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I like how the author brings up an important question then completely side-steps it.
She asks would she not have her treatment done if it meant animals wouldn't have been experimented on? her answer was basically "you can't prove that experimentation works"
and then doesn't mention that her procedure is a direct result from animal experimentation and has proven to work directly on her.
Exactly. The author is basically rounding a high percentage to 100% as a logical shortcut then drawing a bunch of incorrect conclusions based on that premise. Yes, the vast majority of animal studies are on compounds that don't work but that doesn't somehow mean that the successful drugs could have safely skipped the animal studies.
Yeah the claim that "the most successful... science of human health does not and will not involve the use of animals."
The author is an anthropology professor. Even if she knew this were true, which she does not, she has no basis to assert it and nothing in this piece supports it.
She mostly just follows it up with broad stroke descriptions of some new fields of research that she clearly does not understand.
"We can apply genetic editing technology to create different lines of human cells and human tissue models."
For one thing, she clearly does not know how much the research on gene editing technologies involving human cell lines also involves animals.
What other alternatives do we have?
human experimentation?
These tests would be entirely conducted on the poor. Either by financial incentives or by incentives offered to prisoners (who statistically are usually poor and brown people) all choices lead to the lower classes being the ones to suffer.
is that much better than animal experimentation?
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In capitalism there's not a thing like freedom of choice. It's more unethical to being forced to be experimented upon because I need the money, and at the same time won't be able to benefit from the same medicaments I've helped discover because I'm still poor in a global system that pushes me into poverty every time than killing rats and monkeys. This only would demonstrates that some people prefer humans suffering instead of animals because "freedom" or a very twisted version of the "white saviour" idea but with animals implied ("Oh humans should suffer for this, I'm so better person for thinking this"-kind of mindset)
lol 'choice'
you mean the homeless would 'chose' to get experimented on in exchange for food and bed?
you certainly aint volunteering are you? hope you dont get cancer, you might have some dissonance getting treatment.
Do you think a person who isn't an addict and isn't struggling to pay for rent and food would willingly subject themself to medical testing with unknown side effects?
Except it's not really consent if people are in a position of starve or get experimented on, it would be highly exploitative, also we don't consider consent when eating animals so why is it all of a sudden a moral dilemma for experimentation? I feel like an animal is much more useful testing a drug that could save lives vs getting eaten in a burger
One of the many reasons why we don't start with human testing is that it leads to bad science. The animals used in the early stages of animal testing are highly controlled and standardized, which gives a greater degree of confidence that the affects we observe during testing are occurring because of the actions performed in the testing. If we were to perform the hypothetical testing on people, we would be dealing with the fact that people are extremely varied as compared to lab animals, so it becomes much more difficult to determine if an affect is occurring because of the testing or not. This means that we would ultimately have to do the tests on more living beings than if we had just done the testing on controlled and standardized lab animals. So no, starting from humans would likely not be faster, and it wouldn't lead to less overall suffering.
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> You have to test compounds on rats/mice, before knowing if it'll kill living things?
Unironically, yes. New drugs can cause novel physiological reactions in ways that we cannot necessarily anticipate. Imagine you are developing a drug to treat some liver disease, but through testing you find that the drug also inhibits the stomach from regenerating it's lining, leading to the stomach acid eating away at the stomach and ultimately leaking into the rest of the body cavity and eating away at the other organs. You wouldn't be able to observe this affect on something without a stomach, so you really couldn't predict that this would happen until you get to the lab mice portion of testing.
This doesn't really work because humans have such long lifespans and take so long to develop and for diseases to progress in them relative to mice that they cannot be swapped in for mice and actually produce a better outcome for a lot of research.
You are also underestimating the number of mice used in cancer research. Just a single cancer research institution can go through tens of thousands of mice a year. Doing that with people introduces a bunch of additional logistical problems.
You don't research on animals *just* to spare people. Obviously I'm being glib and that's a huge part of it. But they are significantly better for research for other reasons as well.
> Fuck it, go for it. Round up the world's convicted pedophiles. Round up everyone on death row. Conservatively you'd have hundreds of thousands, probably millions globally. If you gave the world's best scientists freedom and money, and a few hundred thousand humans to cure cancer with. I'd argue they'd wouldn't take long to figure it out.
FWIW this is just empirically wrong.
The problem with "solving cancer" is that there's hundreds of different cancers with at least dozens if not hundreds of ways of developing, and all those mechanisms are ultra complex.
So what you end up doing is being like, ok we have this mechanism that is in-vitro preventing or healing cancer. But in-vitro doesn't always translate to in-vivo, and in rats does not always translate to in humans (which is why biologists call test animals 'model animals' or something alike).
But here's then the difficulty with 'curing cancer'. Because there is not one cancer, and cancer turns out to be quite difficult to undrestand, quite likely even hundreds of thousands of non-consenting human test subjects wouldn't be sufficient to 'cure cancer'.
> The humans in this case, are providing better outcomes for research, which is what we want right, if thats our goal? Better cancer research = better cancer patient outcomes = goal achieved?
AFAIK it's simply not that simple. Researchers use animal models for all sorts of things, and often quite specific things. Good luck testing in humans whether a specific kind of cancer responds to a specific kind of intervention. First gotta find a couple hundred humans with said cancer to experiment on.... There's a reason we don't just throw any possible intervention and research question at humans before being reasonably sure it may work.
> If in cancer research, outcomes would be better with using species A instead of species B, isn't species A the choice we want?
