing someone/something else had never been born is not a response of empathy but rather personal guilt.
        nsonha 5y ago
        This is not even a question, being born into a life of slavery and ultimately being slaughtered is worse than not being born. Think about it, you are born into a prison and given no chance to even develop a proper consciousness. This is very different than a fully aware human getting locked up in a prison.
        suifbwish 5y ago
        However since the individual being born is not making the choice, it falls to the individual or group benefitting from the individual being born into the circumstance you described. Universal morality is a form of anthropomorphization, or projecting human characteristics onto an amoral natural world.
        nsonha 5y ago
        This is like the pro life argument. I love it when people are so argumentative about such a simple thing. We are talking about birth control, there is no individual exists to make any choice. > Projecting human characteristics onto an amoral natural world. this is not a bad thing comparing to the alternative which is assuming that animals are too dumb to be sympathize with
- dexwiz 5y ago
  Honestly, I felt that the ethics board part was implied. In western universities it's very hard to do animal testing. No one just strolls down to Pets Mart and picks up some mice. The Animal Welfare Act governs animal testing in the United States, and school risk funding if they don't follow the law. To be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of the specific programs. I just know they had to present and get their protocol (experiment) approved. It was a serious thing to present, not a rubber stamp process. If you want more details, I found this doc from my school. Purdue does biomedical testing and is also a premiere large animal veterinary school. https://www.purdue.edu/research/regulatory-affairs/animal-research/docs/Handbook.pdf https://www.purdue.edu/research/regulatory-affairs/animal-re...
  - catgary 5y ago
    I know University of Calgary had a bio professor who got in hot water for abusing animals (essentially: he encouraged his student to not anaesthetize animals before surgery to fudge numbers). So there are definitely grad students who will happily torture animals if it can help their career.
    - medstrom 5y ago
      Damn, they require you to tell them how many mice you've got so you can get that many anaesthesis doses? That rule wasn't thought through.
      - reportingsjr 5y ago
        It is common to use ketamine for anesthesia in animal testing. It's a controlled drug, so you have to keep a pretty good log of it's use.
      - suifbwish 5y ago
        How many Mice do you have? 800,000. You used ketamine for all of them? YES. Thats a lot of ketamine YES. Can you show us the mice? NO. Why not We disposed of their bodies after the experiment. Then how can we verify the data from the experiment? Give us ketamine for 800,000 more mice
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  Do you EAT pig?
  - MrFlibbles 5y ago
    Yes, frequently.
graderjs 5y ago
Weird that these statements are made (and I don't mean by you, it's a trope to make them by people in general in discussions like this, I'm not picking you out) that it somehow justifies, or ameliorates, the awfulness of experimenting then dissecting (as someone said) a helpless intelligent creature. I think these statements justify animal trials and using it to benefit humans definitely. But it doesn't justify or make better that it's still an awful thing to do to an animal and for the animal I think. It's weird right like where they get the blood of some sort of poor little sea creature that's got a blue copper containing blood it's just awful. I really think we need to revise and reform a lot of how industry interacts with and especially commoditizes animals. I'm not saying we need to be vegans at all but I think there's so much room for improving how we talk think and act about this stuff. To make I guess what is probably an obvious point but I think the reasonableness of that point is not obvious but I think it can be a reasonable and obvious point without really attacking anybody and that non-threatening nature of that reasonable and obvious point I think is what is important about what I'm saying. It's possible. Less this comment be dismissed as some sort of low effort outrage--my heart's beating 50 beats a minute right now I'm not upset. I just think we can improve things there massively but that doesn't make anybody a monster.
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  If you can accept humans can eat helpless intelligent creatures, then the fact we perform ethics-reviewed anesthetised procedures and later dissect the same animals really shouldn't keep you up at night.
  - graderjs 5y ago
    - bendbro 5y ago
