Is Animal Testing Justifiable or Should We Seek Alternatives?

[Another God]

Ok, I am starting to get the point now. What makes a moral justifiable: if it serves us a purpose in surviving.

I think I can agree with everything said in this post Monique. Causing needless suffering is morally reprehensible. Bringing it back ontopic: Causing suffering for scientific experiments is not needless, although it needs to be balanced so that it is at least more beneficial than it is negative. In my opinion, the potential benefits far outweigh the typical amount of suffering a lab animal my go through, and so yes scientific experimentation is completely justified. Of course though, people that go to extremes and do stupid things: "I wonder how this animal will react if we start cutting off one limb at a time" sort of stupidity, are completely unjustified. The suffering they are causing, and the disgust that that would cause anyone looking on etc is far greater than anything they could really learn from doing it.


Self Adjoint, I do think that Fear is a very large part of morality. Most of the rules set up in an ethical system (PS: In case u haven't noticed, i use ethics and morals interchangebly. They mean the same thing) are to do with limiting the risk of you suffering. They are a protective layer of rules, making you feel safer. Allowing you to stop fearing for your life.

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Loren Booda
Definition of a pet: an animal one wouldn't eat unless to survive.

That makes most animals (including humans) pets.

How about six- and eight-legged critters?? I wouldn't eat them and I don't consider them as pets.. at all :P

 

[lavalamp]

Another God, have you seen the film Phenomenon? It has John Travolta in it, he develops a brain tumour and it "unlocks" part of his brain and allow's him to become telekinetic and really smart etc.
The tumour is slowly killing him, the doctors say that if they operate on him, it will shorten his life (ie: the operation will kill him but he would only have a couple of days left at the most anyway), but that they could gain all kinds of scientific insight into how the brain works, how to help cure cancer and perhaps "unlock" these abilities in other people.

Well he doesn't go in for any of that and tuns off, but I'm interested to know whether you would have undergone the operation? It will benefit the human species tremendously in many different ways, but it will kill you. So what do you do?

 

[Another God]

Originally posted by lavalamp
It will benefit the human species tremendously in many different ways, but it will kill you. So what do you do?

take care of myself. I don't give a crap about the human species. I am only interested in them in so far as they keep me alive and make my life pleasurable. Why else would we have communities? For the sake of the community? Thats circular.

We ahve communities for ourselves. And without ourselves, the community is meaningless.

 

[lavalamp]

So you wouldn't feel bad about not helping all of those other people with brain tumours? You'd rather that all of those poeple that you COULD have saved just died, so long as you are alive?

Or would you feel bad about it, but still prefer to live those extra couple of days? If you did feel bad about it, then wouldn't that make it morally wrong? Think of the people that would realize how selfish you had been before you answer this.

Two other related points, do you give blood? And when you die, would you like your organs to be donated to others so that they may live?

I know that as soon as I am old enough I will start giving blood and get myself a donor card (I think the age limit is 18).

 

[Another God]

Well, if I only had a couple of days to live, then i probably would let them experiment. But the chances of me ever giving in, and accepting that I only have a few days left to live is pretty unlikely. I am a fighter, i never give in, and death is not an option for me.

As for donating organs after death, sure, my name is down for that. This goes in line with the unnecessary suffering of animals. If I am dead, then I have no need for my organs. So by donating I am in no way helping myself, and as far as society is concerned, I am doing a good thing. If I chose not to give them though, then I am just an *******. In my opinion, society should be able to take organs from a dead body readily, without needing the permission of the dead person or their family. But I say that from my ethical point of view, with no faith in afterlife/god etc. Since some people do have these beliefs, they would disagree with me.

whatever, this gets complicated when u start talking about real people.

I have given blood, but I don't do it often. Mostly because its a pain in the arse to go out of my way and do it. I also have reservations about it: This will sound silly, but I am unsure how donating blood regularly may affect my longevity . See, I actually want to live as long as I possibly can (forever if I can), and if donating blood is limiting my immediate life span, then I won't do it. There is no evidence yet to say that it does, but its not something that anyone could really study. Its just a hypothesis i thought up based on the replicative senesence of our cells: if our cells can only replace themselve so many times: then won't taking several billions cells out of our body regularly mean that more cells need to be made to replace them... etc

 

[lavalamp]

Don't worry about it affecting your life span, I have a General Studies teacher (he also teaches Business Studies and Economics), he gives blood once every 3 weeks for over 30 years and he's ancient.

There are also millions of people who suffer horrific injuries, lose pints of blood and go on to lead reasonably happy, mentally scarred, lives.

I would hate to live forever, after the first 90 or so years you wouldn't able to look after yourself properly, then comes the humiliation of depending on others and all kinds of other problems.
If you're talking about staying young and living for ever, then I would not want to do that either. Times would move on, fashions would change etc. and you'd be left behind.

Maybe that's why we only live for a finite time, unlike trees which, given the right environment, can live forever.

 

[Another God]

you'd only get left behind if you stayed behind.

