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The emotional toll of caring for research animals

dangle1 4y ago
Very interesting article that brought up many memories, but this feels like too public a space to discuss given the stigma and anger that can get focused on animal research topics. It seems like modeling clinical conferences that discuss patient cases that have been particularly upsetting to staff could be a model for animal care staff as well. Something like a monthly meeting where animal care staff and research staff could decompress and discuss the importance of the research that is being conducted while acknowledging the unique emotional toll of working with animals.
- checkcircuits 4y ago
  There's not much you can do to "decompress" when you go to work, sentence dogs to death, and then go home to your family pet and look at them thinking they could've been one of those dogs. I've met meat packers who still are haunted by the animals they killed. It's because humans have moral and ethnical frameworks. Despite a document drafting XYZ is okay because "its for science" it still is wrong in the sense you are sacrificing something with a memory, sadness, happiness, etc for a possible "greater good". Especially for dogs, an animal deeply engrained and coevolved with humans, I cannot imagine the amount of cognitive dissonance, or more likely, sociopathy that would be required to engage in such experiments. We trivialize the fact it's unethical to experiment on humans. I am not a treehugger or anything but to suggest talk therapy will help solve a very real moral and ethical problem...well I'm not sure you understand. Veterinarians have an extremely high suicide rate for a reason. Moreover, I will never forget the callousness of the veterinarian who suggested I put my family dog down for something that wasn't immediately fatal. It's only a small step from that asshole to these assholes and that step is complete transcendence into pathological psychopathy. We simply sometimes benefit from these psychopaths gassing dogs and pigs. It does not imply such a thing is either morally or ethically correct and no amount of "decompressing" will fix it. It just is what it is and some people have developed the pathological brain wiring to allow themselves to do it.
  - kuhewa 4y ago
    There are a lot of jobs that are necessary in society that have an emotional toll that can't be obviated. All of us, including you and I benefit from the fruits of their labor. Emotional and psychological support in the form of therapy absolutely can ease some of that burden.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
> But one of Van Hooser’s biggest pushes is to make the university’s invisible population feel seen. He encourages scientists to name animal workers in meeting posters and publications. He also invites researchers to visit animal facilities (their labs are often in a different part of campus) to explain the importance of their science. This sounds grim that this is a big push. Scientists not even working on their own animals, leaving technicians to kill them without ever thanking the technician, and the technician never knowing why animals they feed and clean after for years suffer and die.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
  Becoming too attached will ruin the experiment. Science is done under controlled conditions with as much uncertainty and randomness removed as possible. It's not ideal but we don't have any better options unless you want to do mass sacrifice of animals at scale and use Monte Carlo to derive results.
  - serf 4y ago
    >It's not ideal but we don't have any better options as someone else noted, a lot of this is done as a form of grant-securing, and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather than on experiment-basis. a 'better option' would be the removal of such political and economical games from facilities that are supposed to be doing research; this reduces the suffering and death without much loss to discovery and progress. the trick being that we, as humans in this world, have little hope of removing extraneous politics from where they do not belong. but I just care to point out that we're nowhere-near optimal w.r.t. how we operate in the research sector. it can be better.
    - searine 4y ago
      >and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather than on experiment-basis. The thing is, you can't just start and stop many kinds of animal research. For certain models, there needs to be ongoing maintenance of a breeding population so that that model is available for researchers when they need it for an experiment. Researchers spend decades making a particular knockout line, and you can't just stick it into a freezer for a rainy day. It has to be maintained or it will no longer exist. Nobody is getting rich off grants. Then maintenance is a necessity if research gains are to be made on these difficult diseases.
sclarisse 4y ago
The impact, I suppose, is uneven. Anecdotally, I knew a young woman who wanted to help people and ended up as a biotech intern at a regenerative medicine institute where she spent her summer giving puncture wounds to rats. It was very hard on her.
swayvil 4y ago
The best test animal is humans of course. But that's generally considered to be an abomination of biblical proportions. Big-time cognitive dissonance there.
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
  I agree with you and I believe you should volunteer as a test subject for all experiments you can get your hands on!
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    Even though you're joking, we are all participants in these experiments, when you consider how inexact so much of experimental medicine is.
- frozenport 4y ago
  Nope. Humans have really long life cycles. Imagine how long an experiment that requires 2 generations of humans will take? Behavioral problems, etc make reproducibility harder. When we can overcome those problems, like with cultured cells, most prefer human cell lines. But the intention is to have a "model" rather than the full thing.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - doublerabbit 4y ago
    > Humans have really long life cycles. Imagine how long an experiment that requires 2 generations of humans will take? And why is that a problem? More research, more study material. In the two generations you'll have a cure+extra compared to a single dedicated animal study, that may not even work on humans. Loosely speaking.
  - nottathrowaway3 4y ago
zdw 4y ago
Related - suicide rates are much higher for Veterinarians and techs than the general public: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterinary-suicide/ https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterina...
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  How does it compare against human doctors? Perhaps something about caring for animals attracts depressed or possibly suicidal people in the first place. Just an anecdote, but within 1 month in 2018, the lady I adopted my dog from(Stacey Radin), my dog walker, and a lady who ran a horse rescue in my hometown all committed suicide(none knew each other). I don't think I know anyone else directly who has committed suicide, and they all worked with animals.
  - shagie 4y ago
    Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/ > Several studies have identified a link between suicide and occupation (1), including the healthcare professions and our own profession. The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3).
    - 98codes 4y ago
      Am I reading this right? Those in the dental profession commit suicide at 2x the rate of the general population?
      - shagie 4y ago
        That is the statement there... and some of the other material on it. -- https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=758312&article_id=4326411&view=articleBrowser https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=758312&... > Suicide rates among dentists and a perceived elevated risk for suicide have been debated in academic publications worldwide for decades. > A 2011 study of the Danish population published in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders found that dentists had higher age and gender-adjusted rate ratios for suicide and risk for suicide compared with the general population. It reports that dentists held the highest suicide rate at 7.18 percent for men and women combined, and that these suicides rates are much higher than the national average. The national average for men and women was reported as 0.42 percent. Male dentists held the highest suicide rate at 8.02 percent. Female dentists held the fourth highest suicide rate at 5.28 percent. > In 2017, the British Dental Association found that 17.6% of the dentists they surveyed have seriously considered committing suicide. --- Dentists and Suicide: A Look at the Numbers - https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dentists-and-suicide-look-numbers https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dentists-and-suicid... > The Center for Disease Control’s most recent report in 2016 on “Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation” does not list dentists separately, but rather groups them in with other healthcare workers, ranking eleventh. And yet, despite the lack of any hard evidence, the myth regarding dentists being the number one suicide occupation stubbornly persists, casting a negative light on the profession. Not only can this affect the well-being of practitioners, it can also negatively influence perceptions by patients and by students considering dentistry as a prospective career.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
I was once in a running group with a guy who worked for Stanford inducing cancers in dogs, to trial and error test various treatments. Personally I find this unconscionable, as there's an endless supply of all cancers in most species which would benefit from treatments. It was an hour run, the time he spoke of it, of absolutely disgusting shame for our species and in particular because these experiments were largely grant securing.
- y-curious 4y ago
