Experiments on Animals for medical research

[John Cuthber]

"I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species."

So, you don't kill plants for food then?

 

"To say this is very foolish and its the same as saying "My life is worth more than yours because you are black or my life is worth more than yours since you are disabled""

Nope,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

 

"Life is a precious thing and we should not waste it so carelessly."

Nature wastes a lot more of it than we do.

 

"I believe if there is an alternative to testing on animals outside the human species that we should do it."

And that alternative is?

Edited April 2, 2014 by John Cuthber

[Marshalscienceguy]

"I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species."

So, you don't kill plants for food then?

 

"To say this is very foolish and its the same as saying "My life is worth more than yours because you are black or my life is worth more than yours since you are disabled""

Nope,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

 

"Life is a precious thing and we should not waste it so carelessly."

Nature wastes a lot more of it than we do.

 

"I believe if there is an alternative to testing on animals outside the human species that we should do it."

And that alternative is?

 

Well I would not beat a dog because I think a dog is beneath me just for the fun of it. Which is the idea a person might use to abuse animals, as well as child abuse. I have heard similar justifications for both. "Its ok to kick the dog since it is only a dog. It is beneath me so I can abuse it". Why should being a dog mean one is given the right to abuse it for no reason? An adult might have more power or authority than a child does that mean they have the right to abuse them? I really do not agree with having the right to abuse something since you believe its beneath you. You might be able to beat and steal candy from a 14 year old as an adult. Just because its possible does not mean you should.

 

The point of the killing was to only kill out of necessity not just for pleasure or sport. A person can kill the person living next door. Even if the reasoning was "I found them irritating" it does not mean it was absolutely necessary to kill them. Murder is not legal unless it is considered absolutely necessary and I see no reason in killing something or someone just for the joy of it. If you are going to argue we should be able to kill needlessly what about murder? Murder is not legal but you can sometimes get off on self defense. In nature a lions can kill other lions and take over the pride. However we cant do that in everyday society. If a son kills his father to take over the company it does not mean he did not commit a crime.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Marshalscienceguy

[Arete]

The point of the killing was to only kill out of necessity not just for pleasure or sport.

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the use of animals in scientific research - as it has a rather explicit utilitarian purpose. When using animals for research, you generally have to justify explicitly and precisely why you are using animals and why you can't use an alternative to your ethics committee.

Edited April 2, 2014 by Arete

[Marshalscienceguy]

 

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the use of animals in scientific research - as it has a rather explicit utilitarian purpose. When using animals for research, you generally have to justify explicitly and precisely why you are using animals and why you can't use an alternative to your ethics committee.

Yes, and I am saying if there is no alternative to animals than we have to test on something. I believe though if there is another reasonable alternative which will still get desired results that we should use the alternative. However the original post also mentioned animal rights so I was stating where I stood on that.

[Arete]

Yes, and I am saying if there is no alternative to animals than we have to test on something.

 

Previously you said: "From my own personal belief I do not think we should test on animals ... I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species." Which is a pretty unequivocal contradiction to your present statement - which accepts animal testing when there is no viable alternative. Are you saying you've changed your stance?

 

In addition, the use of animal models comes with a rather strong implicit value judgement when it comes to the intrinsic "worth" of a species. Developing a transgenic, immunodeficient line of people would be a pretty heinous crime against humanity (not to mention take an inordinately long time), so we use mice instead. We make a value judgement that the life of a lab mouse is worth less than the life of a person when we develop lab strains used in research - if we considered them to be the same, cancer researchers would be regularly committing genocide when culling transgenic mouse lines.

[Marshalscienceguy]

 

Previously you said: "From my own personal belief I do not think we should test on animals ... I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species." Which is a pretty unequivocal contradiction to your present statement - which accepts animal testing when there is no viable alternative. Are you saying you've changed your stance?

