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Reasonable questions, valid points, no clearcut answers. Every country wishing to known as civilized should have strict - and I do mean strict - legislation on

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

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