  It's a slippery slope. You can't test on people, and need animals that have similar drug kinetics. That being said, so much drug research is unnecessary garbage, and living beings pay the price. I worked in immunotherapeutics and gave cancer to ~25 mice. I can't say it helped progress the field much, and I still feel bad. Cannot imagine what it's like to give cancer to a dog.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    the word is evil, from all i heard. and it was (long story short) greed, not science. just appalling.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  I would argue we treat pigs (which are comparable to dogs in terms of intelligence) raised for slaughter much worse than these dogs. Yet I still eat bacon. Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices are. There is definitely a push for ending things like cosmetics testing on animals[1], but I'm not sure we can or should stop testing things like cancer treatments on animals. At least not until we have viable alternatives. [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-testing-animals https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-t...
  - stametseater 4y ago
    > Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices are. That really depends on what kind of value system you're starting with.
rafark 4y ago
Just make it ilegal already. If we want testing, just test with human *volunteers*. It’s only fair.
- carabiner 4y ago
  I would volunteer to get cancer.
  - dbg31415 4y ago
    I think a lot of the diseases and stuff they studied worked better on animals that aged faster than humans. The way to justify animal testing is to say, "Ok, we can make these animals suffer for 50 years... or we can make humanity continue to suffer or another 250 in order to better understand this and how the disease grows and evolves... what's worse?" But... that's the only way I can think to justify it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver
    - doublerabbit 4y ago
      > what's worse? IMM, animals suffering. Capable humans can speak. "Yeah doc, the lump got bigger, feels like my eyes are about to burst". Unlike animals who are mute apart from squealing which is the only sign for bad. Whom are mainly kept in-humane conditions, no consensual agreement. Does a Monkey get kept in paradise during the testing runs? Elon's brainchip-chimps research shows just how poorly treated they were. Lack of lawful-rights, regulations, corrupted-inspections. The odds are stacked against animals; at least us, humans, can reach out if they were being mistreated. I fail to see any justification for animal testing. It is a valid point, that it may only take twenty-five years on animals, and now we have a pseudo-cure for X. Testing still has to be done on humans, if that fails? Well back to the drawing board with more animal suffering for another twenty-five. So why not just skip straight to humans? If it takes 250 years, that's 250 years more research on the species it's trying to cure with an high percentage of a foreseeable cure.
xkcd-sucks 4y ago
Maybe it should have been clear after trying to get high off breathing dry ice and alcohol as a kid (urban legend), or reading about experimental methods to elicit panic response, but it became undeniably clear after a bunch of rat sacrifices that CO2 asphyxiation is one of the most unpleasant ways to die. Surprised it's still allowed
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  In mice it's generally used to knock the mice out before another method is used to sacrifice them (cervical dislocation).
  - whyenot 4y ago
    Euthanasia by "cervical dislocation" is killing animals by breaking their necks. It may very well be the most humane option, but nothing is gained by using jargon and obfuscation.
    - stametseater 4y ago
      People use technical jargon in all kinds of scenarios in which there's no plausible motive for obfuscation, use of jargon isn't evidence of deliberate obfuscation. In this particular case, "break their necks" sounds fairly humane while "cervical dislocation" sounds unpleasantly clinical, so I doubt this particular jargon is intended to obfuscate. On the other hand, "put it to sleep" is definitely such an obfuscation.
  - xkcd-sucks 4y ago
    I guess the point is CO2 even in sub lethal concentrations makes them do do something that looks like freaking out and having a terrible time, versus isoflurane which does not
- TylerE 4y ago
  It’s highly species dependent, even among mammals. Some have a true low oxygen drive and not a high co2 drive. Mainly borrowing animals
pazimzadeh 4y ago
My mom studied xenotransplantation in non-human primates and pigs. I worked in the veterinary resources department for a couple summers and I can confirm it can be draining. Especially since like most vet resources departments it's in the basement. The best part of the baboons' day is usually when they get to watch The Lion King for enrichment. After a few times they become so familiar with it that they are excited when their favorite scenes are coming up. It's heartbreaking, but at the same time, if we can figure out how to successfully stop organ rejection then we will most likely have cured cancer on the way, and have a much better understanding of how the immune system functions.
- emptybits 4y ago
  > "if we can figure out how to successfully stop organ rejection then we will most likely have cured cancer on the way" Genuinely ignorant and layperson curious here ... how are these two things connected? There are so many types of cancer that this sounds bold and almost too ... simple?
  - lotu 4y ago
    Xenotransplation is translating animal organs (which are easy to get) into humans. If you can do this then you can aggressively cut out whole organs and replace them with new cancer free organs from animals.
  - dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    Sufficiently fine control of the body's immune system such that we can prevent it from attacking a donor organ is likely to also be able to be used to make it attack cells that are reproducing out of control (i.e. cancer).
  - pazimzadeh 4y ago
    In order prevent rejection of the transplant, you give patients immunosuppressive drugs. But part of the immune system's function has always been to clean up any nascent tumerous or pre-cancerous cells. So you are winning on one side and losing on the other. The same co-stimulatory pathways which are getting attention for their effect in waking up the immune system against cancers (PD-L1, CTLA-4, etc) are the pathways which are being studied for the purpose of 'weakening the immune system', or inducing tolerance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6519766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6519766/ https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/immune-system-fight-cancer https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/immune-system-fight-can... The key will likely include the ability to induce tolerance or an immune response to a specific antigen and possibly of a specific immune subtype, so as not to derange the entire system. Also, the ability to target medications to specific regions of the body so that the entire immune system is not affected.
smm11 4y ago
Offer better food or whatever to those serving life sentences in prison, if they agree to the testing. There's consent.
- pprotas 4y ago
  Now I’m imagining prison guards threatening go take away food if the inmates don’t agree to testing…
  - Fomite 4y ago
    For human subjects research, studies involving prisoners, along with members of the military, get a higher level of scrutiny precisely because there's very real concerns about their ability to meaningfully provide informed consent.
- mattkrause 4y ago
  The rules around working with prisoners or other captive audiences are strict because it’s so easy to apply undue pressure to them. The goal isn’t just to get someone to say “okay”; the point is to make sure they’re doing so freely and with a complete understanding of the possible outcomes.
  - doublerabbit 4y ago
    Do animals get to consent and understand the possible outcomes? Why shouldn't they get the same conditions?
    - stametseater 4y ago
      No, because they're animals.
      - DangitBobby 4y ago
        We love circular reasoning.
Fomite 4y ago
A lot of people are assuming this is purely about research for human products/treatments. The researcher who was the most drained from her work was doing work that was entirely focused on the animals she works with. Veterinary schools use research animals as well.
neilv 4y ago
A dear friend who loved animals was a veterinary tech, who'd switched from pet clinic work, to a university-affiliated research lab. She died suddenly, very young, it seems probably due to experience as a vet tech at the lab. Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end) the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was pretty tough. I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals, other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs didn't do the animal care properly. She did have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other than not managing to fix the nastiness problem. Going only from one person's experience, and this short article: 1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select for, nastiness in some people? 2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?
- Fomite 4y ago
  Two thoughts: 1) Vet techs have been some of the kindest, most patient people I have met. They are humans, which means some of them are nasty, but between the compassion fatigue, the relatively low pay for the amount of training, etc., I don't think "nastiness" is selected for. 2) Difficulty hiring is one. Difficulty firing is another, if they're at a state university. But there is a national shortage of these types of technicians, and it's not a job that can't get done.
- JellyBeanThief 4y ago
  A close family member of mine runs a small animal hospital which routinely hires high school students as cage cleaners and dog walkers. Animal comfort is top priority, and the standard of comfort is very high. For instance, employees are expected to learn how to read and heed animal body language, and to control their own body language and voices to be as non-threatening and friendly as possible. Very few new hires have any inkling about any of this when they start, so there's a period of a few weeks where they're forgiven a lot. It's a big ask, because a lot of it is new habits, and some of it can be strange new thinking, too. But ultimately the hires who can't adapt are fired. Consequently a lot of the hires end up studying animal science or veterinary medicine later on. My point is: the nature of the work that comes before the lab tech work can have an impact, too.
aaron695 4y ago