Staying with the times is up to ourselves.

 

[Loren Booda]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Loren Booda
Definition of a pet: an animal one wouldn't eat unless to survive.

That makes most animals (including humans) pets.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Monique,
How about six- and eight-legged critters?? I wouldn't eat them and I don't consider them as pets.. at all :P

You're missing some great lobster, soft-shelled crabs (and chocolate covered insects)! Have you ingested your maximum USDA allowed detritus today? Remember the banana bunch you buy may have housed a tarantula last week.

 

[Oblivion]

I am very against animal testing. I believe all life forms on Earth are equal and deserve the same respect. I am however, for human testing.

 

[Another God]

Understandably, i assume you haven't spent the time reading the last few pages worth of posts huh?

Why do you believe all life forms on Earth are equal? Where do you draw the line (or the grey area) that separates life form from not a life form?

(You must do it somewhere. Either that or you are a lithotroph (able to make energy from inorganic materials))

 

[russ_watters]

Originally posted by Monique
I want to ask both of you: do you live with pets? At the moment we have got 4 large dogs and 4 cats, and some other animals. Once you understand the psychology of these 'lower' animals, you'll realize we are not all that. And no, I am not projecting my feelings upon them.

I don't own any pets. It wouldn't work well in my apartment. This past weekend, I house-sat for my parents and fed their cats - one didn't want me to be out of sight the entire time. He slept on my chest. I like cats.

Now a question for you - have you read any of the theory of rights? Hobbes and Locke?

Rights/morals are a really neat but sometimes difficult concept. The vast majority of people just accept them as something handed down by God when in fact you can derive them by logical proofs and experimentation very much like math and science.

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by russ_watters
Now a question for you - have you read any of the theory of rights? Hobbes and Locke?

No, I haven't.. maybe I should. I read the world of Sofie (or whatever the english translation is) and it really made me want to read more philosofie..

 

[Another God]

I think its called Sophies World here. I haven't read that yet, but I don't think I should bother now, I believe it for entry level philosophy sort of people?

Philosophy is neat. Everyone should do philosophy in primary and high school. Our education system is stuffed up.

 

[Hurkyl]

(You must do it somewhere. Either that or you are a lithotroph (able to make energy from inorganic materials))

No! Don't eat my pet rock!

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Another God
I think its called Sophies World here. I haven't read that yet, but I don't think I should bother now, I believe it for entry level philosophy sort of people?

Philosophy is neat. Everyone should do philosophy in primary and high school. Our education system is stuffed up.

Yes, the book is very basic. It introduces the ideas of different philosophers in a novel style book. At the time I read the book I had no idea! what philosophy was and couldn't come up with a single philosopher. After reading the book I found out that I had known more about it than I thought, the concept was just completely unknown to me :P

Yes, I too think Philosophy should take a better position in society. There was once a Dutch television production, where an interviewer went to 26 accomplished professionals and asked them: what makes your life worth living? The series was called of Beauty and Consolation. Every interview lasted a day and they cut it into an hour. These people were so inspiring, talking about moral and purpose etc... the only show of its kind I have seen..

BUT we were talking about animal testing

 

[Monique]

Originally posted by Another God
I have given blood, but I don't do it often. Mostly because its a pain in the arse to go out of my way and do it. I also have reservations about it: This will sound silly, but I am unsure how donating blood regularly may affect my longevity . See, I actually want to live as long as I possibly can (forever if I can), and if donating blood is limiting my immediate life span, then I won't do it. There is no evidence yet to say that it does, but its not something that anyone could really study. Its just a hypothesis i thought up based on the replicative senesence of our cells: if our cells can only replace themselve so many times: then won't taking several billions cells out of our body regularly mean that more cells need to be made to replace them... etc

Don't worry about that Another God, blood cells are made from stem cells in your bone marrow. Stem cells have active telomerase, the don't senece you should have know that or are you trying to talk your way out of something?

 

[Another God]

actually, i did not know that stem cells had active telomerase. Are you certain about that?

 

[Monique]

100% sure, hematopoetic cells have telomerase activity.. let me look it up.. I can't find the assay I once wrote about it (things got misplaced when I moved).

I had a graph from a publication which shows telomere shortening in different cell types. Stem cells and hematopoetic cells have low levels of telomerase activity which slows down the shortening on telomeres, it doesn't completely cancel it though.

 

[Monique]

I quickly looked up a publication which touches upon the subject:


Review article in Differentiation
Telomerase and differentiation in multicellular organisms:
Turn it off, turn it on, and turn it off again

http://www.swmed.edu/home_pages/cellbio/shay-wright/publications/differentiation%202002.pdf

There must be better, more recent papers on it..

 

[Monique]

Well, before you trust my words too much, go look at the following paper, it was written in 2003 and my assay probably in 99.. you might actually have a point not donating blood too much.