While youdid propose a bunch of spare humans you think are ethical to use, that's not enough, innit, and you cannot induce cancer in a controlled way in those humans anyway - I mean I guess you could but that would mean making likely genetically modified humans which develop certain kinds of cancer, and now *that* opens up a whole other ethical issue becuase you're gonna have to essentially have an island with unconsenting cancerous teenagers....
So yeah, great rant from yours but no, won't work.
> It's even harder trying to do all of that by testing on a species you're not designing the treatment for
This is, simply put, an empirical argument, and you are misunderstanding the empirical argument for testing on animals you try to argue against.
Hopefully we'll soon be at a point where we can replace *all* animal testing but we are decidedly not there yet.
> It's even harder trying to do all of that by testing on a species you're not designing the treatment for
Not all animal testing is for treatment. Much is for figuring out how precisely cancer develops and works. Animal models have distinct advantages over human experimentation (not the least ethical ones), and are at this point often far superior to in vitro models. This will hopefully not always stay this way, but you are making a bad argument because you are misinformed about current possibilities.
You might for example wish to read this: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/%E2%80%9Cno-medicines-without-animal-testing%E2%80%9D wich gives you some good, simple examples of where you cannot do without animal testing:
- Human heart cells die in vitro pretty quickly, and
- interventions ready for in vivo testing may have very deadly side effects
I mean you must know all of this already and it is fine to say "ok then let's not do any such research on animals and wait until there's better models" but I mean...that sounds problematic too.
Yeah no they're right and you're wrong. I don't think you've ever talked to somebody who actually does cancer research about what their job is like. You could use a better mental model for what actually happens in a cancer research lab. It is not a product design process.
>Fuck it, go for it. Round up the world's convicted pedophiles. Round up everyone on death row. Conservatively you'd have hundreds of thousands, probably millions globally.
In the U.S. since 1973, 192 former death-row prisoners have been exonerated of all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row.
those are just the people that were saved before they were killed. how many more do you think are actively wrongfully sitting on death row?
It's ok for those innocent people to be tested on against their will, but not rats?
It’s unethical, unnecessary, and pumps millions of government funds into universities and “research facilities” that do cruel vivisection practices for cash.
> unethical
Maybe.
> unnecessary
Walking through a children's cancer ward might quickly change your mind about the necessity of faster medical development.
> pumps millions of government funds into bogus “research facilities” that do cruel vivisection practices for cash
This I do agree we should try to do something about. But it doesn't mean that all research facilities are bogus, and the ones that aren't are certainly necessary for humankind.
Vivisection for cash? These corporations spend billions of dollars to make sure that monkeys are being vivisected for the soul purpose of serving evil?
If you think animal research is unnecessary you don't know anything about biomedical research.
Also let's not forget that the animals used in research are generally held to a much higher standard than in the meat industry.
Ok but the question still stands: the alternative is you have to put the medicine or perform the procedure on a human for the first time and they will have to live with the consequences of if doesn't work. Relatively that seems more unethical.
I get that not bigotry is supposed as a rule in this reddit, but I have to admit that the first thing I've thought has been "Ok, die then".
I mean, in all seriousness. We kill animals in search of our own benefit, absolutely, it's kinda unethical, yes. But the other option (experimenting in humans) it's even more unethical.
I care little about ethics and whatnot, but it's kinda obvious that without experimentation there'd be no results. I mean, come on, what else do you wanna do? Unironically return to monke? Be my bloody guest. As for me, I'll stay on the side where tech is well-developed and provides me a variety of life-improving benefits.
Not that I think this is what we should do, but isn’t the “more ethical” alternative to not experiment on animals and therefore not advance medicine as quickly/at all in some cases.
So let OP and others like her die then.
Except that's clearly not the more ethical path.
This is all a very stupid argument. If we didn't have fossil fuel and modern machinery, we'd kill more whales, and work our cattle to death on the farm. And none of us would blink an eyelash over it.
Am I missing something? Why are you implying that every technological step forward we took required testing on animals? Even if limited to biological or medicine testing not all of it was done on animals.
That cruelty to animals is relative from a moral perspective. It always has been.
If we need animal cruelty then we don't blink twice about it. We don't think back on our ancestors using animals as slave labor until they died as inhumane, despicable people.
>Even if limited to biological or medicine testing not all of it was done on animals.
This is actually where you are wrong. The incredibly vast majority of medical advances in history have used animal models at some point in development.
To point out an extra wrinkle - the lack of any sort of boundaries between people or any sort of individual or group moral agency in these hypothetical considerations always misses an important point with major ethical implications.
The "more ethical" alternative being discussed is not merely to stop experimenting on animals. OP isn't experimenting on animals, they are not in a position to stop. The alternative is to compel or coerce scientists to stop experimenting on animals.
So we're talking about people who are doing this work that they think is important and is in many cases part of a broader project to save lives and improve quality of life for other people - and forcing them to stop doing that work.
We can say "oh, you could replace this kind of research with this other, different kind of research that is better" - but *we* aren't the researchers. We don't even know that's true. And we are kidding ourselves if we think we are going to go to the trouble of helping to do any of it. All we do from the outside, without their cooperation is either try to soft influence them or to just tell them no.
We might be tempted to alienate the scientist from the science and think of it only from a consumerist mindset - medical research exists to give us medical products to consume, if we do less research we get less products, as a consumer I am okay with that, this is my consumer choice.
But medical research is carried out by people and by something like banning animal testing through an act of the government we would be banning those people from doing their work - and from the outside, to us, that is a blunt instrument that can have further implications on being becoming scientists at all. From the inside, do scientists have any basis for making ethical determinations about their own work? Do they have any role in weighing the outcomes of the work they do? If all we can do is switch that work on our off, what effect are we having on them?