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A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I sympathize. My wife once told me I could not be a vet, because I would need to be able to put the animals down. The more I learn, the more I understand what she meant by it. I dislike unnecessary suffering and some of it does sound very unnecessary. I can give some level of dispensation for necessary pain, but even then it should be a good reason ( and it seems sometimes the reasons are in the 'not great' category ). All that said, what are the options here with regards to research animals? 1. We stop research on all animals 2. We don't stop 3. We research even more 4. We adjust it to some more acceptable status quo Personally, I have a recent opinion that may jar some as I am more and more leaning towards #1. I think what eventually got me was dog cloning services in US. What will follow is a move a different type of testing ( and hopefully more humane ): human testing. It will come with its own set of issues, but, at least, subjects will be able to consent.
dbg31415 4y ago
In college, one of my friends worked in an animal lab on campus. There were something like 3,000 dogs... all in one building... all penned up from birth. And upon hearing about the 3,000 dogs, I was like, "Can I see them?" So she snuck me in. And they were all bred to have some disorder, I don't remember what now, but like the article said... it was fatal. And we got to the lab at like 9 PM and nobody else was there. The dogs were all so happy to see us. God they seemed lonely. They were kept in these little like 10x14 pens, 2-3 dogs per pen. Some dogs were in cages. But like... they were just dogs. Y'know? Most were just happy and looking to be pet, and it was overwhelming to be there. I got to give some treats. One of the pens had a dead dog in it, and my friend agonized over dealing with it or waiting until her shift officially started -- she didn't want to leave the dead dog in the pen, and she didn't want people to know she was sneaking her friends in to play with the dogs. So she decided to deal with the dog, and just tell her supervisor she came back for her wallet or something. Anyway, for a kid 2,500 miles away from home... who missed his dogs... it was really nice to have an hour to play with puppies and young dogs. As we were leaving she said that most of the dogs were euthanized at the 6-month mark to check for heart defects, or heart issues. Even the healthy dogs. Fuck it was devastating to hear that. I'm sure there's a reason and I'm sure we benefit somehow... and a dog who has never seen the sun, and will never see the sun, probably doesn't know what all they are missing... but they have to know, right? Like every living thing has to know they weren't made to sit in a little pen waiting to die. I don't know, just felt like they should be outside, playing in a field, all that stuff... being mentally challenged and taught how to fetch and instead... they were bred just so their hearts would fail, or so they could be killed and dissected to see why their heart didn't fail. Most people at the school didn't even know there was a dog lab like that on campus. Easier not to think about this stuff.
- carabiner 4y ago
  Aside, but what compels you to write in this LinkedIn broetry style?
  - dbg31415 4y ago
    Uh, maybe just how I tell a story. Wasn't intentionally trying for any specific style. I like the term "LinkedIn Broetry" though... instantly knew what you meant. Ha.
gadders 4y ago
Yeah, fuck that job. I couldn't do it. In the UK, all abattoirs have to have a vet in attendance when they are slaughtering animals. I always thought finding that your job as a vet must feel like a weird career turn. You become a vet to help sick animals and now you're helping kill healthy ones.
- Fomite 4y ago
  I know a couple veterinarians who bounced off this during large animal medicine training, but those that did take an approach not dissimilar to a lot of Heroic Defense Lawyer Protagonists on television: This is going to happen, and its their job to make sure it happens with the absolute minimum of suffering (and also that the animals are indeed healthy).
madrox 4y ago
Three months ago, there was a post on HN about Neuralink's treatment of animals. I mentioned that I struggled with the idea of animal testing and meat eating, generally. [1] I was surprised by the lack of empathy for the sentiment. Most were arguments for the necessity of the practice, but I don't think many of the people arguing for the necessity of animal testing could handle being the animal technician. As this article shows, even people in the field struggle with it. I'm not sure it creates a more compassionate society to outsource your industry's cruelty. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33874163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33874163
- valgor 4y ago
  That is how slaughterhouses work, at least in the US. Poor migrate workers get to work on the killing floor for low wages and dangerous work. Keeps it out of sight and minds of the more affluent people that eat those animals.
- Fomite 4y ago
  Most people I know in research were horrified of what was coming out of Neuralink.
ohbleek 4y ago
This topic is essentially why I postponed my PhD work. I’ve worked with animals for years and I finally found a PhD mentor that I saw my own vision and understanding of neurology in, I was elated. However, after two years, I simply couldn’t work with animals any longer. This essentially has ended my career path in translational medicine. For a long time I was able to continue doing lab work with animals due to the motivation of the “bigger picture.” It seems that is no longer enough. I’m still trying to decide what to do and where to go from here. Psychopharmacology is all I want to do and the kind of research I want to be involved with. As to the techs described in the article, I feel for them. It is evident that their job takes a heavy toll and their role is invaluable in research, yet severely undervalued and under recognized.
euix 4y ago
It's akin to how most people would be disgusted if shown how animals are slaughtered for meat but most people also have short memories - they will have their outrage and make some commitments about vegetarianism - the equivalent of the Twitter morale outrage but soon their current events catch up with them and the thought and emotion are swept away by the next thing. I recall a NYT article recently titled something along the lines "you'll forget most of the Covid pandemic and that's a good thing" - and as angry as that title made me I know its right - Solzhenitsyn talked about the memory of the Gulag years fading away from him, getting fat and complacent, turning back to old things - so even if such great trauma is lost in time I have no doubt most people just forget about how pigs are slaughtered in a week or two. I almost think its almost by evolutionary design, to live otherwise and carry and accumulating all that weight over the course of a life time is very hard. The alternative is to turn into a stone and abandon your humanity altogether. I don't mean to be cynical, it's just an observation.
- ip26 4y ago
  There seem to be all sorts of coincidental mechanisms that help people move past or forget trauma. A simple example is poor memory formation when sleep deprived; I note that many of my most difficult times have included significant sleep deprivation...
DangitBobby 4y ago
Definitely interesting to read an article about the emotional suffering humans experience due to their proximity to animal suffering. We must be at the center of any story for it to matter. Bitterness aside, I feel for these animals and for the people trying to make their short lives better.
jalapenos 4y ago
I might add a devil's advocate position, albeit colored by my own experiences. We're predators. We consume other animals. The fact we have found other ways to consume them doesn't make for a moral conundrum. Indeed, true to the empathic nature of a social species, we even go out of our way to minimize the suffering of our prey. Do you think the bear does that, as it eats its pray alive? Or the animals that swallow whole & alive, and kill during digestion only? Or parasitic wasps? You can be as self indulgent and narcissistic as you want, but if you see a loved one painfully dying of a disease that 10 years of no-holds-barred (FDA-unencumbered) medical research could have have prevented, we'll see how quickly your narcissist "think of the animals" self-indulgence will be replaced by "why are authorities letting this happen" self-indulgence. Virtue comes from doing what is painful but must be done, not indulging in your high horse like a child who's yet to understand the world.
- ornornor 4y ago
  That’s a very binary argument. Because we have no alternative for research, and because other animals are cruel with each other, then it absolves us of compassion? By the same token, there are vicious criminals that are unable to control their base instincts so we should all be viciously killing others whenever we feel justified? That’s how psychopaths and wild animals do it after all. We don’t have to kill animals and make them suffer like we do currently to raise and eat them. We have the knowledge and technology to thrive on a plant based diet. Research is a very different thing unfortunately. I very much hope we’ll develop theoretical and computer models to avoid the need for research on animals altogether because this is such a cruel and inhumane thing. But right now, there is no alternative unlike any other situation where we use animals historically (clothing, food).
  - jalapenos 4y ago
    I probably basically agree. Where technology has already replaced the need for consuming an animal, lets use it. Indeed, we already do (pelts aren't much of a thing anymore). But if not, don't sacrifice people over animals.
    - 4y ago
danbmil99 4y ago
How soon will we see articles on the emotional toll of bonding with chatbots?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Very interesting article that brought up many memories, but this feels like too public a space to discuss given the stigma and anger that can get focused on animal research topics. It seems like modeling clinical conferences that discuss patient cases that have been particularly upsetting to staff could be a model for animal care staff as well. Something like a monthly meeting where animal care staff and research staff could decompress and discuss the importance of the research that is being conducted while acknowledging the unique emotional toll of working with animals.