I briefly read the abstract and it seems that mouse have no problem regenerating blood cells in great amounts, in humans it is in fact different, the little telomerase activity doesn't seem to make much difference, decide for yourself:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12799281&dopt=Abstract

 

[Another God]

hmmm...yeah, well, I sort of thought that. Until you said anything I was pretty sure that in Humans at least Telomerase only works in the germ cells... But as soon as you said anything I realized that I had no real knowledge on the topic. I probably should actually read these articles.

Give me a couple of weeks though. 4 weeks left now until I have finished my undergrad degree (except honours...still to come.)

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Question, is there really an arugment about animal cruelty with animal testing? I mean there is the animal welfare act of 1985 which specificly states how animals should be treated. Obviously there are a few labs that do not follow the acts guidelines, but is that animal testings fault? That like saysing driving is bad and we should ban it because some people fail to obey speed limits.

 

[Loren Booda]

Some would say that testing children is cruel, too.

 

[notal33t]

Hornets nest!

What I had intended as being a comment on cruelty and blindness within the human race seems to have gotten out of all proportion in a discussion vis a vis animal rights and human greed. The moral highground I was attempting to define was IMHO the use of the natural resources of nature in a manner that causes the least disruption to the biosphere! I site precolombian amerindians as an example of such a culture. I believe that "science" in it's true calling is something that should further THAT end!

AN END TO THE SCIENCE OF DESTRUCTION AND WASTE!

 

[Moonbear]

I hope this hasn't already been brought up in this topic. I haven't read through all the posts and have debated the need for animal research so many times that I'm just too tired to do it again. Instead, there's another site that is dedicated to this topic that explains quite well the stance of researchers and status of regulations (in the US) for conducting animal research.

For anyone who wants more information about animal research and animal welfare, see the Foundation for Biomedical Research's website. http://www.fbresearch.org

In particular, there is an FAQ section that explains a number of things, including the difference between animal welfare and animal rights and why researchers are committed to promoting animal welfare. Note the emphasis that it is a privilege of researchers to be able to use animals for improving human life, and that we have the utmost respect for those animals we use, and do everything we can to ensure their welfare.

 

[noratmedicine]

Hi, I've just been discussing this at 'cherub forums: animal testing good or bad?"

please see www.curedisease.net[/url] [url]www.curedisease.com[/url] [url]www.navs.org[/url] [url]www.speakcampaigns.org[/url] [url]www.mrmcmed.org[/url] [url]www.dlrm.org[/url] [PLAIN]www.caare.org.uk www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr www.pcrm.org www.buav.org www.nzavs.org.nz

these are mostly created by and contributed to by doctors and scientists. an important difference between medical based anti animal experimentation (vivisection) sites and pro a.e. sites is that the anti viv sites give evidence for the fact that medicine for one species cannot be reliable based on any other species and therefore human medicine cannot be based on animals

"92% of new drugs fail in clinical trials, after they have passed all the safety tests in animals" US FDA (2004) "Innovation or Stagnation, Challenge and Opportunity on the Critical Path to new Medical Products" (36).

"A drug that is tested in animals will have a completely different effect in man. There are uncounted examples that could be cited." (Dr. med. Karlheinz Blank) Lord Platt, President of the Royal College of Physicians said "No amount of animal testing can make a drug safe because humans react differently from animals." The report of the british pharmaceutical industries expert committee on drug toxicity said "Information from one animal species cannot be taken as valid for any other. It is not a matter of balancing the cruelty and suffering of animals against the gain of humanity spared from the suffering, because that is not the choice. Animals die to enable hundreds of new drugs to be marketed annually, but the gain is to industry, not mankind." Dr Herbert Gundersheimer, "Results from animal tests are not transferable between species, and therefore cannot guarantee product safety for humans…In reality these tests do not provide protection for consumers from unsafe products, but rather are used to protect corporations from legal liability." Report of the Medical Research Council "It must be emphasized that it is impossible to extrapolate quantitatively from one species to any other species." The Lancet, "We know from drug toxicity studies that animals are very imperfect indicators of human toxicity: only clinical experience and careful control of the introduction of new drugs can tell us about their real dangers." Dr Ralph Heywood, former scientific director of huntington life sciences, one of the largest contract research laboratories in the world speaking to the CIBA Foundation said "The best guess for the correlation of adverse toxic reactions between human and animal data is somewhere between 5% and 25%" and "90% of our work is done for legal and not for scientific reasons."
So the USFDA, from drug co's own data on millions of animals over decades indicates that animals are incorrect in determining drug toxicity for humans 92% of the time. It is a legal device, not a scientific one.

Microdosing Pharmagene of Asterand are making genetically engineered drugs made for individuals as drug effects vary between humans

CANCER from Campaign Against Fraudulent Medical Research www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr

"Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them." - Linus Pauling PhD (Two-time Nobel Prize winner). Dr A. Sabin, creator of the vaccine of his name said, "It is time to end cancer research on animals because it is not related to humans." And Dr Irwin Bross in Fundamental and Applied Toxicology "The moral is that animal model systems not only kill animals they also kill humans. There is no good factual evidence to show that the use of animals in cancer research has led to the prevention or cure of a single human cancer." And Dr J F Brailsford "During the past fifty years scientists experimenting with thousands of animals have found 700 ways of causing cancer. But they had not discovered one way of curing the disease."