 

In addition, the use of animal models comes with a rather strong implicit value judgement when it comes to the intrinsic "worth" of a species. Developing a transgenic, immunodeficient line of people would be a pretty heinous crime against humanity (not to mention take an inordinately long time), so we use mice instead. We make a value judgement that the life of a lab mouse is worth less than the life of a person when we develop lab strains used in research - if we considered them to be the same, cancer researchers would be regularly committing genocide when culling transgenic mouse lines.

I am neither entirely against human testing but I believe that it should be done on the guilty not the innocent. Also does being under someone/something give you mean they deserve to be abused? If there is a dog and its not bothering anyone does it seem right to randomly go beat it to death with a shovel? I do not agree with animal testing since I believe if you harm something that harm should be earned and that if you must harm an innocent it should be necessary not for fun. we also kill animals for food but that is not killing for the pleasure of killing. Its killing for food and its something that is necessary. Same with if a person is trying to kill you its ok to kill them in defense. I am saying that needless harm is dangerous and if we must harm it needs to be necessary harm. Not for the fun of it. they have also made a burger in a lab by growing muscle and cooking it but it was never a full living cow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/a-lab-grown-burger-gets-a-taste-test.html?_r=0

Edited April 3, 2014 by Marshalscienceguy

[John Cuthber]

 

Well I would not beat a dog because I think a dog is beneath me just for the fun of it. Which is the idea a person might use to abuse animals, as well as child abuse. I have heard similar justifications for both. "Its ok to kick the dog since it is only a dog. It is beneath me so I can abuse it". Why should being a dog mean one is given the right to abuse it for no reason? An adult might have more power or authority than a child does that mean they have the right to abuse them? I really do not agree with having the right to abuse something since you believe its beneath you. You might be able to beat and steal candy from a 14 year old as an adult. Just because its possible does not mean you should.

 

The point of the killing was to only kill out of necessity not just for pleasure or sport. A person can kill the person living next door. Even if the reasoning was "I found them irritating" it does not mean it was absolutely necessary to kill them. Murder is not legal unless it is considered absolutely necessary and I see no reason in killing something or someone just for the joy of it. If you are going to argue we should be able to kill needlessly what about murder? Murder is not legal but you can sometimes get off on self defense. In nature a lions can kill other lions and take over the pride. However we cant do that in everyday society. If a son kills his father to take over the company it does not mean he did not commit a crime.

Let me know if you plan to actually answer my point which was

"I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species."

So, you don't kill plants for food then?"

 

N.B. I didn't ask about beating dogs.

[davidivad]

animal testing should be done in a minimal fashion and under the humility that we do not have a better solution in all our superior wisdom.

[Marshalscienceguy]

Let me know if you plan to actually answer my point which was

"I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species."

So, you don't kill plants for food then?"

 

N.B. I didn't ask about beating dogs.

Yes killing animals or plants for food is done out of necessity. If we do not eat we die.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Marshalscienceguy

[hypervalent_iodine]

I am neither entirely against human testing but I believe that it should be done on the guilty not the innocent. Also does being under someone/something give you mean they deserve to be abused? If there is a dog and its not bothering anyone does it seem right to randomly go beat it to death with a shovel? I do not agree with animal testing since I believe if you harm something that harm should be earned and that if you must harm an innocent it should be necessary not for fun. we also kill animals for food but that is not killing for the pleasure of killing. Its killing for food and its something that is necessary. Same with if a person is trying to kill you its ok to kill them in defense. I am saying that needless harm is dangerous and if we must harm it needs to be necessary harm. Not for the fun of it. they have also made a burger in a lab by growing muscle and cooking it but it was never a full living cow.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/a-lab-grown-burger-gets-a-taste-test.html?_r=0

 

 