      You suggest someone can't "understand", "reduce", or "invalidate" another's morals, but these quotes below from you contradict that. > ... I really think we need to revise ... > ... I'm not saying we need to be vegans ... > ... improving how we talk think and act about ...
zizee 5y ago
Sure, perhaps it can be justified by the greater good, but that should not preclude feeling sorry for the animal in question.
- fastball 5y ago
  Who said you're not allowed to feel sorry for it? I feel like OP is being strawmanned. It's not like dexwiz said "fuck pigs test em more".
  - zizee 5y ago
    Well the grandparent responded to a comment observing no sympathy being shown, with a comment that showed no sympathy, instead with reasoning for why it's worthwhile, and downplaying any suffering. I am not saying dexwiz was encouraging/promoting suffering of pigs, but they were ignoring the original call to express sympathy to these animals.
    - fastball 5y ago
      People can feel sympathy without displaying it on queue for your gratification.
      - zizee 5y ago
        I think your missing the point I am trying to make. Hint: It's not for my gratification, I am not asking people to show sympathy. Ironically, you accuse people of "strawmanning", and then proceed do the same to me. Perhaps take a leaf out of your own book and stop assuming intent. Have a splendid day.
        fastball 5y ago
        > with a comment that showed no sympathy > but they were ignoring the original call to express sympathy to these animals. How is this not asking people to show sympathy?
bongoman37 5y ago
People forget about how hard it is to get through ethics reviews for animal testing. I remember a PI telling me that it was easier to run psych experiments on undergrads compared to rats or mice.
- runarberg 5y ago
  As it should be. Undergrads can give consent, rats and mice can’t.
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    It depends on the age of the undergrad and what country they are in.
jorvi 5y ago
> The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. You should read ‘ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’.
- weregiraffe 5y ago
  ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas into a different Omelas with a lot more suffering children’
pxmpxm 5y ago
It's really strange to me how these topics lately have tendency to devolve info infantile exchanges like the one above, where the first statement only serves to demonstrate author's emotional bona fides and the second validate and assuages it by offering a platitude. This is how one would interact with a child. EG: Op -2: Awww but pigs, I like pigs Op -1: They were happy pigs
uhtred 5y ago
So the bar for how well we treat other animals is now "is it having a better life than a factory farmed animal"? We have a long way to go don't we?
- c048 5y ago
  It's also a better life than what most animals have in the wild. The wild isn't some fairytale happy place; it's a place of hunger, fear, brutality, pain and disease. It reminds me of the old saying: "they overexaggerated the aggressiveness of European wolves, they're only dangerous when hungry". Ok, so did European wolves just go to the shop to buy food when hungry?
  - uhtred 5y ago
    so by your logic as per statement #1: do you think an iron age peasant, who undoubtably would have had a more brutal life than us, would have swapped their freedom and way of life for being kept in a cage, being experimented on by technology they would find to be terrifying dark magic that could kill them at any moment (see above commenter's mention of the pigs having heart attacks), all for some basic but guaranteed food each day?
    - c048 5y ago
      Well, yes. You even have people like that right now (for even far smaller of a compensation).
heresie-dabord 5y ago
Also, we are saving human lives. With success in this procedure, we could be saving your/our loved ones. From the article: “This is a truly remarkable breakthrough,” [the patient] said in a statement. “As a heart transplant recipient, myself with a genetic heart disorder, I am thrilled by this news and the hope it gives to my family and other patients who will eventually be saved by this breakthrough.”
Sporktacular 5y ago
Yeah thanks for clarifying. As for the loved one argument, probably. But that wouldn't necessarily make me right. In fact my proximity to the situation would probably make any objective evaluation of what's right or wrong impossible. That would effectively remove my credibility as a reasonable interlocutor when discussing the ethics at all, like a cop in a ticking time-bomb scenario isn't the best person to call on to craft torture policy. It wasn't my intention to judge (I don't know your position on anything) it just stood out to me. Animals often aren't treated with much respect or concern, especially ones suffering for our benefit. That's not a comment on you.