Have you ever wondered why, despite the billions of dollars spent on cancer research over many decades, and the constant promise of a cure which is forever "just around the corner", cancer continues to increase?
Cancer Is Increasing

Once quite rare, cancer is now the second major cause of death in Western countries such as Australia, the U.S.A. and the United Kingdom. In the early 1940s cancer accounted for 12% of Australian deaths. (1)ref # d'Espaignet, E.T. et al., Trends in Australian Mortality 1921-1988, Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS), Canberra, 1991, p. 33

By 1992 this figure had climbed to 25.9% of Australian deaths. (2)ref # Australian Bureau of Statistics, Causes of Death, Australia 1992, ABS, Canberra, 1993, p.1

and from safer med. campaign,
Given substances are not necessarily carcinogenic to all species. Studies show that 46% of chemicals found to be carcinogenic in rats were not carcinogenic in mice. [23] If species as closely related as mice to rats do not even contract cancer similarly, it's not surprising that 19 out of 20 compounds that are safe for humans caused cancer in animals. [24]


The US National Cancer Institute treated mice growing 48 different "human" cancers with a dozen different drugs proven successful in humans, and in 30 of the cases, the drugs were useless in mice. Almost two-thirds of the mouse models were wrong. Animal experimentation is not scientific because it is not predictive.

The US National Cancer Institute also undertook a 25 year screening programme, testing 40,000 plant species on animals for anti-tumour activity. Out of the outrageously expensive research, many positive results surfaced in animal models, but not a single benefit emerged for humans. As a result, the NCI now uses human cancer cells for cytotoxic screening.[25]

Dr. Richard Klausner, as director of the US National Cancer Institute, plainly states:

"The history of cancer research has been a history of curing cancer in the mouse... We have cured mice of cancer for decades - and it simply didn't work in humans."
refs 23# DiCarlo DrugMet Rev,15; p409-131984.
24# Mutagenesis1987;2:73-78.
25# Handbook of Laboratory Animal Science, Volume II Animal Models Svendensen and Hau (Eds.) CRC Press 1994 p4.

you are certainly correct in saying that animal tests do not identify human carcionogens, even warnings on cigarette packets were delayed for 10 years due to animal 'tests' and 180 years for arsenic, also asbestos, literally thousands of human carcinogens. legal not scientific

Re insulin/diabetes as so little funds are put into human based research compared to animal we are unlikely to learn more about it.

i agree that animal res. isn't undertaken on a whim, getting published, qualifications, income and legal protection are major motives. even noble motives though do not lead to worthwhile results ie cures or protecting humans.

AIDS. from dr ray greek http://www.navs.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7753
"According to the February 20, 2009 issue of Science:

SIVcpz, the chimpanzee virus that infected humans and triggered the AIDS epidemic, caused no harm to apes. But new data reveal that wild chimps infected with SIVcpz are more likely to die than are uninfected chimps . . . Captive chimps experimentally infected with HIV-1 typically suffer no harm, which led several researchers to propose that chimps had lived with SIVcpz for centuries and that their immune systems had evolved to coexist with the virus. But few SIVcpz- infected chimps in the wild were identified until about a decade ago . . .

We hear all the time about a new breakthrough using animals. What often goes unreported in the news is that a vast majority of these fail to translate to humans. Since HIV was isolated researchers have been experimenting with nonhuman primates seeking a vaccine or cure. Neither have been found; for humans. Many vaccines and preventive measures have been found for monkeys. Yet the NIH continues to fund experiments on a different species suffering from a different virus.

Animals are not going to be predictive for humans because:

1.
animals and humans have different genes;
2.
animals and humans control and express the same genes differently;
3.
animals and humans live in different external environments (notice that wild chimpanzees are apparently susceptible to SIVcpz while captive chimps were not);
4.
animals and humans live in different internal environments (even if we all had the same gene, how all those genes and proteins interact would be different);
5.
even if animals and humans suffered from exactly the same virus in exactly the same fashion it does not follow they will respond similarly to the same treatment because different biochemical pathways may be involved.

The above differences highlight why monkeys are no better predictors for humans than are our more distant relatives, mice. A percentage of genetic similarity does not imply predictive ability..."

 

[Mkorr]

Pretty strange argument since non-human animals have been predicative for humans. Do you know how medicines are tested? If you think animal testing is inefficient, you should not dare to take any medicine whatsoever, neither antibiotics or antibiotics. If you think animal testing is inefficient, you must think that modern medicine is inefficient.

Non-human animals and humans do have the same genes. In fact, if you cut out an arbitrary gene from a chimp and one from a human, the probability that they will be identical on average is quite large, not just in structure (100%), but also sequence.