We can assume for the sake of the argument that any sentencing of a prisoner to be passed on for medical experiments would have to be equivalent to the death penalty, since there is every chance that some unforseen side-effect will cause individuals in a given experiment to die. These experiments can be lengthy and presumably, painful (studies may involve, for instance, inducing cancer in individuals), which I would think falls in the category of human rights violations. As well, our justice system is imperfect and you cannot guarantee with absolute certainty that every person sentenced to death is guilty of the crime that put them on death row (especially when considering some of the charges that put people on death row in certain countries). As a punitive measure, it has been shown that the death penalty is largely ineffective at reducing crime rates and I doubt that the threat of medical experiments would be any better in that regard. Finally, using a population of death row prisoners for medical experiments is hardly going to give you statistically valid results for most studies. Not only do you not solve any ethical dilemmas, you create a few new ones and you struggle to generate any decent data.

 

 

Yes killing animals or plants for food is done out of necessity. If we do not eat we die.

 

 

 

I do not see why you cannot extend this to the medical advancements that stem from animal testing (which encompasses most, if not all of the more modern ones from the past ~ 100 years). If we didn't develop chemotherapeutics, as an example, a lot of people that have otherwise survived their cancer would be dead. In a way, the animals we sacrificed to develop these drugs is a necessity and it will continue to be so until we can develop methods that are as robust and translatable to human models as the various animals we currently use are.

[John Cuthber]

Yes killing animals or plants for food is done out of necessity. If we do not eat we die.

Why should you not die rather than them?

Why do you think your life is more important than theirs?

Could it be that when you said

"I also do not regard one life as more valuable for simply being a different species."

you hadn't thought it through and actually you do consider some species subordinate.

[Arete]

If there is a dog and its not bothering anyone does it seem right to randomly go beat it to death with a shovel?

 

You keep posting this strawman that the use of animals in scientific research is somehow equatable to "needless" or malicious violence. Scientific research has a very explicit purpose - animals are not used in research unless they have to be.

 

In some of my research, we use transgenic mice with their T cell production knocked out. In the absence of immune system function, these mice express endogenous retroviruses contained in their own genomes, and suffer leukogenic viremia as a result. We do it to study the role of ERVs in acquired immunity and cancer formation, and also to examine the evolutionary processes affecting retroviruses. This type of research requires the mice to be bred with genes knocked out - you could not take a wild type mouse and conduct the same research.

 

If we were to use human subjects, we would need to modify an embryo in IVF, have it brought to term, raise it in a completely sterile enviroment and then conduct a series of tests on it before it ultimately developed cancer and died. You could never use prisoners for this type of research - you'd need to "breed" a population of humans specifically for the research program.

Edited April 3, 2014 by Arete

[davidivad]

If we were to use human subjects, we would need to modify an embryo in IVF, have it brought to term, raise it in a completely sterile enviroment and then conduct a series of tests on it before it ultimately developed cancer and died. You could never use prisoners for this type of research - you'd need to "breed" a population of humans specifically for the research program.

 

do you feel that we should breed a separate line of sterile humans in order to prevent the ethical ramifications of prisoners?

[Arete]

 

do you feel that we should breed a separate line of sterile humans in order to prevent the ethical ramifications of prisoners?

 

Nope, I'm OK with using mice.

[davidivad]

so knowing that we really do not have a better alternative right now, do you have any suggestions on thing we can do to possibly remedy this kind of situation in the future? Can we prepare for ourselves a way around it in the future?

[Arete]

so knowing that we really do not have a better alternative right now, do you have any suggestions on thing we can do to possibly remedy this kind of situation in the future? Can we prepare for ourselves a way around it in the future?

 

I don't think biology could ever really be studied in isolation of actual biological systems, and as such, there will always be organisms and manipulation of organisms involved in research. All that can really be done is to minimize the use of live models where possible, and conduct research in ways that minimize the suffering of individual animals - which we already do. Most of the lab mice which are euthanized are never actually used in research - but are surplus individuals associated with maintaining breeding colonies of lab animals.

