3 ms·

Can you propose a means by which we can do many of those tests without rats? I'm actually all ears on this one, because I don't like it, but the slaughter of m

Can you propose a means by which we can do many of those tests without rats? I'm actually all ears on this one, because I don't like it, but the slaughter of millions or billions of rats is making real progress on several research programs, spanning research in to disease, the function of organs, mechanisms of embryology, genetics, and epigenetics, etc. Stalling any of those programs has a real cost in human lives -- people die all the time because we haven't had 10 more years of research on what would've saved them done. Thousands of people. Millions of people. There is certainly some frivolous animal experiments, but I think at this point in time, they make up the minority, and that most of what you're objecting to has just been morbidly set against a higher goal to most people. So here's my real question: there's a cancer lab down the street for me; what animal should they intentionally give cancer to to progress their research?

interfixus 11y ago
Reasonable questions, valid points, no clearcut answers. Every country wishing to known as civilized should have strict - and I do mean strict - legislation on all aniaml experimentation. We probably cannot get around it yet, but every single instance should be controlled, monitored, and damned hard to get permission for. My mechanisms for pain and suffering really aren't any different from those of a dog, a pig, a cat, or a rat. I don't remember offering myself up for even modestly unpleasant experimentation in cancer research, and may not have the rigtht to impose such unpleasentness on others. Of course, I am a hypocrite like everyone else, happily consuming whatever medication I may need, without asking awkward questions about its history and origins.
- SoftwareMaven 11y ago
  My mechanisms for pain and suffering really aren't any different from those of a dog, a pig, a cat, or a rat. The mechanism is the same, but the effect is very different. Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. While that does not justify putting animals in unnecessary pain, it does mean we should be careful not to anthropomorphize our reactions to pain (or anything else, for that matter) onto animals.
  - asciimo 11y ago
    > Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. How do you know this? I see more evidence against this statement than I see for it.
  - meowface 11y ago
    >Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. What are you basing this on? If a mammal is exposed to pain, any stimulus similar to that initial cause of pain will cause anxiety and fear, just like in humans. They may not understand the cause-effect relationship of the stimulus as clearly as humans, but they certainly have the ability to expect and fear unpleasant stimuli.
- SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
  I just... People don't say anything about the meat industry (okay, some of the vegetarian/vegan ones /do/), or that our cities are essentially organized to be large scale breeding factories for animals which we then massacre as annoyances, but I have to hear all the time about the poor rats given cancer for science. One just has to think, the people complaining to me about laboratory animals are just emotional wrecks who should be kept from making real decisions about the world and left to ride out the high of their brain chemicals. The truth is, I think you're worse than a hypocrite: I think you're a 5 year old screaming out his emotional needs about the rat being his friend and wanting to be a good boy so we shouldn't hurt animals, without a real understanding or opinion about the problem, hassling grownups trying to actually get things done. I think virtually everyone I've talked to about animal testing is. I'm just left with the sense that people who bother to complain about the topic are either a) crazy idealists willing to trade human lives to save the rats or b) children without real opinions who want to be seen doing the "right thing", and are going about it in a shallow, childlike way. Either way, go away. Adults have real work to do. Come back when you have an opinion that actually says something about the problem. Ed: This post is harsher than it should be, but I will leave it unaltered for documentation reasons. My frustrations stem from the fact that very often, the people I'm debating against simply are speaking from an emotional need that cherry-picked "facts" from questionable sources, and it ultimately feels like you're explaining to a five year old that Superman comics are not a reliable source of information on how science actually works. Animal testing is hardly the only topic this happens with, but it's deeply frustrating to have to have those kinds of debates with childish opinions based on fabrications or misinformation over and over when you just want to make progress on what is actually an important topic. At some point, you just start to pull away and work quietly by yourself, and ignore the children stamping their feet and screaming, because no amount of explaining it to them ever seems to be enough. We see this attitude from experts in many industries, including agriculture, oil, pharmacy, military R&D, sciences in general, etc. Much like animal testing, how you deal with the problem that most people just don't know what the hell they're talking about, but because of emotional needs, feel entitled to be heard about topics they're passionate about is very complicated -- and hard to talk about.
  - meowface 11y ago
meowface 11y ago
It's a very difficult problem. As I said, obviously the intentions are good and the benefits are very clear. But still, it's an issue of ends justifying the means. Decades and centuries ago, many intelligent and educated people would argue that experiments on humans (like the Tuskegee syphilis study) are for the greater good, even if it it's at the expense of some certain group. They would say the ends justify the means. Now, in 2015, very few people would say that. I don't know if humans have the right to effectively (metaphorically) cannibalize other species in order to improve our own, just because we're more intelligent.
- SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
  > They would say the ends justify the means. Now, in 2015, very few people would say that. To be fair, I'm at least consistent in that I think human experimentation is prudent and should be done, precisely because I think it's unethical to stall some of the research questions it would answer. Of course, we actually /do/ human experimentation, including experimentation we're not sure will work or which is not directly consented to by the human, moderated by the utility we get out of it and the risk to the human. > But still, it's an issue of ends justifying the means. What else is there to justify (or condemn) them? We are but passing minds, waves cresting and breaking in a sea of chemicals. I view it as a duty to try and see as many healthy and happy minds as I can, and to be a net increase on that. There simply is no reality except the one here, and our net impact on that all that matters. There's no cosmic tally after about how good you meant to be. So while it would break my heart to, I would push down the plunger to kill everyone one of my pet rats so I didn't have to see so many skeletal faces in the children's cancer ward anymore. > I don't know if humans have the right to effectively (metaphorically) cannibalize other species in order to improve our own, just because we're more intelligent. At the end of the day, my views are really the emotional, monsterous ones: I simply value human lives at over a million rats to a human, so I'm willing to kill billions of them a year on the alter of saving those children. Once I have that valuation, the rest is pretty easy deductions about what allows the advance of research in the biochemistry. So I'm curious: do you not regard the people who die through your inaction to be your fault? and if they are your fault, how many human children is a rat worth?