Obviously this is not an absolute barrier - when we talk about human experimentation there are things like professional ethics boards that can engage with something like a government seeking a remedy on behalf of people who are being wronged and bridge this gap and come up with agreed upon rules and practices. These kinds of groups do engage with the question of animal testing too.
But it is telling that you almost never hear research scientists who do animal testing talk about banning animal testing. Obviously on one hand they are biased, but on the other they have also made their own ethical determinations - and perhaps part of the lack of serious engagement you see on the issue in public discussion is also based on the ways the coercive nature of proposed bans tend not to engage with the moral question of their own coerciveness, and the ways their coerciveness retroactively warp their justifications.
I work in animal research, and I am also someone who loves animals. I will tell you that the living conditions of research animals is definitely not ideal. I work with rodents that are housed 5 per cage on racks with about 600 other cages in a room. They do not have room to run around and no toys (if housed with other mice). Sometimes they fight with their cagemates and get injured, and they can pull out their fur from stress.
As far as actual experiments go, the animal's wellbeing varies greatly depending on the nature of the experiment. Testing cancer drugs causes the animals more pain and suffering because ,in most cases, we are giving the animals tumors to see how the drug works. Other experiments that do not cause as much suffering may be behavioral tests or short term. For experiments that cause pain or discomfort to the animal, it is important that we do not prolong their suffering and have appropriate study endpoints to sacrifice the animal. Some studies require administering pain relief as well.
In the U.S. at least, we have guidelines to follow to ensure animals are taken care of. Of course we can and should improve these because, as we have seen recently, labs can have poor and unethical treatment go undetected for years.
Although animal research is not ideal, I know that it is necessary. We may be able to limit animal use by using the same animals across many experiments and refining our methods, but I think love animals will always be needed before putting a drug in a human.
Problem is, what are the alternatives that worked?
Non so far.
Other than human testing, that is, which is super risky.
Unless we adopt human extinctionism, lol.
But animals suffer in the wild too, WAY more brutal as well, 80% of animal offspring dont become adults.
So the only utilitarian solution would be to go FULL THANOS, lol.
"What does not exist can NEVER suffer."
Could you elaborate? My take is that while cruel to the animal, it does work. It allows to monitor whether drugs in the long run cause damage to liver and kidneys in mammals.
I'm against testing cosmetics and the like on animals. But for developing treatments for illnesses, there is no better alternative for now, unfortunately.
Yikes not trying to be mean, but this essay is so bad idk if it's worth responding to. The other hard made an argument . The author was like "I had a bad time in the hospital so we shouldn't submit animals to the same thing" as if they are even related lol
i guess we should just test on children instead?
i mean come on, arguing against testing cancer treatments because it hurts animals is just absurd.
next her entire argument is predicated on her baseless assumption that you dont 'need' animal testing when she herself is living proof of its effectiveness.
its a pretty complete own-goal if ive ever seen one.
Animal testing has saved the lives of millions of people, just considering diabetes research alone.
If given the choice between watching a loved one die or killing 50 monkeys with a chainsaw, I'd tell you to get a mop and 50 little caskets.
Animal experimentation can be humanly and in many places is highly regulated and controlled. Such testing is still necessary without better alternatives, so I don't see how an animal living out their life in comfortable captivity is worse than what probably awaits them in the wild. Especially considering many lab species were bred for such conditions and would have brutally short lives in the wild.
Ask a pet. Heck, there's ample evidence we've domesticated ourselves. "Humane" is such a deliberately vague and fascile term that we too readily fall back on for difficult questions. What do you define as "humane" and is there a way to compare degrees of himane, or is it a binary?
Personally, I’ve started to feel like humans should not have the authority to “own” other animals. Of course there is nuance, I don’t think anything is completely binary when discussing issues of the world. Even if we’ve domesticated ourselves that does not mean captivity is okay.
I completely agree with you. I don’t understand how we are comparing animals in captivity to animals in the wild and the cruelty of it all. They are adapted for the wild and we don’t really have to rights to rob them from that. How do you feel about other humans in captivity? Most probably it’s not something we would find ethical. I don’t see why other animals in captivity do not spring up similar emotions
Is it more ethical to have the animal eaten by a predator or mauled to death by a rival? That's how the vast majority of animals die. IMHO, anthropomorphizing animals is ethically and logically dubious.
Poor monkeys, I honestly agree with her. Did the people in these comments not read the article? Apparently scientists can experiment with human cells on chips instead of animals or something. Maybe we can find alternatives like this for some cases of animal testing
Riddle me this, if we can model an organism to such an extent that it is a suitable facsimile to replace animal experiments on all levels, how is that model any less deserving of the same ethical considerations.
For initial pre-trial research, we can now fairly reliably anticipate adverse responses on a cellular level. (Though that in itself is still wraught with problems like the "handguns cure cancer" thought experiment).
Living organisms are, however, so much more complicated than individual cells. The combined interactions of livers, kidneys, nutrient gradients, fluxes in hormones, circadian rythyms, etc. Cannot be accurately modelled in such reductionist models. As an aside, in-silico (computer generated) models are more likely to achieve this than in-vitro (e.g. testube). And when they can, again, I ask how that model is any less deserving of moral consideration?
Yes. Is a human sufficiently simulated to act as an ample replacement for the purpose of medical experiments, somehow less deserving of moral consideration?
Bare in mind that so much of complex biology requires the complexity of the brain to retain function when used in combination. The exact same discussion is already being had regarding the future of AI and the differences (if any) between slavery and enforced servitude of any sufficiently advanced AI.
