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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 u
by 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 agoIt'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 agothe word is evil, from all i heard. and it was (long story short) greed, not science. just appalling.
- AlexandrB 4y agoI 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.
- StrangeATractor 4y ago> I would argue we treat pigs (which are comparable to dogs in terms of intelligence) Closer to toddlers actually. I'm not a vegetarian or animals rights activist or anything but I'm kind of surprised people eat pigs with how smart they are.
- BobbyJo 4y agoIs it really a blind spot if you're aware yet still continue to support the behavior? Seems like mental gymnastics to feel less bad. "Well, I'm not absolutely certain this particular pig was mistreated, so..."
- aschearer 4y agoCareful, one false step and you'll become vegan.
- valgor 4y agoCareful, one false step and your behavior will align with your morals.
- boston_clone 4y agoWhy do you think people should be careful about becoming more ethical?
- devb 4y ago> Yet I still eat bacon. How do you rationalize that? Not many people admit to being aware of the way food animals are treated. I'm legitimately curious, not trolling.
- valgor 4y agoPeople like that don't rationalize it. You cannot win the ethical argument against eating animals. One simply ignores morals or does not care. And I don't mean this in an attacking way because we all do this to some extent.
- stametseater 4y ago> One simply ignores morals or does not care. Third possibility: they have different values which you either don't understand or agree with.
- jerojero 4y agoUnder which ethical framework is it possible to justify industrial slaughtering of animals? When you say "some people have different values" you probably mean "some people have simply not thought it through". I really don't think there's an ethical framework that favours industrial meat production. But please surprise me. Now, most people have inconsistent ethics. Which I think is a different thing. I think most people that engage with the industrial meat complex simply ignore the ethical implications, that's actually quite easy to do and even more so when most people are just inconsistent when it comes to ethics. Sometimes people are utilitarians, other times they behave like deontologists and other times they will apply ethics of care. I believe we are constantly building our own personal ethical frameworks. And that's kind of what you're alluding to, but I also think it's important to acknowledge that consistency is important, and I believe if we really tried to accomplish that most people would be faced with a very harsh reality. It's a struggle but we should be more honest with ourselves and the rest.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
- Maursault 4y ago> pigs (which are comparable to dogs in terms of intelligence) You must really like dogs. Pig intelligence is vastly superior to dog intelligence. Pigs basically are as smart as children, with a full range of emotion. Seriously, stop eating them. Be an example rather than entitled to indulge horrid tastes. We can all live without.
- Invictus0 4y agoIs it so outrageous to say that a dog's life has less value than a human's?
- jjtheblunt 4y agoWho mentioned humans? I think I know what you mean, but the impression was that the tests were for treatments in dogs, perhaps the presumption being they'd work in humans, but that was not clear.
- kajic 4y agoIt depends on who you ask. What would a dog answer if it could contemplate the question and say its piece?
- TheMode 4y agoThe dog would say that it has more value, same for a tree, or an ant. If we had to fully protect everything categorized as intelligent/living, we wouldn't do much. Dogs may be a hard no for someone, and yes for someone else. It's kinda arbitrary.
- optymizer 4y agoIt doesn't matter. This is the real world, not the imaginary world where dogs can speak. You have to accept that in the real world a dog's life is objectively worth less to humans than a human life. If that were not true, then it would be generally accepted that saving a dog would take priority over a child, whereas the reverse is true. I'm not advocating for mistreating dogs, I'm advocating for distinguishing between how we would like the world to be and how the world really is.
- colmvp 4y agoYour statement made me realize I should empathize with the machines in the Matrix. After all, a human life is objectively worth less to machines than to humans. A machine can last for centuries and can have more utility on a daily basis than a human.
- DangerousPie 4y agoTo study cures for cancer you need to induce the exact type of cancer you are trying to treat in dozens of identical animals that are as similar as possible to humans, and do so in a reproducible way. suggesting you could just go and work with any old animal that happens to have some sort of cancer is incredibly naive.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoWho mentioned humans?
- gowld 4y agoYou were vague, so readers used the most probable parse: that the dogs were used for human-medical research. Anyway, pet owners aren't lining up to volunteer their pets for experimental treatments, so researching dog cancer on random sick dogs isn't a great model either.
- jjtheblunt 4y agoSome subset of owners of sick pets DO enroll pets in experimental treatments, which i know from a life among animals. In a personal case, the results amazed the oncologists.
- SpaceManNabs 4y agoI wonder if they ran an a prior power analysis to see if the effect size they were looking for even had a good chance of being discovered.
- Fomite 4y agoIf they are at all subject to a functional IACUC (i.e. at a university) this is required. The bar for testing things on (especially charismatic) animals is quite high.
- SpaceManNabs 4y agoI have seen otherwise. And statistical literacy is quite low.
- Fomite 4y agoOn the second point we agree - but I have seen people absolutely torn apart for sloppy sample size calculations when it comes to animals.