by dexwiz 5y ago

tcgv 5y ago

Thanks for your clarification. It's good to read that the pig was well cared and experiments passed ethics reviews. To be fair your original comment was lacking this information, hence when I first read it felt (unintentionally as we can see now) a bit cold-hearted to me as well.

nsonha 5y ago
lol that's it? If they said something like "how you feel about it is inconsequential" I would accept it as a pragmatic/stoic way to look at it. There is no way a life in a lab can be even remotely good, well cared or not, but it's hard to compare when a typical life of a pig ends with being slaughtered, only to end up expired pieces of meat most of the times.
- cheese_goddess 5y ago
  How do you think a life of a pig would end if it wasn't being slaughtered? Most likely it would be half-eaten alive by a predator and the rest left to rot or be taken by scavengers. The same thing will happen now (the expired pieces of meat will mostly become food for insect larvae) except it's a human doing the slaughtering and the animal is killed before being eaten.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    the life of such pig would not even begin, which is a good thing, if wasn't for human to have so much meat on display that it gets expired.
    - cheese_goddess 5y ago
      Sorry, I didn't understand what you mean. Can you type more carefully? English is not my first language and I can't guess what you're trying to say.
    - snovv_crash 5y ago
      Wishing you had never been born is one thing, wishing someone/something else had never been born is not a response of empathy but rather personal guilt.
      - nsonha 5y ago
        This is not even a question, being born into a life of slavery and ultimately being slaughtered is worse than not being born. Think about it, you are born into a prison and given no chance to even develop a proper consciousness. This is very different than a fully aware human getting locked up in a prison.
        suifbwish 5y ago
        However since the individual being born is not making the choice, it falls to the individual or group benefitting from the individual being born into the circumstance you described. Universal morality is a form of anthropomorphization, or projecting human characteristics onto an amoral natural world.
        nsonha 5y ago
        This is like the pro life argument. I love it when people are so argumentative about such a simple thing. We are talking about birth control, there is no individual exists to make any choice. > Projecting human characteristics onto an amoral natural world. this is not a bad thing comparing to the alternative which is assuming that animals are too dumb to be sympathize with
dexwiz 5y ago
Honestly, I felt that the ethics board part was implied. In western universities it's very hard to do animal testing. No one just strolls down to Pets Mart and picks up some mice. The Animal Welfare Act governs animal testing in the United States, and school risk funding if they don't follow the law. To be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of the specific programs. I just know they had to present and get their protocol (experiment) approved. It was a serious thing to present, not a rubber stamp process. If you want more details, I found this doc from my school. Purdue does biomedical testing and is also a premiere large animal veterinary school. https://www.purdue.edu/research/regulatory-affairs/animal-research/docs/Handbook.pdf https://www.purdue.edu/research/regulatory-affairs/animal-re...
- catgary 5y ago
  I know University of Calgary had a bio professor who got in hot water for abusing animals (essentially: he encouraged his student to not anaesthetize animals before surgery to fudge numbers). So there are definitely grad students who will happily torture animals if it can help their career.
  - medstrom 5y ago
    Damn, they require you to tell them how many mice you've got so you can get that many anaesthesis doses? That rule wasn't thought through.
    - reportingsjr 5y ago
      It is common to use ketamine for anesthesia in animal testing. It's a controlled drug, so you have to keep a pretty good log of it's use.
    - suifbwish 5y ago
      How many Mice do you have? 800,000. You used ketamine for all of them? YES. Thats a lot of ketamine YES. Can you show us the mice? NO. Why not We disposed of their bodies after the experiment. Then how can we verify the data from the experiment? Give us ketamine for 800,000 more mice
hungryforcodes 5y ago
Do you EAT pig?
- MrFlibbles 5y ago
  Yes, frequently.

graderjs 5y ago

Weird that these statements are made (and I don't mean by you, it's a trope to make them by people in general in discussions like this, I'm not picking you out) that it somehow justifies, or ameliorates, the awfulness of experimenting then dissecting (as someone said) a helpless intelligent creature. I think these statements justify animal trials and using it to benefit humans definitely. But it doesn't justify or make better that it's still an awful thing to do to an animal and for the animal I think. It's weird right like where they get the blood of some sort of poor little sea creature that's got a blue copper containing blood it's just awful. I really think we need to revise and reform a lot of how industry interacts with and especially commoditizes animals. I'm not saying we need to be vegans at all but I think there's so much room for improving how we talk think and act about this stuff. To make I guess what is probably an obvious point but I think the reasonableness of that point is not obvious but I think it can be a reasonable and obvious point without really attacking anybody and that non-threatening nature of that reasonable and obvious point I think is what is important about what I'm saying. It's possible. Less this comment be dismissed as some sort of low effort outrage--my heart's beating 50 beats a minute right now I'm not upset. I just think we can improve things there massively but that doesn't make anybody a monster.