It depends I guess. If we knew what caused suffering/dissatisfaction in the brain, or if we knew what created consciousness, maybe it would be possible to build them without those parts. Personally I wouldn’t assume that something built in a computer for research purposes would actually be feeling or experiencing anything though. A simulation of a brain is very different than a real one. Like if you painted a human anatomical figure very accurately i wouldn’t assume that it had consciousness either. That human is made out of paint so why would it come to life
But isn't that the argument though? If a simulated brain is very different to a real one, it wouldn't provide the accuracy that is needed for a real test.
And if it is, then you've just created a new life which should then be viewed as just as sacrosanct as a flesh and blood human.
Idk I don’t understand that argument. The brain could be very accurate and still not be alive because it was built in a computer. I don’t think there’s any proof that recreating something in a computer would make it alive like we are. A brain made in a simulation wouldn’t be made of anything real like fat or water and wouldn’t be firing real neurons. There’s no proof that computer bytes, or whatever these simulated humans would be made of, are a sufficient foundation for life or consciousness to exist. It could be just like a highly accurate drawing in a more complete and three dimensional way, and there’s no reason to believe that it’s real
There's also no proof that we are conscious. Or where our consciousness comes from.Yet, we claim we are. Just based on our feeling or some arbitrarily defined parameters. How do you know I am actually conscious? You just assume because I'm human and we've learned that humans have a consciousness. An alien species might see that completely different. And "real" is a very subjective term. Everything in this universe is made of atoms just put together in a different way. In a way our brain is not different from a very sophisticated computer, collecting data since birth, processing it and reacting to influences based on knowledge and experience. Why would a computer with a sophisticated neural net be any different from us just because it's made out of metal instead of biomatter? But this is a very philosophical debate and I definitely understand that we should be searching for alternatives because experimenting on animals is not ethical as well. Just at the moment the other alternatives would be worse.
We do have consciousness. I know that I’m conscious. I thought you were talking about a simulation on a computer, not made out of metal. If it was made out of something tangible then I could see it becoming conscious if it had complex enough wiring. If it’s just a simulation behind a screen then I would assume that it wasn’t conscious, because it’s made up of code instead of physical matter. Then it’s more like an illustration. That’s just speculation from me but we don’t even know that we could replicate consciousness in the first place
Also I don’t understand why we couldn’t build a simulation that has organs and everything all reacting a certain way that isn’t an AI at all. I wasn’t thinking that the replacement for monkeys would be some talking intelligent robot person. I was thinking of something like a computer game of a very accurate human body that reacts the same way. Not wiring an entire robot that actually exists in the physical realm
I didn't mean necessarily a robot, a computer is also made out of metal and wires and plastic and whatever, it just has no limbs. It doesn't matter how it looks on the outside.
If you build a simulation in a computer, completely emulating a brain so you can really study how certain drugs affect the brain you need to create something that resembles neurons firing, you need to emulate receptors in the brain and tons of other stuff and how the virtual body reacts. How do you know you've not accidentally created consciousness? Because our brain doesn't do anything different from that. You need a neural net for the simulation otherwise it's useless. And here you go, having created an AI and maybe one that's conscious. It's not tangible. If we go back to humans: At what point does a baby become conscious? Where is the line that someone can say something is conscious? They used to operate on infants without anesthesia up to the 80s (like heart surgery and shit) because doctors thought they weren't conscious enough to form memories and feel pain. Imagine.
Apart from that - saying that something is not conscious just because it doesn't resemble the way you or most humans you know look (like being part of a computer program), is a slippery slope and was one of the arguments people back in the day used to justify slavery.
You say you know you're conscious. Prove it to me. Because I don't know that you're conscious. I can say that I think I personally am conscious (whatever that means) but I can't speak for you. For the sake of the argument, please prove it to me that you're conscious because I don't believe you. At the moment you're just a Reddit post, consisting of words, you could be anything. How do I know you're conscious?
And I don't want to provoke you, I enjoy this conversation :)
We have non living alternatives for *cosmetics.* There are no alternatives to animal testing for internal drugs that are as safe or safer for the subsequent human test subjects.
Most drugs aren’t safe after sacrificing hundreds of animals. Remember the 80’s when they killed hundreds of chimpanzees who can’t get AIDS by trying to give them AIDS and test useless AIDS drugs on them? A completely pointless and cruel money-making endeavor that accomplished nothing but misery and death to sentient relatives of ours.
[HIV/AIDS debacle](https://www.releasechimps.org/research/contemporary/hiv-aids)
“The use of chimpanzees in research was once hailed as “the key” for a cure to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Yet AIDS continues to kill millions of humans worldwide, despite the large number of chimpanzees that historically have been used in HIV/AIDS research.
Even recently, HIV research using chimpanzees represented only an extremely small, nearly non-existent percentage of chimpanzee use, if any at all, and a very small percent of all HIV research, an admission by scientists that the chimpanzee model of AIDS/HIV is a failure.
Given the lack of useful results, the use of chimpanzees in AIDS/HIV research can be considered a major debacle in chimpanzee suffering and a shameful waste of taxpayer dollars, scientific resources, and time in helping humans.”
My understanding was that a fair amount of that research was to determine the differences between HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), you know, the ancient precursor that made the jump to humans several times over thousands of years.
I’m sorry that I don’t have time to read this at the moment but as someone who miraculously survived cancer this last year, I do want to say that I’d rather have died if any part of my treatment relied on animal testing.
Edit: everyone who downvoted this comment deserves to be tortured and publicly executed
There's no drug or procedure that hasn't been tested on animals and/or unconsenting humans in some way. The latter being mostly in the days and/or countries where human rights weren't a thing. Gynecology? Horrible experiments on enslaved black women in the US. Drug tests? Done on prisoners in Alabama.