checkcircuits 4y ago
There's not much you can do to "decompress" when you go to work, sentence dogs to death, and then go home to your family pet and look at them thinking they could've been one of those dogs. I've met meat packers who still are haunted by the animals they killed. It's because humans have moral and ethnical frameworks. Despite a document drafting XYZ is okay because "its for science" it still is wrong in the sense you are sacrificing something with a memory, sadness, happiness, etc for a possible "greater good". Especially for dogs, an animal deeply engrained and coevolved with humans, I cannot imagine the amount of cognitive dissonance, or more likely, sociopathy that would be required to engage in such experiments. We trivialize the fact it's unethical to experiment on humans. I am not a treehugger or anything but to suggest talk therapy will help solve a very real moral and ethical problem...well I'm not sure you understand. Veterinarians have an extremely high suicide rate for a reason. Moreover, I will never forget the callousness of the veterinarian who suggested I put my family dog down for something that wasn't immediately fatal. It's only a small step from that asshole to these assholes and that step is complete transcendence into pathological psychopathy. We simply sometimes benefit from these psychopaths gassing dogs and pigs. It does not imply such a thing is either morally or ethically correct and no amount of "decompressing" will fix it. It just is what it is and some people have developed the pathological brain wiring to allow themselves to do it.
- kuhewa 4y ago
  There are a lot of jobs that are necessary in society that have an emotional toll that can't be obviated. All of us, including you and I benefit from the fruits of their labor. Emotional and psychological support in the form of therapy absolutely can ease some of that burden.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