Also, there is a unity of life when it comes to basal metabolic processes. This is, in fact, a very strong piece of evidence for common ancestry. Furthermore, scientists can control and modify the external and internal environment in experiments.

Of course, there are limits to what we can gain from animal testing, but they are not what you present them to be. You could have learned this from some very basic reading on the subject.

http://www.animalresearch.info/en/quick

Does animal research work?

The combined weight of many different kinds of evidence from medical and scientific history shows that animal research has played a crucial role in basic and applied research, and in the development and testing of new therapies. It is often useful to look at the role of animals in many examples from history and ask whether the same progress could have been made any other way. There are many examples on this website.

Aren’t animals different to humans?

Obviously there are differences between animals and people. But under the skin, the biology of humans and other animals, particularly mammals, is remarkably similar. We have the same organs, controlled by the same nerves and hormones, as many other species. Where there are differences, researchers know about them, and such differences can actually help scientific understanding of a particular problem.

Many animals suffer quite naturally from the same diseases as humans, and can be used to study those diseases. In other cases, researchers can use an "animal model" of a disease which is close to the human condition.

Where do medicines come from?

Most medicines and treatments are only available as a result of extensive research, development and testing over many years - often decades. The study of animals throughout this process gives valuable insights into how the healthy and diseased body works. Targets for new medicines to act on need to be identified in the body, and any undesirable effects that they cause elsewhere need to be understood. Animal studies are also used to show how a medicine is taken into, distributed and processed by the body.

Let us take a look at the misconceptions section of that website. Look what I found:

Microdosing

"Microdosing can replace animal safety tests."

Microdosing is intended to study how very small doses of potential medicines behave in human volunteers (sometimes called Phase 0 human trials). It should make the drug discovery process more efficient by highlighting earlier whether a compound is suitable. New, urgently needed medicines could be available sooner and more cheaply as a result.

If microdosing shows that certain potential medicines are poorly suited for people, it should reduce the number of animals used by eliminating these compounds from further development and testing in animals. But compounds that look promising would need further development, including animal tests.Microdosing has limitations like any other method of testing. There is no guarantee that the body's reaction to a microdose will be the same as it is to a full dose. It is a relatively new method and has yet to be fully validated, although encouraging moves in this direction are being made by scientists and regulatory authorities.

Here is HIV/AIDS

HIV & AIDS research

"25 years of primate research has failed to find vaccines, cures or treatments for AIDS."

HIV and AIDS have been difficult to tackle because the virus targets the body’s immune system, and because it mutates rapidly. Leading researchers have recently recommended that more basic research should be done to help us understand the virus better, before further vaccine trials are carried out in volunteers. While we do not yet have an effective vaccine, animal studies have been crucial in identifying the virus, developing diagnostic tests, and for producing therapies that have prolonged millions of lives.

HIV was identified in the early 1980s as a retrovirus – the class of virus that had been studied in animals, but had only been found to infect humans a short time previously. The blood test (to test blood for transfusion as well as to diagnose the disease) was developed using animals. The first treatment for HIV was shown to have activity against retroviruses in animals, and once it was shown to also be active against HIV went directly into clinical trials.

By studying monkeys with a related virus, SIV, in the first few weeks after infection, scientists were able to understand more about the virus and develop better antiretroviral medicines for HIV patients. Many now take two or three pills a day to stop the virus from reproducing while helping the immune system to recover. Animal research also played a key role in the development of post-exposure prevention that has saved many victims of needlestick injuries and other exposures to HIV.

As for your cancer quackery, I find it hard to take it seriously. The reason cancer is getting more common may be because people are getting older, thus increasing the chance that something will go wrong on the cellular level. One of the reasons that progress is slow is that "cancer" is not one thing, but a general category of many different conditions.

 

[mazinse]

is noratmedicine a troll, where is he getting all this specious stuff from

 

[noratmedicine]

The unreferenced information given to counter my claims is I presume from a pro-vivisection site. Can you show a causal and not a casual relationship between vivisection and any advance in human health. Not simply a post hoc ergo propter hoc (after that therefore because of that) argument. The references I have given have been from diverse sources including the US FDA and even Huntington Life Sciences, none of them of an animal rights nature. It is hardly surprising that those who benefit from vivisection would speak positively about it. As Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand the truth when his salary depends on him not understanding it."

I have not presented any 'specious' information and the sites referred to have all been listed. If the question about where it is from is sincere I would advise one look to those sites for an answer.

The information about why it is impossible to base human medicine reliably on any species of animal is valid. Humans and cabbages have 50% DNA in common. Would you say that 50% of human diseases would be cured by cabbage experiments?

 

[Frame Dragger]

I love animals to the point of weeping thinking about this issue. HOWEVER, I recognize the necessity, and am familiar with the issues surrounding this. The reality is that we have a choice between human and animal lives. There is a balance that is struck, and we do exploit and kill these animals. The alternative would be to do the same to people (a practice that is already too common) which is at LEAST as morally reprehensible. I also know people who test on animals (mice, rats, cats, monkeys) and they are not bloodthirsty... I couldn't tolerate that kind of person.