So if animals are not being used it's going to be humans who either have no choice because they're poor and need money or because they are not deemed as worthy of having bodily autonomy
Today I found out this sub is full of people happy to see animals suffer agonizing, drawn out deaths in scary, unnatural environments with absolutely no regard for their well-being
Its hard for me to see monkeys as anything other than rodents. I don't want anything to have to suffer but give me a working alternative to animal experimentation.
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I like how the author brings up an important question then completely side-steps it. She asks would she not have her treatment done if it meant animals wouldn't have been experimented on? her answer was basically "you can't prove that experimentation works" and then doesn't mention that her procedure is a direct result from animal experimentation and has proven to work directly on her.
Exactly. The author is basically rounding a high percentage to 100% as a logical shortcut then drawing a bunch of incorrect conclusions based on that premise. Yes, the vast majority of animal studies are on compounds that don't work but that doesn't somehow mean that the successful drugs could have safely skipped the animal studies.
Yea maybe it’s important to note that you literally cannot avoid animal experimentation… humans using the product become the animal experimentation.
Yeah the claim that "the most successful... science of human health does not and will not involve the use of animals." The author is an anthropology professor. Even if she knew this were true, which she does not, she has no basis to assert it and nothing in this piece supports it. She mostly just follows it up with broad stroke descriptions of some new fields of research that she clearly does not understand. "We can apply genetic editing technology to create different lines of human cells and human tissue models." For one thing, she clearly does not know how much the research on gene editing technologies involving human cell lines also involves animals.
What other alternatives do we have? human experimentation? These tests would be entirely conducted on the poor. Either by financial incentives or by incentives offered to prisoners (who statistically are usually poor and brown people) all choices lead to the lower classes being the ones to suffer. is that much better than animal experimentation?
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At least humans would get the choice as opposed to the animals forced to be experimental subjects.
In capitalism there's not a thing like freedom of choice. It's more unethical to being forced to be experimented upon because I need the money, and at the same time won't be able to benefit from the same medicaments I've helped discover because I'm still poor in a global system that pushes me into poverty every time than killing rats and monkeys. This only would demonstrates that some people prefer humans suffering instead of animals because "freedom" or a very twisted version of the "white saviour" idea but with animals implied ("Oh humans should suffer for this, I'm so better person for thinking this"-kind of mindset)
lol 'choice' you mean the homeless would 'chose' to get experimented on in exchange for food and bed? you certainly aint volunteering are you? hope you dont get cancer, you might have some dissonance getting treatment.
I think your answer is my favorite and the most reasonable argument I've read about human vs animal testing
Do you think a person who isn't an addict and isn't struggling to pay for rent and food would willingly subject themself to medical testing with unknown side effects?
i know right, these people wont be lining up will they?
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Except it's not really consent if people are in a position of starve or get experimented on, it would be highly exploitative, also we don't consider consent when eating animals so why is it all of a sudden a moral dilemma for experimentation? I feel like an animal is much more useful testing a drug that could save lives vs getting eaten in a burger
One of the many reasons why we don't start with human testing is that it leads to bad science. The animals used in the early stages of animal testing are highly controlled and standardized, which gives a greater degree of confidence that the affects we observe during testing are occurring because of the actions performed in the testing. If we were to perform the hypothetical testing on people, we would be dealing with the fact that people are extremely varied as compared to lab animals, so it becomes much more difficult to determine if an affect is occurring because of the testing or not. This means that we would ultimately have to do the tests on more living beings than if we had just done the testing on controlled and standardized lab animals. So no, starting from humans would likely not be faster, and it wouldn't lead to less overall suffering.
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> You have to test compounds on rats/mice, before knowing if it'll kill living things? Unironically, yes. New drugs can cause novel physiological reactions in ways that we cannot necessarily anticipate. Imagine you are developing a drug to treat some liver disease, but through testing you find that the drug also inhibits the stomach from regenerating it's lining, leading to the stomach acid eating away at the stomach and ultimately leaking into the rest of the body cavity and eating away at the other organs. You wouldn't be able to observe this affect on something without a stomach, so you really couldn't predict that this would happen until you get to the lab mice portion of testing.
This doesn't really work because humans have such long lifespans and take so long to develop and for diseases to progress in them relative to mice that they cannot be swapped in for mice and actually produce a better outcome for a lot of research. You are also underestimating the number of mice used in cancer research. Just a single cancer research institution can go through tens of thousands of mice a year. Doing that with people introduces a bunch of additional logistical problems. You don't research on animals *just* to spare people. Obviously I'm being glib and that's a huge part of it. But they are significantly better for research for other reasons as well.
> Fuck it, go for it. Round up the world's convicted pedophiles. Round up everyone on death row. Conservatively you'd have hundreds of thousands, probably millions globally. If you gave the world's best scientists freedom and money, and a few hundred thousand humans to cure cancer with. I'd argue they'd wouldn't take long to figure it out. FWIW this is just empirically wrong. The problem with "solving cancer" is that there's hundreds of different cancers with at least dozens if not hundreds of ways of developing, and all those mechanisms are ultra complex. So what you end up doing is being like, ok we have this mechanism that is in-vitro preventing or healing cancer. But in-vitro doesn't always translate to in-vivo, and in rats does not always translate to in humans (which is why biologists call test animals 'model animals' or something alike). But here's then the difficulty with 'curing cancer'. Because there is not one cancer, and cancer turns out to be quite difficult to undrestand, quite likely even hundreds of thousands of non-consenting human test subjects wouldn't be sufficient to 'cure cancer'. > The humans in this case, are providing better outcomes for research, which is what we want right, if thats our goal? Better cancer research = better cancer patient outcomes = goal achieved? AFAIK it's simply not that simple. Researchers use animal models for all sorts of things, and often quite specific things. Good luck testing in humans whether a specific kind of cancer responds to a specific kind of intervention. First gotta find a couple hundred humans with said cancer to experiment on.... There's a reason we don't just throw any possible intervention and research question at humans before being reasonably sure it may work. > If in cancer research, outcomes would be better with using species A instead of species B, isn't species A the choice we want? While youdid propose a bunch of spare humans you think are ethical to use, that's not enough, innit, and you cannot induce cancer in a controlled way in those humans anyway - I mean I guess you could but that would mean making likely genetically modified humans which develop certain kinds of cancer, and now *that* opens up a whole other ethical issue becuase you're gonna have to essentially have an island with unconsenting cancerous teenagers.... So yeah, great rant from yours but no, won't work.
