Animal Testing.

[Mycroft]

This is a conversation I had with someone whose against Animal Testing. They interrupted my walk with flyers and stuff, so they had it coming:

'Are you again animal testing in research?'

'Nope'

'Why not?'

'Because there's no effective alternative. Until we have one, animal research is a necessary evil.'

'You're not an animal lover?'

'Of course.'

'But you support it anyway?'

'It's not a case of whether I support it or not, it's a case of which is the most effective system.'

'What about testing on people?'

'Would you take the first jab of something untested?'

'No.'

'There you go then.'

'What about people in Prisons?'

'You mean like Josef Mengele did?'

'Whose he?'

'The Nazi Angel of Death.'

'So you're saying testing on prisoners makes me a Nazi?'

'I'm saying the ethics are roughly the same. Are you an animal lover?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Got pets?'

'Yes.'

'Ever taken them to the vet?'

'Of course.'

'Did they get any medication?'

'Sometimes.'

'That medication? Tested on animals.'

'But that's different.'

'How?'

'Because it's for the animal's benefit.'

'So you're saying that it's ok to test on animals FOR animals?'

'Yes.'

'But there's still human benefit in that. You take your beloved pet to the vet so it wont fall ill and die. Because you'll miss it. And because of this you're willing to allow drugs that have been tested on animals to be used. Sure, it's for the animal's welfare, but it's for your benefit as much as his.'

We went round in circles after that.

Fun convo, though.

 

[Mycroft]

The concept of necessary evil in animal testing eludes me.

Do you have a better, workable method?

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I'm fine with testing on death row inmates. It would be the only positive they've contributed to the world, for many of them.

 

[Mycroft]

No, I would advocate for ending the testing of potentially dangerous or harmful projects to non-consensual testers. So not animals.

But what's your alternative?

 

[buddhist]

I'm against animal testing. Results don't often carry over to humans anyways, every species' DNA coding and enzymes are different and interacts with various drugs, etc. in ways which do more often than not do not work the same way in humans. Even with humans, different ethnicities often produce different results.

 

[buddhist]

Could you link me to something about the different ethnic origins producing different results? I'd be interested in reading those.

Here's one summary.

 

[Nous]

Animal-model experimentation is not predictive of results in humans, worse, it’s misleading, and is more costly in time and money than human-based studies:

Research on tobacco risks provided some of the strongest evidence that animal experiments can be dangerous and misleading, showing that there is no substitute for human data in searching for the causes of human disease. In the early 1960s, the tobacco lobby used all the political and scientific clout it could muster against health warnings about smoking. One piece of evidence helped their case: animal experiments did not show that inhaled smoke causes cancer. In study after study, animals forced to inhale smoke did not get cancer. As Clarence C. Little wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, June 15, 1961, “There have been many such experiments here and abroad, and none have been able to produce carcinoma of the lung in animals.” Dr. Little worked for the Tobacco Research Committee and for Jackson Laboratory, a large-scale animal breeder. He used the results of animal experiments to argue that lung cancer is not linked to smoking tobacco. Rather, he claimed that lung cancer “is a challenge, an unsolved problem. Its etiology will probably long be an open question.” While Little’s conclusion served both of his employers, it was no help to human health. Indeed, in another editorial published at about the same time, Dr. Donald B. Effler of the Cleveland Clinic argued that animal experiments offered little support for the smoking-cancer link, and that a smoker who does not yet have a chronic cough “assumes little risk to his health.”1 The animal experiments were clearly doing more harm than good, delaying warnings about smoking.

Of course, the key evidence on tobacco came from human studies. Whether one looks at large human populations or at individual smokers, the link between tobacco smoke and cancer is inescapable, even though it was completely missed in animal inhalation experiments. So the question is, have animal experiments led us astray in other areas?

Inaccurate Results

Nutrition is another area where animal experiments have raised repeated problems. While it is easy to feed vitamins, fat, or fiber to animals and to check whether their disease rates rise or fall, the relevance to humans is limited at best, due to major physiological differences between species. For example, if vitamin C helps prevent cancer, what is the impact on cancer research of the fact that rats and mice synthesize vitamin C within their bodies, unlike humans, who do not? Likewise, rats differ from humans in crucial enzyme functions. For example, rats have much higher activity of the 5-desaturase enzyme system, a part of the body’s machinery for processing fats in the diet. Because of this species difference, rats are “not an appropriate human model” for studying the effects of fats.2

Although rats have been used extensively to test the value of various iron supplements, it turns out that rats absorb iron quite differently from humans and do not give usable information. According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “Our studies indicate that rodents cannot be used to assess the quantitative importance of dietary factors in human iron nutrition.”3

Research on stroke provides another example. For years, experimenters have used animal experiments to create brain damage that simulates the effects of a human stroke. They then test out various experimental drugs to see whether they reduce the damage to the brain. But a review in the journal Stroke, published by the American Heart Association in January 1990, reported that, of 25 different treatments that worked in rodents, not a single one worked in human patients. As the Stroke editorial lamented, such animal experiments were not only failing to advance science, they were actually impeding progress:

“Each time one of these potential treatments is observed to be effective based upon animal research, it propagates numerous further animal and human studies consuming enormous amounts of time and effort to prove that the observation has little or no relevance to human disease or that it may have been an artifact of the animal model itself.”4

Are animal experiments that lead researchers astray simply rare exceptions or are they typical of animal tests? Broader data come from a U.S. General Accounting Office review of the safety of all new drugs marketed in the decade 1976 to 1985. All had been animal-tested prior to approval. Of the 198 new drugs for which data were available, 102 (51.5 percent) were more dangerous than pre-market animal tests and limited human tests had indicated, so much so that they had to be relabeled or withdrawn.5​

http://www.pcrm.org/research/health...mpendium/an-examination-of-animal-experiments

Be sure to read all the sections at top of page.