Perhaps a distinction needs to be drawn for people, that life is very GREY, and this is one of the murkiest issues. YES, some financial issues are at play, and in some cases it is (or was) greed, but more often it would cost SO much to achieve current results with computer models and human testing... that many would not HAVE their medication, medical devices, etc.

The wise person who loves animals, from mice to people, has to recognize that it is no longer possible to entirely separate the fact from fiction. Moreover, consider the benefit to society, the world, and the future. Smallpox is GONE... that is amazing. Human nature may change, but no time soon. People will contract disease, or need surgery, and they will want to live, more than they want the animals that died for that tech to live. It's not right, or wrong, it's apex predation taken to a new height.
It FEELS wrong, and I have deep reservations about some of this research (especially in the realm of psych and neurobiology with which I am most familiar, and where the experiments are arguably 'cruel'), but I see no alternative at this time. If we expect to reach the point where we can spare animals AND people, we need to pass through this point.

I would also add, that people who are OUTRAGED over this issue, often neglect animals for food, abandoned pets, etc. People need to consider how selective they are being in their outrage. When I was younger I felt the same way as much of the (old) PETA organization did. I still feel terrible about matters, but I, you, me, didn't make the world or the universe, or the laws of thermodynamics. Whatever the source, we do what we have to, like the animals we are.

EDIT: @ noratmedicine: "I have not presented any 'specious' information and the sites referred to have all been listed. If the question about where it is from is sincere I would advise one look to those sites for an answer." No, you're making an argument so the burden to make it is yours. That's very basic, unless you don't actually intend to do more than "drive-by" post.
"As Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand the truth when his salary depends on him not understanding it."
Indeed. How much harder when your life may depend on it? If your argument is that human nature should change, you're not making a REAL argument. Argue from the science, or the morality... not a fictional plea that people accept death or disease in place of other animals. Right or wrong, that's not effective as debate, merely a "shock tactic".

 

[noratmedicine]

to frame dragger, thanks for your opinion. I apologise in advance for any typing errors. you say "I love animals to the point of weeping thinking about this issue. HOWEVER, I recognize the necessity, and am familiar with the issues surrounding this. The reality is that we have a choice between human and animal lives. There is a balance that is struck, and we do exploit and kill these animals. The alternative would be to do the same to people (a practice that is already too common) which is at LEAST as morally reprehensible. I also know people who test on animals (mice, rats, cats, monkeys) and they are not bloodthirsty... I couldn't tolerate that kind of person."
If you love animals to the point of tears then you should be very pleased to find that animal experimentation does not benefit humans, in fact has the opposite effect, and can therefore be eliminated completely. "Are there alternatives to vivisection? Of course not. There are no alternatives to vivisection because any method intended to replace it should have the same qualities; but it is hard to find anything in biomedical research that is; and always was; more deceptive and misleading than vivisection. So the methods we propose for medical research should be called ‘scientific methods’… they are not ‘alternatives’".; - Prof. Croce M.D; Fulbright Scholar; Vivisection or Science: A Choice To Make; page 21. may be avail at www.dlrm.org[/url] or [PLAIN]www.nzavs.org.nz; Professor Colin Dollery stated:; "... for the great majority of disease entities; the animal models either do not exist or are really very poor. [We risk] overlooking useful drugs because they do not give a response to the animal models commonly used."(2) Dollery; C. in Risk-Benefit Analysis in Drug Research; ed. Cavalla; 1981; p87.;

"That kind" of person you refer to is very common behind the closed doors of the animal lab, hidden film shows that lack of anaesthetic and people deriving pleasure from causing pain are not uncommon. I will leave this to the side though as supporters of animal experiments need this argument to be based on animal rights as when faced with a scientific/human health argument they have no valid response.

you say "Perhaps a distinction needs to be drawn for people, that life is very GREY, and this is one of the murkiest issues. YES, some financial issues are at play, and in some cases it is (or was) greed, but more often it would cost SO much to achieve current results with computer models and human testing... that many would not HAVE their medication, medical devices, etc."

As I have provided independent and expert information showing animal experimentation to be fraudulent you now call it "murky and grey". It is worse than this but i have no doubt that such partial admissions would not ever have been made without the quotes i included.

What current results specifically? Tell me what advances you believe animal experiments have been essential for.

Computer models, human testing, micro dosing etc are cheaper than animal experiments. The problem with real scientific methods is that they would not convey legal protection to the manufacturer. Though animal experimentation is not a legal reuirement in most of the world, historically, jurys have been duped by these animal 'tests'. Worked for thalidomide (no payouts) and still works now. As any substance including strychnine, cyanide arsenic botulin asbestos HIV infected blood ddt benzene and cigarettes to name a few, PASS animal tests needless to say any pharmaceutical/chemical/pollutant can pass it. This is how these co's get legal protection. Most of their products would fail a valid test.