> But one of Van Hooser’s biggest pushes is to make the university’s invisible population feel seen. He encourages scientists to name animal workers in meeting posters and publications. He also invites researchers to visit animal facilities (their labs are often in a different part of campus) to explain the importance of their science. This sounds grim that this is a big push. Scientists not even working on their own animals, leaving technicians to kill them without ever thanking the technician, and the technician never knowing why animals they feed and clean after for years suffer and die.

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
Becoming too attached will ruin the experiment. Science is done under controlled conditions with as much uncertainty and randomness removed as possible. It's not ideal but we don't have any better options unless you want to do mass sacrifice of animals at scale and use Monte Carlo to derive results.
- serf 4y ago
  >It's not ideal but we don't have any better options as someone else noted, a lot of this is done as a form of grant-securing, and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather than on experiment-basis. a 'better option' would be the removal of such political and economical games from facilities that are supposed to be doing research; this reduces the suffering and death without much loss to discovery and progress. the trick being that we, as humans in this world, have little hope of removing extraneous politics from where they do not belong. but I just care to point out that we're nowhere-near optimal w.r.t. how we operate in the research sector. it can be better.
  - searine 4y ago
    >and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather than on experiment-basis. The thing is, you can't just start and stop many kinds of animal research. For certain models, there needs to be ongoing maintenance of a breeding population so that that model is available for researchers when they need it for an experiment. Researchers spend decades making a particular knockout line, and you can't just stick it into a freezer for a rainy day. It has to be maintained or it will no longer exist. Nobody is getting rich off grants. Then maintenance is a necessity if research gains are to be made on these difficult diseases.

sclarisse 4y ago

The impact, I suppose, is uneven. Anecdotally, I knew a young woman who wanted to help people and ended up as a biotech intern at a regenerative medicine institute where she spent her summer giving puncture wounds to rats. It was very hard on her.

swayvil 4y ago

The best test animal is humans of course. But that's generally considered to be an abomination of biblical proportions. Big-time cognitive dissonance there.

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
I agree with you and I believe you should volunteer as a test subject for all experiments you can get your hands on!
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Even though you're joking, we are all participants in these experiments, when you consider how inexact so much of experimental medicine is.
frozenport 4y ago
Nope. Humans have really long life cycles. Imagine how long an experiment that requires 2 generations of humans will take? Behavioral problems, etc make reproducibility harder. When we can overcome those problems, like with cultured cells, most prefer human cell lines. But the intention is to have a "model" rather than the full thing.
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- doublerabbit 4y ago
  > Humans have really long life cycles. Imagine how long an experiment that requires 2 generations of humans will take? And why is that a problem? More research, more study material. In the two generations you'll have a cure+extra compared to a single dedicated animal study, that may not even work on humans. Loosely speaking.
- nottathrowaway3 4y ago

zdw 4y ago

Related - suicide rates are much higher for Veterinarians and techs than the general public: https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterinary-suicide/ https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterina...