scoopertrooper 5y ago
If you can accept humans can eat helpless intelligent creatures, then the fact we perform ethics-reviewed anesthetised procedures and later dissect the same animals really shouldn't keep you up at night.
- graderjs 5y ago
  - bendbro 5y ago
    You suggest someone can't "understand", "reduce", or "invalidate" another's morals, but these quotes below from you contradict that. > ... I really think we need to revise ... > ... I'm not saying we need to be vegans ... > ... improving how we talk think and act about ...

zizee 5y ago

Sure, perhaps it can be justified by the greater good, but that should not preclude feeling sorry for the animal in question.

fastball 5y ago
Who said you're not allowed to feel sorry for it? I feel like OP is being strawmanned. It's not like dexwiz said "fuck pigs test em more".
- zizee 5y ago
  Well the grandparent responded to a comment observing no sympathy being shown, with a comment that showed no sympathy, instead with reasoning for why it's worthwhile, and downplaying any suffering. I am not saying dexwiz was encouraging/promoting suffering of pigs, but they were ignoring the original call to express sympathy to these animals.
  - fastball 5y ago
    People can feel sympathy without displaying it on queue for your gratification.
    - zizee 5y ago
      I think your missing the point I am trying to make. Hint: It's not for my gratification, I am not asking people to show sympathy. Ironically, you accuse people of "strawmanning", and then proceed do the same to me. Perhaps take a leaf out of your own book and stop assuming intent. Have a splendid day.
      - fastball 5y ago
        > with a comment that showed no sympathy > but they were ignoring the original call to express sympathy to these animals. How is this not asking people to show sympathy?

bongoman37 5y ago

People forget about how hard it is to get through ethics reviews for animal testing. I remember a PI telling me that it was easier to run psych experiments on undergrads compared to rats or mice.

runarberg 5y ago
As it should be. Undergrads can give consent, rats and mice can’t.
- suifbwish 5y ago
  It depends on the age of the undergrad and what country they are in.

jorvi 5y ago

> The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. You should read ‘ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’.

weregiraffe 5y ago
‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas into a different Omelas with a lot more suffering children’

pxmpxm 5y ago

It's really strange to me how these topics lately have tendency to devolve info infantile exchanges like the one above, where the first statement only serves to demonstrate author's emotional bona fides and the second validate and assuages it by offering a platitude. This is how one would interact with a child. EG: Op -2: Awww but pigs, I like pigs Op -1: They were happy pigs

uhtred 5y ago

So the bar for how well we treat other animals is now "is it having a better life than a factory farmed animal"? We have a long way to go don't we?

c048 5y ago
It's also a better life than what most animals have in the wild. The wild isn't some fairytale happy place; it's a place of hunger, fear, brutality, pain and disease. It reminds me of the old saying: "they overexaggerated the aggressiveness of European wolves, they're only dangerous when hungry". Ok, so did European wolves just go to the shop to buy food when hungry?
- uhtred 5y ago
  so by your logic as per statement #1: do you think an iron age peasant, who undoubtably would have had a more brutal life than us, would have swapped their freedom and way of life for being kept in a cage, being experimented on by technology they would find to be terrifying dark magic that could kill them at any moment (see above commenter's mention of the pigs having heart attacks), all for some basic but guaranteed food each day?
  - c048 5y ago
    Well, yes. You even have people like that right now (for even far smaller of a compensation).

heresie-dabord 5y ago

Also, we are saving human lives. With success in this procedure, we could be saving your/our loved ones. From the article: “This is a truly remarkable breakthrough,” [the patient] said in a statement. “As a heart transplant recipient, myself with a genetic heart disorder, I am thrilled by this news and the hope it gives to my family and other patients who will eventually be saved by this breakthrough.”

Sporktacular 5y ago

Yeah thanks for clarifying. As for the loved one argument, probably. But that wouldn't necessarily make me right. In fact my proximity to the situation would probably make any objective evaluation of what's right or wrong impossible. That would effectively remove my credibility as a reasonable interlocutor when discussing the ethics at all, like a cop in a ticking time-bomb scenario isn't the best person to call on to craft torture policy. It wasn't my intention to judge (I don't know your position on anything) it just stood out to me. Animals often aren't treated with much respect or concern, especially ones suffering for our benefit. That's not a comment on you.