Human experiments are certainly occurring, to quote Dr Moniem A Fadali MD of doctors and lawyers for responsible medicine www.dlrm.org "Animal exprimentation inevitably leads to human experimentation" Why? The animal experiment does not tell us what will happen to the human who may or may not react like the animal so the first time a drug or medical procedure is tried on a human that is a human experiment. We know the result of basing human medicine on animals; humans now have 30,000 diseases, cancer and other diseases continue a steady rise (carcinogens such as cigarettes and thousands of other substances pass animal 'tests' which only protect the financial health of the manufacturer/polluter and the animal based cancer research is an ongoing failure). "Animal studies are done for legal reasons and not for scientific reasons. The predictive value of such studies for man is meaningless."; - Dr James D. Gallagher; Director of Medical Research; Lederle Laboratories; Journal of the American Medical Association; March 14 1964.;

The public has been successfully duped into believing that this is an animal versus humans issue. It is in fact animal and humans and the environment and the economy versus profits of some very powerful industries mostly and also titles, careers, status, income, publish or perish, inertia, curiosity, easy availability of animals and convenience of using them and guilt to lesser degrees. I do not deny that there may be some (probably young) people who do animal experiments under the mistaken belief that they will cure a disease, something they have been spoonfed to believe since school and in universities, given 'donations' from drug/chem co's. They will not achieve this via animal experiments. As tens of millions of animals are killed in so called medical 'research' each year and humans have about 30,000 diseases and none are cured clearly they will not achieve this. Much money will continue to pour into these 'charities' though and to the profits of drug co's.

you say "The wise person who loves animals, from mice to people, has to recognize that it is no longer possible to entirely separate the fact from fiction. Moreover, consider the benefit to society, the world, and the future." I agree, the fact that a human is not a rat, cat dog, monkey or any other animal and that human medicine cannot reliably be based on any ohter species would be a good fact to start with. Great beneft would come to humans and the environment when this is realized.

you say "Smallpox is GONE... that is amazing." Not really amazing though, it is the inevitable result of the elimination of disease causing conditions which comes about through epidemiology (observation of the human population), you can thank Bentham and Chadwick (and common sense) for that. Their observations of London prior to the fire enabled them to identify disease causing conditions. London and all other cities where these diseases are gone have been built in a hygenic way. Clean water, rubbish and sewage removal, clean food, asepsis.

The enforcement of vaccination laws in england and wales in 1867 lead to a 3 fold increase in smallpox deaths, peaking at 42,000 in 1872, the largest epidemic ever. Smallpox was in decline until then. The towns of Leicester and Dewsbury rejected the vaccine preferring hygeine and sanitation instead. Consequently these towns had the lowest death rates in the country.

To quote Hansard, February 1, 1964 "From 1936 to 1962, two-thirds of the children born in England and Wales were unvaccinated: of these, 4, under the age of 5, died of smallpox. Of the vaccinated group, 86, under the age of 5 were killed by the vaccination and many more seriously injured."

"Dr Charles Henry Kempe, University of Colorado, after a 20 year study Dr Kempe recommends abolishing smallpox vaccination. Since 1948 there have been no deaths from smallpox in the United States. In the same period more than 300 persons have died from smallpox vaccinations, including vaccine induced encephalitis." (The Evening Bulletin, Philadelphia, May 7, 1965) too much more for me to type.

from the campaign against fraudulent medical research www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr "Japan experienced yearly increases in small pox following the introduction of compulsory vaccines in 1872. By 1892, there were 29,979 deaths, and all had been vaccinated.[20] Early in this century, the Philippines experienced their worst smallpox epidemic ever after 8 million people received 24.5 million vaccine doses; the death rate quadrupled as a result."[21]
refs# 20 Trevor Gunn, Mass Immunization, A Point in Question, p 15 (E.D. Hume, Pasteur Exposed - The False Foundations of Modern Medicine, Bookreal, Australia, 1989.)

# 21 Physician William Howard Hay's address of June 25, 1937; printed in the Congressional Record.

"...smallpox vaccination has been followed by violent local and general reactions and by leukaemia." (Professors Aleksandrrowickz and Halileokowski, Medical Academy of Crakow, Poland, Lancet, May 6, 1967.)

"Even a procedure anchored in law, such as the smallpox vaccination, is now the subject of such strong doubts that Holland has abolished compulsory vaccination for an initial period of 2 years." (Dr Med Eckhard, Hanover, 1924)

"Dr Marmelzat, university of Southern California announced that smallpox vaccination causes cancer in the form of malignant tumours..." (front page of Medical News, 1962).