oh_sigh 4y ago
How does it compare against human doctors? Perhaps something about caring for animals attracts depressed or possibly suicidal people in the first place. Just an anecdote, but within 1 month in 2018, the lady I adopted my dog from(Stacey Radin), my dog walker, and a lady who ran a horse rescue in my hometown all committed suicide(none knew each other). I don't think I know anyone else directly who has committed suicide, and they all worked with animals.
- shagie 4y ago
  Suicide in veterinary medicine: Let’s talk about it - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266064/ > Several studies have identified a link between suicide and occupation (1), including the healthcare professions and our own profession. The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3).
  - 98codes 4y ago
    Am I reading this right? Those in the dental profession commit suicide at 2x the rate of the general population?
    - shagie 4y ago
      That is the statement there... and some of the other material on it. -- https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=758312&article_id=4326411&view=articleBrowser https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/publication/?i=758312&... > Suicide rates among dentists and a perceived elevated risk for suicide have been debated in academic publications worldwide for decades. > A 2011 study of the Danish population published in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders found that dentists had higher age and gender-adjusted rate ratios for suicide and risk for suicide compared with the general population. It reports that dentists held the highest suicide rate at 7.18 percent for men and women combined, and that these suicides rates are much higher than the national average. The national average for men and women was reported as 0.42 percent. Male dentists held the highest suicide rate at 8.02 percent. Female dentists held the fourth highest suicide rate at 5.28 percent. > In 2017, the British Dental Association found that 17.6% of the dentists they surveyed have seriously considered committing suicide. --- Dentists and Suicide: A Look at the Numbers - https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dentists-and-suicide-look-numbers https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dentists-and-suicid... > The Center for Disease Control’s most recent report in 2016 on “Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation” does not list dentists separately, but rather groups them in with other healthcare workers, ranking eleventh. And yet, despite the lack of any hard evidence, the myth regarding dentists being the number one suicide occupation stubbornly persists, casting a negative light on the profession. Not only can this affect the well-being of practitioners, it can also negatively influence perceptions by patients and by students considering dentistry as a prospective career.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

I was once in a running group with a guy who worked for Stanford inducing cancers in dogs, to trial and error test various treatments. Personally I find this unconscionable, as there's an endless supply of all cancers in most species which would benefit from treatments. It was an hour run, the time he spoke of it, of absolutely disgusting shame for our species and in particular because these experiments were largely grant securing.

y-curious 4y ago
It's a slippery slope. You can't test on people, and need animals that have similar drug kinetics. That being said, so much drug research is unnecessary garbage, and living beings pay the price. I worked in immunotherapeutics and gave cancer to ~25 mice. I can't say it helped progress the field much, and I still feel bad. Cannot imagine what it's like to give cancer to a dog.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  the word is evil, from all i heard. and it was (long story short) greed, not science. just appalling.
AlexandrB 4y ago
I would argue we treat pigs (which are comparable to dogs in terms of intelligence) raised for slaughter much worse than these dogs. Yet I still eat bacon. Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices are. There is definitely a push for ending things like cosmetics testing on animals[1], but I'm not sure we can or should stop testing things like cancer treatments on animals. At least not until we have viable alternatives. [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-testing-animals https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-t...
- stametseater 4y ago
  > Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices are. That really depends on what kind of value system you're starting with.

rafark 4y ago

Just make it ilegal already. If we want testing, just test with human *volunteers*. It’s only fair.

carabiner 4y ago
I would volunteer to get cancer.
- dbg31415 4y ago
  I think a lot of the diseases and stuff they studied worked better on animals that aged faster than humans. The way to justify animal testing is to say, "Ok, we can make these animals suffer for 50 years... or we can make humanity continue to suffer or another 250 in order to better understand this and how the disease grows and evolves... what's worse?" But... that's the only way I can think to justify it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver
  - doublerabbit 4y ago
    > what's worse? IMM, animals suffering. Capable humans can speak. "Yeah doc, the lump got bigger, feels like my eyes are about to burst". Unlike animals who are mute apart from squealing which is the only sign for bad. Whom are mainly kept in-humane conditions, no consensual agreement. Does a Monkey get kept in paradise during the testing runs? Elon's brainchip-chimps research shows just how poorly treated they were. Lack of lawful-rights, regulations, corrupted-inspections. The odds are stacked against animals; at least us, humans, can reach out if they were being mistreated. I fail to see any justification for animal testing. It is a valid point, that it may only take twenty-five years on animals, and now we have a pseudo-cure for X. Testing still has to be done on humans, if that fails? Well back to the drawing board with more animal suffering for another twenty-five. So why not just skip straight to humans? If it takes 250 years, that's 250 years more research on the species it's trying to cure with an high percentage of a foreseeable cure.

xkcd-sucks 4y ago

Maybe it should have been clear after trying to get high off breathing dry ice and alcohol as a kid (urban legend), or reading about experimental methods to elicit panic response, but it became undeniably clear after a bunch of rat sacrifices that CO2 asphyxiation is one of the most unpleasant ways to die. Surprised it's still allowed

pazimzadeh 4y ago
In mice it's generally used to knock the mice out before another method is used to sacrifice them (cervical dislocation).
- whyenot 4y ago
  Euthanasia by "cervical dislocation" is killing animals by breaking their necks. It may very well be the most humane option, but nothing is gained by using jargon and obfuscation.
  - stametseater 4y ago
    People use technical jargon in all kinds of scenarios in which there's no plausible motive for obfuscation, use of jargon isn't evidence of deliberate obfuscation. In this particular case, "break their necks" sounds fairly humane while "cervical dislocation" sounds unpleasantly clinical, so I doubt this particular jargon is intended to obfuscate. On the other hand, "put it to sleep" is definitely such an obfuscation.
- xkcd-sucks 4y ago
  I guess the point is CO2 even in sub lethal concentrations makes them do do something that looks like freaking out and having a terrible time, versus isoflurane which does not
TylerE 4y ago
It’s highly species dependent, even among mammals. Some have a true low oxygen drive and not a high co2 drive. Mainly borrowing animals

pazimzadeh 4y ago

My mom studied xenotransplantation in non-human primates and pigs. I worked in the veterinary resources department for a couple summers and I can confirm it can be draining. Especially since like most vet resources departments it's in the basement. The best part of the baboons' day is usually when they get to watch The Lion King for enrichment. After a few times they become so familiar with it that they are excited when their favorite scenes are coming up. It's heartbreaking, but at the same time, if we can figure out how to successfully stop organ rejection then we will most likely have cured cancer on the way, and have a much better understanding of how the immune system functions.