interfixus 11y ago

Reasonable questions, valid points, no clearcut answers. Every country wishing to known as civilized should have strict - and I do mean strict - legislation on all aniaml experimentation. We probably cannot get around it yet, but every single instance should be controlled, monitored, and damned hard to get permission for. My mechanisms for pain and suffering really aren't any different from those of a dog, a pig, a cat, or a rat. I don't remember offering myself up for even modestly unpleasant experimentation in cancer research, and may not have the rigtht to impose such unpleasentness on others. Of course, I am a hypocrite like everyone else, happily consuming whatever medication I may need, without asking awkward questions about its history and origins.

SoftwareMaven 11y ago
My mechanisms for pain and suffering really aren't any different from those of a dog, a pig, a cat, or a rat. The mechanism is the same, but the effect is very different. Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. While that does not justify putting animals in unnecessary pain, it does mean we should be careful not to anthropomorphize our reactions to pain (or anything else, for that matter) onto animals.
- asciimo 11y ago
  > Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. How do you know this? I see more evidence against this statement than I see for it.
- meowface 11y ago
  >Other animals do not exhibit the anxiety about expecting or experiencing pain that humans do. What are you basing this on? If a mammal is exposed to pain, any stimulus similar to that initial cause of pain will cause anxiety and fear, just like in humans. They may not understand the cause-effect relationship of the stimulus as clearly as humans, but they certainly have the ability to expect and fear unpleasant stimuli.
SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
I just... People don't say anything about the meat industry (okay, some of the vegetarian/vegan ones /do/), or that our cities are essentially organized to be large scale breeding factories for animals which we then massacre as annoyances, but I have to hear all the time about the poor rats given cancer for science. One just has to think, the people complaining to me about laboratory animals are just emotional wrecks who should be kept from making real decisions about the world and left to ride out the high of their brain chemicals. The truth is, I think you're worse than a hypocrite: I think you're a 5 year old screaming out his emotional needs about the rat being his friend and wanting to be a good boy so we shouldn't hurt animals, without a real understanding or opinion about the problem, hassling grownups trying to actually get things done. I think virtually everyone I've talked to about animal testing is. I'm just left with the sense that people who bother to complain about the topic are either a) crazy idealists willing to trade human lives to save the rats or b) children without real opinions who want to be seen doing the "right thing", and are going about it in a shallow, childlike way. Either way, go away. Adults have real work to do. Come back when you have an opinion that actually says something about the problem. Ed: This post is harsher than it should be, but I will leave it unaltered for documentation reasons. My frustrations stem from the fact that very often, the people I'm debating against simply are speaking from an emotional need that cherry-picked "facts" from questionable sources, and it ultimately feels like you're explaining to a five year old that Superman comics are not a reliable source of information on how science actually works. Animal testing is hardly the only topic this happens with, but it's deeply frustrating to have to have those kinds of debates with childish opinions based on fabrications or misinformation over and over when you just want to make progress on what is actually an important topic. At some point, you just start to pull away and work quietly by yourself, and ignore the children stamping their feet and screaming, because no amount of explaining it to them ever seems to be enough. We see this attitude from experts in many industries, including agriculture, oil, pharmacy, military R&D, sciences in general, etc. Much like animal testing, how you deal with the problem that most people just don't know what the hell they're talking about, but because of emotional needs, feel entitled to be heard about topics they're passionate about is very complicated -- and hard to talk about.
- meowface 11y ago

meowface 11y ago

It's a very difficult problem. As I said, obviously the intentions are good and the benefits are very clear. But still, it's an issue of ends justifying the means. Decades and centuries ago, many intelligent and educated people would argue that experiments on humans (like the Tuskegee syphilis study) are for the greater good, even if it it's at the expense of some certain group. They would say the ends justify the means. Now, in 2015, very few people would say that. I don't know if humans have the right to effectively (metaphorically) cannibalize other species in order to improve our own, just because we're more intelligent.

SomeStupidPoint 11y ago
> They would say the ends justify the means. Now, in 2015, very few people would say that. To be fair, I'm at least consistent in that I think human experimentation is prudent and should be done, precisely because I think it's unethical to stall some of the research questions it would answer. Of course, we actually /do/ human experimentation, including experimentation we're not sure will work or which is not directly consented to by the human, moderated by the utility we get out of it and the risk to the human. > But still, it's an issue of ends justifying the means. What else is there to justify (or condemn) them? We are but passing minds, waves cresting and breaking in a sea of chemicals. I view it as a duty to try and see as many healthy and happy minds as I can, and to be a net increase on that. There simply is no reality except the one here, and our net impact on that all that matters. There's no cosmic tally after about how good you meant to be. So while it would break my heart to, I would push down the plunger to kill everyone one of my pet rats so I didn't have to see so many skeletal faces in the children's cancer ward anymore. > I don't know if humans have the right to effectively (metaphorically) cannibalize other species in order to improve our own, just because we're more intelligent. At the end of the day, my views are really the emotional, monsterous ones: I simply value human lives at over a million rats to a human, so I'm willing to kill billions of them a year on the alter of saving those children. Once I have that valuation, the rest is pretty easy deductions about what allows the advance of research in the biochemistry. So I'm curious: do you not regard the people who die through your inaction to be your fault? and if they are your fault, how many human children is a rat worth?