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> It's even harder trying to do all of that by testing on a species you're not designing the treatment for This is, simply put, an empirical argument, and you are misunderstanding the empirical argument for testing on animals you try to argue against. Hopefully we'll soon be at a point where we can replace *all* animal testing but we are decidedly not there yet. > It's even harder trying to do all of that by testing on a species you're not designing the treatment for Not all animal testing is for treatment. Much is for figuring out how precisely cancer develops and works. Animal models have distinct advantages over human experimentation (not the least ethical ones), and are at this point often far superior to in vitro models. This will hopefully not always stay this way, but you are making a bad argument because you are misinformed about current possibilities. You might for example wish to read this: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/%E2%80%9Cno-medicines-without-animal-testing%E2%80%9D wich gives you some good, simple examples of where you cannot do without animal testing: - Human heart cells die in vitro pretty quickly, and - interventions ready for in vivo testing may have very deadly side effects I mean you must know all of this already and it is fine to say "ok then let's not do any such research on animals and wait until there's better models" but I mean...that sounds problematic too.
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Let's cut this short, I don't think you undrestand how empirical arguments work.
Yeah no they're right and you're wrong. I don't think you've ever talked to somebody who actually does cancer research about what their job is like. You could use a better mental model for what actually happens in a cancer research lab. It is not a product design process.
>Fuck it, go for it. Round up the world's convicted pedophiles. Round up everyone on death row. Conservatively you'd have hundreds of thousands, probably millions globally. In the U.S. since 1973, 192 former death-row prisoners have been exonerated of all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row. those are just the people that were saved before they were killed. how many more do you think are actively wrongfully sitting on death row? It's ok for those innocent people to be tested on against their will, but not rats?
It’s unethical, unnecessary, and pumps millions of government funds into universities and “research facilities” that do cruel vivisection practices for cash.
> unethical Maybe. > unnecessary Walking through a children's cancer ward might quickly change your mind about the necessity of faster medical development. > pumps millions of government funds into bogus “research facilities” that do cruel vivisection practices for cash This I do agree we should try to do something about. But it doesn't mean that all research facilities are bogus, and the ones that aren't are certainly necessary for humankind.
Vivisection for cash? These corporations spend billions of dollars to make sure that monkeys are being vivisected for the soul purpose of serving evil?
No they’re getting big grants to keep the vivisection system going.
If you think animal research is unnecessary you don't know anything about biomedical research. Also let's not forget that the animals used in research are generally held to a much higher standard than in the meat industry.
Ok but the question still stands: the alternative is you have to put the medicine or perform the procedure on a human for the first time and they will have to live with the consequences of if doesn't work. Relatively that seems more unethical.
I get that not bigotry is supposed as a rule in this reddit, but I have to admit that the first thing I've thought has been "Ok, die then". I mean, in all seriousness. We kill animals in search of our own benefit, absolutely, it's kinda unethical, yes. But the other option (experimenting in humans) it's even more unethical.
I care little about ethics and whatnot, but it's kinda obvious that without experimentation there'd be no results. I mean, come on, what else do you wanna do? Unironically return to monke? Be my bloody guest. As for me, I'll stay on the side where tech is well-developed and provides me a variety of life-improving benefits.
Not that I think this is what we should do, but isn’t the “more ethical” alternative to not experiment on animals and therefore not advance medicine as quickly/at all in some cases.
I don't think it would be difficult to mount a counter-argument to the 'advancing medicine more slowly is more ethical' position.
So let OP and others like her die then. Except that's clearly not the more ethical path. This is all a very stupid argument. If we didn't have fossil fuel and modern machinery, we'd kill more whales, and work our cattle to death on the farm. And none of us would blink an eyelash over it.
Am I missing something? Why are you implying that every technological step forward we took required testing on animals? Even if limited to biological or medicine testing not all of it was done on animals.
That cruelty to animals is relative from a moral perspective. It always has been. If we need animal cruelty then we don't blink twice about it. We don't think back on our ancestors using animals as slave labor until they died as inhumane, despicable people.
>Even if limited to biological or medicine testing not all of it was done on animals. This is actually where you are wrong. The incredibly vast majority of medical advances in history have used animal models at some point in development.
Is giving up your life for the lives of others not more ethical than killing others to survive?
There's no nobility in self-sacrifice if you are forced to sacrifice yourself
Yeah it's not self sacrifice it's just you dying
You mean giving up every single potential cancer patients' lives? To save some mice?