emptybits 4y ago
> "if we can figure out how to successfully stop organ rejection then we will most likely have cured cancer on the way" Genuinely ignorant and layperson curious here ... how are these two things connected? There are so many types of cancer that this sounds bold and almost too ... simple?
- lotu 4y ago
  Xenotransplation is translating animal organs (which are easy to get) into humans. If you can do this then you can aggressively cut out whole organs and replace them with new cancer free organs from animals.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago
  Sufficiently fine control of the body's immune system such that we can prevent it from attacking a donor organ is likely to also be able to be used to make it attack cells that are reproducing out of control (i.e. cancer).
- pazimzadeh 4y ago
  In order prevent rejection of the transplant, you give patients immunosuppressive drugs. But part of the immune system's function has always been to clean up any nascent tumerous or pre-cancerous cells. So you are winning on one side and losing on the other. The same co-stimulatory pathways which are getting attention for their effect in waking up the immune system against cancers (PD-L1, CTLA-4, etc) are the pathways which are being studied for the purpose of 'weakening the immune system', or inducing tolerance. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6519766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6519766/ https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/immune-system-fight-cancer https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/immune-system-fight-can... The key will likely include the ability to induce tolerance or an immune response to a specific antigen and possibly of a specific immune subtype, so as not to derange the entire system. Also, the ability to target medications to specific regions of the body so that the entire immune system is not affected.

smm11 4y ago

Offer better food or whatever to those serving life sentences in prison, if they agree to the testing. There's consent.

pprotas 4y ago
Now I’m imagining prison guards threatening go take away food if the inmates don’t agree to testing…
- Fomite 4y ago
  For human subjects research, studies involving prisoners, along with members of the military, get a higher level of scrutiny precisely because there's very real concerns about their ability to meaningfully provide informed consent.
mattkrause 4y ago
The rules around working with prisoners or other captive audiences are strict because it’s so easy to apply undue pressure to them. The goal isn’t just to get someone to say “okay”; the point is to make sure they’re doing so freely and with a complete understanding of the possible outcomes.
- doublerabbit 4y ago
  Do animals get to consent and understand the possible outcomes? Why shouldn't they get the same conditions?
  - stametseater 4y ago
    No, because they're animals.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      We love circular reasoning.

Fomite 4y ago

A lot of people are assuming this is purely about research for human products/treatments. The researcher who was the most drained from her work was doing work that was entirely focused on the animals she works with. Veterinary schools use research animals as well.

neilv 4y ago

A dear friend who loved animals was a veterinary tech, who'd switched from pet clinic work, to a university-affiliated research lab. She died suddenly, very young, it seems probably due to experience as a vet tech at the lab. Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end) the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was pretty tough. I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals, other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs didn't do the animal care properly. She did have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other than not managing to fix the nastiness problem. Going only from one person's experience, and this short article: 1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select for, nastiness in some people? 2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?

Fomite 4y ago
Two thoughts: 1) Vet techs have been some of the kindest, most patient people I have met. They are humans, which means some of them are nasty, but between the compassion fatigue, the relatively low pay for the amount of training, etc., I don't think "nastiness" is selected for. 2) Difficulty hiring is one. Difficulty firing is another, if they're at a state university. But there is a national shortage of these types of technicians, and it's not a job that can't get done.
JellyBeanThief 4y ago
A close family member of mine runs a small animal hospital which routinely hires high school students as cage cleaners and dog walkers. Animal comfort is top priority, and the standard of comfort is very high. For instance, employees are expected to learn how to read and heed animal body language, and to control their own body language and voices to be as non-threatening and friendly as possible. Very few new hires have any inkling about any of this when they start, so there's a period of a few weeks where they're forgiven a lot. It's a big ask, because a lot of it is new habits, and some of it can be strange new thinking, too. But ultimately the hires who can't adapt are fired. Consequently a lot of the hires end up studying animal science or veterinary medicine later on. My point is: the nature of the work that comes before the lab tech work can have an impact, too.

aaron695 4y ago

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A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

I sympathize. My wife once told me I could not be a vet, because I would need to be able to put the animals down. The more I learn, the more I understand what she meant by it. I dislike unnecessary suffering and some of it does sound very unnecessary. I can give some level of dispensation for necessary pain, but even then it should be a good reason ( and it seems sometimes the reasons are in the 'not great' category ). All that said, what are the options here with regards to research animals? 1. We stop research on all animals 2. We don't stop 3. We research even more 4. We adjust it to some more acceptable status quo Personally, I have a recent opinion that may jar some as I am more and more leaning towards #1. I think what eventually got me was dog cloning services in US. What will follow is a move a different type of testing ( and hopefully more humane ): human testing. It will come with its own set of issues, but, at least, subjects will be able to consent.

dbg31415 4y ago

In college, one of my friends worked in an animal lab on campus. There were something like 3,000 dogs... all in one building... all penned up from birth. And upon hearing about the 3,000 dogs, I was like, "Can I see them?" So she snuck me in. And they were all bred to have some disorder, I don't remember what now, but like the article said... it was fatal. And we got to the lab at like 9 PM and nobody else was there. The dogs were all so happy to see us. God they seemed lonely. They were kept in these little like 10x14 pens, 2-3 dogs per pen. Some dogs were in cages. But like... they were just dogs. Y'know? Most were just happy and looking to be pet, and it was overwhelming to be there. I got to give some treats. One of the pens had a dead dog in it, and my friend agonized over dealing with it or waiting until her shift officially started -- she didn't want to leave the dead dog in the pen, and she didn't want people to know she was sneaking her friends in to play with the dogs. So she decided to deal with the dog, and just tell her supervisor she came back for her wallet or something. Anyway, for a kid 2,500 miles away from home... who missed his dogs... it was really nice to have an hour to play with puppies and young dogs. As we were leaving she said that most of the dogs were euthanized at the 6-month mark to check for heart defects, or heart issues. Even the healthy dogs. Fuck it was devastating to hear that. I'm sure there's a reason and I'm sure we benefit somehow... and a dog who has never seen the sun, and will never see the sun, probably doesn't know what all they are missing... but they have to know, right? Like every living thing has to know they weren't made to sit in a little pen waiting to die. I don't know, just felt like they should be outside, playing in a field, all that stuff... being mentally challenged and taught how to fetch and instead... they were bred just so their hearts would fail, or so they could be killed and dissected to see why their heart didn't fail. Most people at the school didn't even know there was a dog lab like that on campus. Easier not to think about this stuff.