I can't be bothered typing more quotes on this. Though this one is very relevant to vivisection (animal experimentation) and vaccines, "Opinions on matters held by the public to be 'obvious', long considered natural and necessary, are only so because they are shared widely without question." Maria Chiara Giardini

you say "Human nature may change, but no time soon. People will contract disease, or need surgery, and they will want to live, more than they want the animals that died for that tech to live." Another statemnet which claims, without evidence, that we benefit from animal experiments. it is impossible to say exactly how many of the 30,000 diseases we have came from animal 'tested' substances but i certainly know that none have been cured by it. As regards surgery...
"I have never known a single good surgeon who has learned anything from vivisection." Dr Abel Desjardins, President of the Society of Surgeons of Paris, foremost surgeon of his time in France and Professor of Surgery, from Hans Ruesch's "One Thousand Doctors (and many more) Against Vivisection." www.nzavs.org.nz[/url] or [url]www.dlrm.org[/URL] (vivisection is animal experimentation)

Dr Robert Lawson Tait (1845-1899) is recognised as the giant of surgical progress and the most innovative and successful surgeon of all time. he said this, "Like every member of my profession I was bought up in teh belief that almost every important fact in physiology had been obtained by vivisection and that many of our most valued means of saving life and diminishing suffering had resulted from experiments on animals. I now know that nothing of the sort is true concerning the art of surgery; and not only do i not believe that vivisection has helped the surgeon one bit, but I know that it has often led him astray."

you say "It's not right, or wrong, it's apex predation taken to a new height." It is wrong. The predators at the top of the apex are very powerful industries predating the human and animal population and the environment for economic gain, not humans predating animals (via 'research') for the general good of humans as i presume you are implying.

"It FEELS wrong, and I have deep reservations about some of this research (especially in the realm of psych and neurobiology with which I am most familiar, and where the experiments are arguably 'cruel'), but I see no alternative at this time. If we expect to reach the point where we can spare animals AND people, we need to pass through this point."

No doubt you want to suggest, as your capital letters indicate, that opponents of animal experimentation only FEEL it to be wrong. The facts indicate that the conclusion that animal experiments are wrong is very well grounded in FACT. i.e It harms humans (and animals) on a grand scale. Prof Croce has already responded above to the use of the term 'alternative'. There are over 400 real scientific methods, ie ones which produce results which are valid for humans with consistency. see [url]www.curedisease.net[/url]

So here are some real scientific methods; ie they are predictive for humans. for drug creation: Microdosing; ie human cell phase then micro dose in humans; ie v. small quantities given and patient monitored as dose increased; patient pref. suffers from problem to be remedied so efficacy can also be tested. makes healthier drugs as the animal testing phase is not indicative; it is a legal device.

Better again is genetically engineered drugs. a dna chip is created and drugs tailor made for individuals asterand or pharmagene are already doing this; Computers enable scientists to design and test new medicines. Though they may never be able to replicate a human patient completely; they will always reap more accurate findings than an entirely different species. Medical computers are now designing new drugs for AIDS; cancer and other diseases. There are many others. So; i am not suggesting that no tests be done; only valid ones.; re cancer; i agree there are many known causes unrelated to animal exp. such as sun; high fat diet; smoking however exposure to substances which pass animal tests such as cigarettes is certainly a cause of cancer. without epidemiological studies being done it is difficult to identify exactly which of the hundreds of thousands of artificial substances is causing cancer or other damage in humans. this type of valid research receives little funding.; These methods would decrease human mortlity as the misleading aspect is removed from drug creation. it would increase a drug companies chance of being sued as; if they chose to market a potentially harmful drug; they would not be able to rely on misleading animal data to claim that they did not know and when your product is the fourth biggest cause of death in the USA (and similar in other wealthy countries) you want legal protection.

"The only thing we have learned about human nature from 50 years of psychological research on animals is how depraved some humans will be in order to gain money, power and titles."

For the sake of brevity I would like to give you an opportunity to tell me the 5 or so greatest advances/benefits to humanity from animal experiments. After 100 years, over a billion dead animals and over a trillion dollars spent there should be some shouldn't there?

 

[zomgwtf]

I haven't read the entire posts put on here because they aren't very well laid out for reading on a forum lol.

I will say this though:
I think that if testing drugs on an organism whether it's a mouse, a fish, or a worm reduces the ill-effects during human trials then GO RIGHT AHEAD. As far as I know a lot of testing is done on flies, worms and rats. Most of which were bred for the single purpose of being used in the test.
I think saving a few humans from immense pains or discomfort... even death is much more important than trying to save a few other organisms.

 

[BoomBoom]

Computer models would be great if they were accurate and comprehensive enough to be trusted with a high level of confidence, but how do you think these computer models are to be developed? They are developed by animal testing of model organisms to determine what all the biochemical pathways are and how each effects one another (an immense undertaking, I might add). You seem to be under the impression that this already exists...and you are mistaken.

 

[zomgwtf]

Computer models would be great if they were accurate and comprehensive enough to be trusted with a high level of confidence, but how do you think these computer models are to be developed? They are developed by animal testing of model organisms to determine what all the biochemical pathways are and how each effects one another (an immense undertaking, I might add). You seem to be under the impression that this already exists...and you are mistaken.

Indeed computer models are no where near having the level of confidence to be depended on without testing on real living organisms.