 

[Deathbydefault]

I'm fine with both human and animal testing.
I wouldn't go as far as the angel of death, but progress is more important to me than people I don't care about.
Myself included in that category.

We are not at a point as a species where stunting progress is beneficial for humanity as a whole.
Though I can't say I care much about that either.

 

[Father Heathen]

Testing what, specifically?

 

[Deathbydefault]

Shampoo, of course.

 

[Zardoz]

Shampoo, of course.

That's a point. It all depends on the type of testing, and predicted risks.
A simple rash might be the worst result expected from a shampoo test.
However, much more risky things are tested on animals.
Animals cannot give meaningful consent. Humans can.
Humans can agree to very risky tests indeed, if motivated.
Whether by necessity (in the case of new medicine) or by plain old cash.
Lots of cash will find many willing testers.

 

[Deathbydefault]

That's a point. It all depends on the type of testing, and predicted risks.
A simple rash might be the worst result expected from a shampoo test.
However, much more risky things are tested on animals.
Animals cannot give meaningful consent. Humans can.
Humans can agree to very risky tests indeed, if motivated.
Whether by necessity (in the case of new medicine) or by plain old cash.
Lots of cash will find many willing testers.

Something happening that may shave a few years off my life versus enough money to pay rent for the next couple years.

Yeah, I'm down for a few tests.

 

[VioletVortex]

Well, if animal testing is done, they might as well do human testing. Same principle...
I am completely against animal testing.

 

[MountainPine]

Since when is it necessary to commit evil acts?

 

[Whateverist]

Love my pets. No, you can't use them for testing. But of course -if you're qualified- and you're using the animals to do important and necessary research, you may do the testing. Just not on my pets, me or my kind, or their pets. It will be a good thing when that sort of research is never needed again. I'm way in favor of extremely high levels of oversight to be sure that the animal's suffering is minimized and their needs met in the meantime.

 

[Nous]

But of course -if you're qualified- and you're using the animals to do important and necessary research, you may do the testing.

You don't know of any animal-model experimentation that is "important," "necessary" or predictive of results in humans. Do you?

 

[Whateverist]

Why no, I don't. Do you? Of course the research may be sufficiently necessary if it benefits the animals themselves too.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I'm against most animal testings. Things like cosmetics testing should never happen, but with medical testing sometimes testing on animals is our only option for treatment research and development.

You don't know of any animal-model experimentation that is "important," "necessary" or predictive of results in humans. Do you?

Of course animal studies will not automatically mean the same thing in humans, but it does in many cases, and it allows research to move on to human testing without being totally in the dark. And of course some stuff works the same in humans and animals. Dogs, for example, can take human aspirin, ibuprofen, various antibiotics, and even xanax. Pig internal organs are nearly identical to humans. And even certain horse and pig parts will work just fine in a human.

 

[Silverscale derg]

This is a conversation I had with someone whose against Animal Testing. They interrupted my walk with flyers and stuff, so they had it coming:

'Are you again animal testing in research?'

'Nope'

'Why not?'

'Because there's no effective alternative. Until we have one, animal research is a necessary evil.'

'You're not an animal lover?'

'Of course.'

'But you support it anyway?'

'It's not a case of whether I support it or not, it's a case of which is the most effective system.'

'What about testing on people?'

'Would you take the first jab of something untested?'

'No.'

'There you go then.'

'What about people in Prisons?'

'You mean like Josef Mengele did?'

'Whose he?'

'The Nazi Angel of Death.'

'So you're saying testing on prisoners makes me a Nazi?'

'I'm saying the ethics are roughly the same. Are you an animal lover?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Got pets?'

'Yes.'

'Ever taken them to the vet?'

'Of course.'

'Did they get any medication?'

'Sometimes.'

'That medication? Tested on animals.'

'But that's different.'

'How?'

'Because it's for the animal's benefit.'

'So you're saying that it's ok to test on animals FOR animals?'

'Yes.'

'But there's still human benefit in that. You take your beloved pet to the vet so it wont fall ill and die. Because you'll miss it. And because of this you're willing to allow drugs that have been tested on animals to be used. Sure, it's for the animal's welfare, but it's for your benefit as much as his.'

We went round in circles after that.

Fun convo, though.

Okay this should straighten it out. Stuff should be tested on the species. If the drug is for humans then test it on humans, if it's for dogs then test it on dogs. If it's for cats then cat testing. Not only does every species have it's nuance, it's also unethical to enslave creatures for testing yet I will let it go if it's strictly for their species benefit

 

[Secret Chief]

Have you seen the new 2021 animal testing laws in Europe? They offer life imprisonment.

I haven't. (I presume you mean the EU). Care to summarise?