 

Also, I do most of my research on bacterial/viral systems. No one has ever bothered us about the fact that we massacre billion/trillions of bacteria in every experiment - just like you do every time you wash your hands.

[davidivad]

i agree that, due to the nature of the topic, scientists already practice a fairly minimal approach. there are a few areas that could surely be improved. we are getting better at computer modelling and i think that at some point it will be more economical to run precision simulations in most instances and thus dramatically cut the costs of research while at the same time lowering the number of lab strains.

 

i am sure that new methods will come in to play that all but eliminate the need for animal testing some time in the future. it will be regulation that has the greatest impact on our drive to find a better solution.

[CharonY]

There are approaches for toxicity tests in which in vitro models of tissues and organs are used. However, these approaches are still in their infancy and are most likely only be useful for minimizing need for animals rather than a real replacement.

[imatfaal]

My understanding - which I am sure Arete and CharonY will correct if wrong - is that the research community would leap at the chance of reliable and repeatable in vitro testing if (and it is a big if that is currently miles off) a similar depth and breadth of research could be carried out. Testing in vivo is expensive, timing consuming and messy; the compliance with MERCs is tedious and potentially terminal to the project; and very few scientists would not welcome never having to look a harvard oncomouse in the eye again.

[davidivad]

@imatfaal

 

i agree that regulation can be a real pain in the butt. methods of research that are required can make a simple process more expensive. however i feel that it is important that they are there because they continuously question our current line of reasoning. in short it promotes growth in the area of methodology.

 

in the end regulation promotes growth in fields of science through the time tested act of questioning.

a true investment in the future of science.

the result is new methodology and new technology leveraged upon our current situation.

[CharonY]

My understanding - which I am sure Arete and CharonY will correct if wrong - is that the research community would leap at the chance of reliable and repeatable in vitro testing if (and it is a big if that is currently miles off) a similar depth and breadth of research could be carried out. Testing in vivo is expensive, timing consuming and messy; the compliance with MERCs is tedious and potentially terminal to the project; and very few scientists would not welcome never having to look a harvard oncomouse in the eye again.

 

Absolutely. As I mentioned, there is a fair chunk of research that tries to re-create aspects of animal physiology. For the vast majority it is done out of necessity. In addition to tox testing there are also other aspects where animals are sacrificed, e.g. to isolate antibodies or extract primary cell lines. One could argue that this not different to regular livestock use, though.

[MonDie]

Mammals & birds conscious

 

Fish nociception doesn't produce pain emotion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130808123719.htm

 

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Finally, using a population of death row prisoners for medical experiments is hardly going to give you statistically valid results for most studies. Not only do you not solve any ethical dilemmas, you create a few new ones and you struggle to generate any decent data.

Control prisoner group vs. experimental prisoner group

 

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I don't know about you, but I generally ask them.

But what about that robot you programmed to say ouch? Couldn't you just programme it to say it feels such and such? And what about someone with locked in syndrome who cannot express much but we still imagine feels?

 

The hypothesis that other people have minds like mine has incredible predictive value regarding what they will communicate to me.

Don't forget that your mental experiences provide the basis for empiricism.

Edited June 9, 2014 by MonDie

[hypervalent_iodine]

 

 

 

 

Control prisoner group vs. experimental prisoner group

 

 

I don't really see how that makes it any better. It certainly doesn't help to make such a study statistically valid.

[MonDie]

I don't really see how that makes it any better. It certainly doesn't help to make such a study statistically valid.

 

Small sample size?

Edited June 9, 2014 by MonDie

[hypervalent_iodine]

Small sample size?

My knowledge of statistics is admittedly not very good, but I think it is less the small sample size and more that you can't really draw meaningful conclusions from tests performed on a minor and inherently non-random subset of the general population.

Though sample size is certainly another issue. As I mentioned, you'd be talking about prisoners on death row, since a likely outcome of medical experiments is death. Even if death sentences were brought back in all places, you would still have a tiny number of people on which to do tests.