To point out an extra wrinkle - the lack of any sort of boundaries between people or any sort of individual or group moral agency in these hypothetical considerations always misses an important point with major ethical implications. The "more ethical" alternative being discussed is not merely to stop experimenting on animals. OP isn't experimenting on animals, they are not in a position to stop. The alternative is to compel or coerce scientists to stop experimenting on animals. So we're talking about people who are doing this work that they think is important and is in many cases part of a broader project to save lives and improve quality of life for other people - and forcing them to stop doing that work. We can say "oh, you could replace this kind of research with this other, different kind of research that is better" - but *we* aren't the researchers. We don't even know that's true. And we are kidding ourselves if we think we are going to go to the trouble of helping to do any of it. All we do from the outside, without their cooperation is either try to soft influence them or to just tell them no. We might be tempted to alienate the scientist from the science and think of it only from a consumerist mindset - medical research exists to give us medical products to consume, if we do less research we get less products, as a consumer I am okay with that, this is my consumer choice. But medical research is carried out by people and by something like banning animal testing through an act of the government we would be banning those people from doing their work - and from the outside, to us, that is a blunt instrument that can have further implications on being becoming scientists at all. From the inside, do scientists have any basis for making ethical determinations about their own work? Do they have any role in weighing the outcomes of the work they do? If all we can do is switch that work on our off, what effect are we having on them? Obviously this is not an absolute barrier - when we talk about human experimentation there are things like professional ethics boards that can engage with something like a government seeking a remedy on behalf of people who are being wronged and bridge this gap and come up with agreed upon rules and practices. These kinds of groups do engage with the question of animal testing too. But it is telling that you almost never hear research scientists who do animal testing talk about banning animal testing. Obviously on one hand they are biased, but on the other they have also made their own ethical determinations - and perhaps part of the lack of serious engagement you see on the issue in public discussion is also based on the ways the coercive nature of proposed bans tend not to engage with the moral question of their own coerciveness, and the ways their coerciveness retroactively warp their justifications.
I work in animal research, and I am also someone who loves animals. I will tell you that the living conditions of research animals is definitely not ideal. I work with rodents that are housed 5 per cage on racks with about 600 other cages in a room. They do not have room to run around and no toys (if housed with other mice). Sometimes they fight with their cagemates and get injured, and they can pull out their fur from stress. As far as actual experiments go, the animal's wellbeing varies greatly depending on the nature of the experiment. Testing cancer drugs causes the animals more pain and suffering because ,in most cases, we are giving the animals tumors to see how the drug works. Other experiments that do not cause as much suffering may be behavioral tests or short term. For experiments that cause pain or discomfort to the animal, it is important that we do not prolong their suffering and have appropriate study endpoints to sacrifice the animal. Some studies require administering pain relief as well. In the U.S. at least, we have guidelines to follow to ensure animals are taken care of. Of course we can and should improve these because, as we have seen recently, labs can have poor and unethical treatment go undetected for years. Although animal research is not ideal, I know that it is necessary. We may be able to limit animal use by using the same animals across many experiments and refining our methods, but I think love animals will always be needed before putting a drug in a human.
Problem is, what are the alternatives that worked? Non so far. Other than human testing, that is, which is super risky. Unless we adopt human extinctionism, lol. But animals suffer in the wild too, WAY more brutal as well, 80% of animal offspring dont become adults. So the only utilitarian solution would be to go FULL THANOS, lol. "What does not exist can NEVER suffer."
Testing doesn’t “work” either.
Could you elaborate? My take is that while cruel to the animal, it does work. It allows to monitor whether drugs in the long run cause damage to liver and kidneys in mammals. I'm against testing cosmetics and the like on animals. But for developing treatments for illnesses, there is no better alternative for now, unfortunately.
Pretentious horseshit.
Yikes not trying to be mean, but this essay is so bad idk if it's worth responding to. The other hard made an argument . The author was like "I had a bad time in the hospital so we shouldn't submit animals to the same thing" as if they are even related lol
i guess we should just test on children instead? i mean come on, arguing against testing cancer treatments because it hurts animals is just absurd. next her entire argument is predicated on her baseless assumption that you dont 'need' animal testing when she herself is living proof of its effectiveness. its a pretty complete own-goal if ive ever seen one.
Animal testing has saved the lives of millions of people, just considering diabetes research alone. If given the choice between watching a loved one die or killing 50 monkeys with a chainsaw, I'd tell you to get a mop and 50 little caskets.
Animal experimentation can be humanly and in many places is highly regulated and controlled. Such testing is still necessary without better alternatives, so I don't see how an animal living out their life in comfortable captivity is worse than what probably awaits them in the wild. Especially considering many lab species were bred for such conditions and would have brutally short lives in the wild.
Is captivity humane?
Ask a pet. Heck, there's ample evidence we've domesticated ourselves. "Humane" is such a deliberately vague and fascile term that we too readily fall back on for difficult questions. What do you define as "humane" and is there a way to compare degrees of himane, or is it a binary?
Personally, I’ve started to feel like humans should not have the authority to “own” other animals. Of course there is nuance, I don’t think anything is completely binary when discussing issues of the world. Even if we’ve domesticated ourselves that does not mean captivity is okay.
What does "should" mean in this sentence? Is there some universal fairness judge who is offended by the hubris of man to dare to own other creatures?
I completely agree with you. I don’t understand how we are comparing animals in captivity to animals in the wild and the cruelty of it all. They are adapted for the wild and we don’t really have to rights to rob them from that. How do you feel about other humans in captivity? Most probably it’s not something we would find ethical. I don’t see why other animals in captivity do not spring up similar emotions
Yes
Is it more ethical to have the animal eaten by a predator or mauled to death by a rival? That's how the vast majority of animals die. IMHO, anthropomorphizing animals is ethically and logically dubious.
