Why not?
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Is animal testing justified
- Thread starter Spiderman
- Start date
Why not?
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
I have. What right do you have to eat their flesh? What right do you have even to eat vegetables? They too are life-form. If you want to avoid 'karmas' completely, then take "Santhara" (the Jain abandonment of food till death so as to avoid violence to any living form). It has been explained in Bhagawat Purana (Dharmavyadha story) 2,000 years ago, living in complete non-violence to any being is just not possible. We can only try to do the best.
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psychoslice
Veteran Member
Yes but we can get by easily without meat, so why cause all the suffering for animals ?.
No, animal testing is not justifiable on any grounds. First and foremost, animal-model experimentation is not predictive of effects in humans. Therefore, it is not just useless torment of animals, it is misleading and dangerous when the results are relied upon. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine provides unassailable arguments on these issues:
Frequently Asked Questions About Animal Testing
An Examination of Animal Experiments
The PCRM provides an easy way for people who care about the senseless suffering of innocents and are intelligent enough to understand the futility and danger of animal-model experimentation to encourage local laboratories to use alternatives rather than animals: Take Action: Sign this petition to your regional chemical laboratory and tell them to stop testing on animals! - Tell Legislators in Taiwan to Stop Rabies Experiments on Animals
Let’s take an example from the pharmaceutical world. Currently drugs have over a 90% failure rate, which means they are certified safe from animal studies, then fail in human clinical trials or once they reach the market. This crisis has led the FDA, NIH, and DARPA to spend tens of millions of dollars on “human-on-a-chip” research projects, a promising nonanimal testing method.
Broadly, there are significant genetic, molecular, and metabolic differences between humans and animals used for testing. In toxicity tests, often different sexes or strains of the same species react differently to chemicals.
This makes it impossible to accurately predict potential effects of chemicals on humans -- especially given the diversity of our population. Age, developmental stage, disease state, diet -- all of these factors affect how a person would respond to a chemical. Animal tests can’t cover all that diversity.
Additionally, animals are often exposed to doses of chemicals thousands of times higher than humans would ever be exposed to, sometimes leading to dubious results or repeated testing. The cramped, stressful conditions in which animals are kept -- as well as their individual, unique reactions to their environment -- make animal tests extremely unreliable.
Broadly, there are significant genetic, molecular, and metabolic differences between humans and animals used for testing. In toxicity tests, often different sexes or strains of the same species react differently to chemicals.
This makes it impossible to accurately predict potential effects of chemicals on humans -- especially given the diversity of our population. Age, developmental stage, disease state, diet -- all of these factors affect how a person would respond to a chemical. Animal tests can’t cover all that diversity.
Additionally, animals are often exposed to doses of chemicals thousands of times higher than humans would ever be exposed to, sometimes leading to dubious results or repeated testing. The cramped, stressful conditions in which animals are kept -- as well as their individual, unique reactions to their environment -- make animal tests extremely unreliable.
Frequently Asked Questions About Animal Testing
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]
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]
An Examination of Animal Experiments
The PCRM provides an easy way for people who care about the senseless suffering of innocents and are intelligent enough to understand the futility and danger of animal-model experimentation to encourage local laboratories to use alternatives rather than animals: Take Action: Sign this petition to your regional chemical laboratory and tell them to stop testing on animals! - Tell Legislators in Taiwan to Stop Rabies Experiments on Animals
Thief
Rogue Theologian
Are any of these assertions intended to be part of some argument relating to the topic?
Thief
Rogue Theologian
Full disclosure: I am a PCRM member, vegan and animal rights supporter.
That said, I think the 'pro animal' camp's reliance on the irrelevance of animal test results is overblown. Yes, there are plenty of examples -- like penicillin killing guinea pigs -- but many of these 'poster pig' examplars are the result of poor test design -- or testing just to cash in on federal subsidies.
Personally, I think there is a great deal of correspondence between animal physiology and our own, and well designed testing can yield useful results.
Nonetheless, I generally oppose the exploitation of one demographic for the benefit of another, and my objection rests a lot on the moral relationship (equivalence?) between humans and other groups of animals.
Is this comparable? Do animals have the options humans do? Can animals appreciate the interests of their prey, or the full effects of their carnivory? Are animals even moral agents?
I agree there's a phylogenic, anatomic and physiologic equivalence, but this is a moral issue, and I don't think there is a moral equivalence. Humans are unique in their moral agency.
Seriously?
1. Retention of archaic features is not a mandate to use the features for their original purpose.
2. Human canines are clearly useless for the purposes lions and tigers use them. They are relictual.
3. Canines don't exist solely for grasping struggling prey. Musk deer have huge canines; virtual tusks:
Geladas graze, they live on grass. Note their canines.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
But that still provides sustenance, unless you are excreting totally undigested food, which means you have a serious problem going on. What's wrong with enjoying your food?
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Not so much as a right but an ability. But if you wish to use the term "right", then we have the right, as governments dispense rights and most if not all allow it.
Is it better to cause suffering for some animals and find the cure for a disease that is killing millions of humans, or avoid the suffering of the animal and permit the suffering of the humans???
Is it better to cause the suffering of some animals and find the cure for the disease that is killing those very animals, or to allow the disease to continue to kill that species?
On another other level.....causing animal suffering to perfect the latest beauty cream or lipstick is absolutely asinine.
So, in the end, the answer is "It depends".
So you fine killing an animal to sustain yourself?
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
I am.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Yes. We are animals. Other animals kill animals to do the same thing. It's how nature works.
Are you okay with the mass destruction of natural habitats animals need to survive in order to use the land for intensive farming with chemicals and herbicides to grow the grains, fruits and vegetables you eat?
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
I wonder if any of those who are against animal testing will actually address this point.
I shall not be holding my breath.
So I am.
How about for the houses that you and our kind live in?
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Yep, same situation. everything any human does has a measurable impact on the ecosystem, as does the actions of every other living thing. I prefer not to live in a cave.
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
Ok, were being silly arguing the same position.
You might be right. If so, it was my fault. I thought you were saying it was wrong to eat animals. I was saying that it is part of nature and therefore it is okay. I suppose not necessary.....but okay.
I was simply pointing out that vegetarians try to position themselves as 'holier than thou", and that is wrong. The act of eating vegetation also kills animals by destroying millions of acres of habitat.
Although I do eat meat, it is minimal. I actually am borderline vegetarian. I just find the attitudes some people get about the whole question distasteful. I will also say that I do not care for the methods that are often used to kill animals for food these days. That is unnecessary.
Your point? How does this apply to humans? We're fundamentally different from the rest of "Nature."
I think you've got this entirely backwards, MP. Most of our agriculture goes to feeding animals. Eliminate the animals and vast areas of habitat could be recovered.
I did, didn't I?