carabiner 4y ago
Aside, but what compels you to write in this LinkedIn broetry style?
- dbg31415 4y ago
  Uh, maybe just how I tell a story. Wasn't intentionally trying for any specific style. I like the term "LinkedIn Broetry" though... instantly knew what you meant. Ha.

gadders 4y ago

Yeah, fuck that job. I couldn't do it. In the UK, all abattoirs have to have a vet in attendance when they are slaughtering animals. I always thought finding that your job as a vet must feel like a weird career turn. You become a vet to help sick animals and now you're helping kill healthy ones.

Fomite 4y ago
I know a couple veterinarians who bounced off this during large animal medicine training, but those that did take an approach not dissimilar to a lot of Heroic Defense Lawyer Protagonists on television: This is going to happen, and its their job to make sure it happens with the absolute minimum of suffering (and also that the animals are indeed healthy).

madrox 4y ago

Three months ago, there was a post on HN about Neuralink's treatment of animals. I mentioned that I struggled with the idea of animal testing and meat eating, generally. [1] I was surprised by the lack of empathy for the sentiment. Most were arguments for the necessity of the practice, but I don't think many of the people arguing for the necessity of animal testing could handle being the animal technician. As this article shows, even people in the field struggle with it. I'm not sure it creates a more compassionate society to outsource your industry's cruelty. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33874163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33874163

valgor 4y ago
That is how slaughterhouses work, at least in the US. Poor migrate workers get to work on the killing floor for low wages and dangerous work. Keeps it out of sight and minds of the more affluent people that eat those animals.
Fomite 4y ago
Most people I know in research were horrified of what was coming out of Neuralink.

ohbleek 4y ago

This topic is essentially why I postponed my PhD work. I’ve worked with animals for years and I finally found a PhD mentor that I saw my own vision and understanding of neurology in, I was elated. However, after two years, I simply couldn’t work with animals any longer. This essentially has ended my career path in translational medicine. For a long time I was able to continue doing lab work with animals due to the motivation of the “bigger picture.” It seems that is no longer enough. I’m still trying to decide what to do and where to go from here. Psychopharmacology is all I want to do and the kind of research I want to be involved with. As to the techs described in the article, I feel for them. It is evident that their job takes a heavy toll and their role is invaluable in research, yet severely undervalued and under recognized.

euix 4y ago

It's akin to how most people would be disgusted if shown how animals are slaughtered for meat but most people also have short memories - they will have their outrage and make some commitments about vegetarianism - the equivalent of the Twitter morale outrage but soon their current events catch up with them and the thought and emotion are swept away by the next thing. I recall a NYT article recently titled something along the lines "you'll forget most of the Covid pandemic and that's a good thing" - and as angry as that title made me I know its right - Solzhenitsyn talked about the memory of the Gulag years fading away from him, getting fat and complacent, turning back to old things - so even if such great trauma is lost in time I have no doubt most people just forget about how pigs are slaughtered in a week or two. I almost think its almost by evolutionary design, to live otherwise and carry and accumulating all that weight over the course of a life time is very hard. The alternative is to turn into a stone and abandon your humanity altogether. I don't mean to be cynical, it's just an observation.

ip26 4y ago
There seem to be all sorts of coincidental mechanisms that help people move past or forget trauma. A simple example is poor memory formation when sleep deprived; I note that many of my most difficult times have included significant sleep deprivation...

DangitBobby 4y ago

Definitely interesting to read an article about the emotional suffering humans experience due to their proximity to animal suffering. We must be at the center of any story for it to matter. Bitterness aside, I feel for these animals and for the people trying to make their short lives better.

jalapenos 4y ago

I might add a devil's advocate position, albeit colored by my own experiences. We're predators. We consume other animals. The fact we have found other ways to consume them doesn't make for a moral conundrum. Indeed, true to the empathic nature of a social species, we even go out of our way to minimize the suffering of our prey. Do you think the bear does that, as it eats its pray alive? Or the animals that swallow whole & alive, and kill during digestion only? Or parasitic wasps? You can be as self indulgent and narcissistic as you want, but if you see a loved one painfully dying of a disease that 10 years of no-holds-barred (FDA-unencumbered) medical research could have have prevented, we'll see how quickly your narcissist "think of the animals" self-indulgence will be replaced by "why are authorities letting this happen" self-indulgence. Virtue comes from doing what is painful but must be done, not indulging in your high horse like a child who's yet to understand the world.

ornornor 4y ago
That’s a very binary argument. Because we have no alternative for research, and because other animals are cruel with each other, then it absolves us of compassion? By the same token, there are vicious criminals that are unable to control their base instincts so we should all be viciously killing others whenever we feel justified? That’s how psychopaths and wild animals do it after all. We don’t have to kill animals and make them suffer like we do currently to raise and eat them. We have the knowledge and technology to thrive on a plant based diet. Research is a very different thing unfortunately. I very much hope we’ll develop theoretical and computer models to avoid the need for research on animals altogether because this is such a cruel and inhumane thing. But right now, there is no alternative unlike any other situation where we use animals historically (clothing, food).
- jalapenos 4y ago
  I probably basically agree. Where technology has already replaced the need for consuming an animal, lets use it. Indeed, we already do (pelts aren't much of a thing anymore). But if not, don't sacrifice people over animals.
  - 4y ago

danbmil99 4y ago

How soon will we see articles on the emotional toll of bonding with chatbots?

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