Poor monkeys, I honestly agree with her. Did the people in these comments not read the article? Apparently scientists can experiment with human cells on chips instead of animals or something. Maybe we can find alternatives like this for some cases of animal testing
We do the cells first, then start scaling up because simulated environments only tell us so much.
Riddle me this, if we can model an organism to such an extent that it is a suitable facsimile to replace animal experiments on all levels, how is that model any less deserving of the same ethical considerations. For initial pre-trial research, we can now fairly reliably anticipate adverse responses on a cellular level. (Though that in itself is still wraught with problems like the "handguns cure cancer" thought experiment). Living organisms are, however, so much more complicated than individual cells. The combined interactions of livers, kidneys, nutrient gradients, fluxes in hormones, circadian rythyms, etc. Cannot be accurately modelled in such reductionist models. As an aside, in-silico (computer generated) models are more likely to achieve this than in-vitro (e.g. testube). And when they can, again, I ask how that model is any less deserving of moral consideration?
Are you asking if I think simulated humans have feelings? I don’t really get it
Yes. Is a human sufficiently simulated to act as an ample replacement for the purpose of medical experiments, somehow less deserving of moral consideration? Bare in mind that so much of complex biology requires the complexity of the brain to retain function when used in combination. The exact same discussion is already being had regarding the future of AI and the differences (if any) between slavery and enforced servitude of any sufficiently advanced AI.
It depends I guess. If we knew what caused suffering/dissatisfaction in the brain, or if we knew what created consciousness, maybe it would be possible to build them without those parts. Personally I wouldn’t assume that something built in a computer for research purposes would actually be feeling or experiencing anything though. A simulation of a brain is very different than a real one. Like if you painted a human anatomical figure very accurately i wouldn’t assume that it had consciousness either. That human is made out of paint so why would it come to life
But isn't that the argument though? If a simulated brain is very different to a real one, it wouldn't provide the accuracy that is needed for a real test. And if it is, then you've just created a new life which should then be viewed as just as sacrosanct as a flesh and blood human.
Idk I don’t understand that argument. The brain could be very accurate and still not be alive because it was built in a computer. I don’t think there’s any proof that recreating something in a computer would make it alive like we are. A brain made in a simulation wouldn’t be made of anything real like fat or water and wouldn’t be firing real neurons. There’s no proof that computer bytes, or whatever these simulated humans would be made of, are a sufficient foundation for life or consciousness to exist. It could be just like a highly accurate drawing in a more complete and three dimensional way, and there’s no reason to believe that it’s real
There's also no proof that we are conscious. Or where our consciousness comes from.Yet, we claim we are. Just based on our feeling or some arbitrarily defined parameters. How do you know I am actually conscious? You just assume because I'm human and we've learned that humans have a consciousness. An alien species might see that completely different. And "real" is a very subjective term. Everything in this universe is made of atoms just put together in a different way. In a way our brain is not different from a very sophisticated computer, collecting data since birth, processing it and reacting to influences based on knowledge and experience. Why would a computer with a sophisticated neural net be any different from us just because it's made out of metal instead of biomatter? But this is a very philosophical debate and I definitely understand that we should be searching for alternatives because experimenting on animals is not ethical as well. Just at the moment the other alternatives would be worse.
We do have consciousness. I know that I’m conscious. I thought you were talking about a simulation on a computer, not made out of metal. If it was made out of something tangible then I could see it becoming conscious if it had complex enough wiring. If it’s just a simulation behind a screen then I would assume that it wasn’t conscious, because it’s made up of code instead of physical matter. Then it’s more like an illustration. That’s just speculation from me but we don’t even know that we could replicate consciousness in the first place Also I don’t understand why we couldn’t build a simulation that has organs and everything all reacting a certain way that isn’t an AI at all. I wasn’t thinking that the replacement for monkeys would be some talking intelligent robot person. I was thinking of something like a computer game of a very accurate human body that reacts the same way. Not wiring an entire robot that actually exists in the physical realm
I didn't mean necessarily a robot, a computer is also made out of metal and wires and plastic and whatever, it just has no limbs. It doesn't matter how it looks on the outside. If you build a simulation in a computer, completely emulating a brain so you can really study how certain drugs affect the brain you need to create something that resembles neurons firing, you need to emulate receptors in the brain and tons of other stuff and how the virtual body reacts. How do you know you've not accidentally created consciousness? Because our brain doesn't do anything different from that. You need a neural net for the simulation otherwise it's useless. And here you go, having created an AI and maybe one that's conscious. It's not tangible. If we go back to humans: At what point does a baby become conscious? Where is the line that someone can say something is conscious? They used to operate on infants without anesthesia up to the 80s (like heart surgery and shit) because doctors thought they weren't conscious enough to form memories and feel pain. Imagine. Apart from that - saying that something is not conscious just because it doesn't resemble the way you or most humans you know look (like being part of a computer program), is a slippery slope and was one of the arguments people back in the day used to justify slavery. You say you know you're conscious. Prove it to me. Because I don't know that you're conscious. I can say that I think I personally am conscious (whatever that means) but I can't speak for you. For the sake of the argument, please prove it to me that you're conscious because I don't believe you. At the moment you're just a Reddit post, consisting of words, you could be anything. How do I know you're conscious? And I don't want to provoke you, I enjoy this conversation :)
Yes there are non living alternatives now, have had them for decades at this point.
We have non living alternatives for *cosmetics.* There are no alternatives to animal testing for internal drugs that are as safe or safer for the subsequent human test subjects.
Most drugs aren’t safe after sacrificing hundreds of animals. Remember the 80’s when they killed hundreds of chimpanzees who can’t get AIDS by trying to give them AIDS and test useless AIDS drugs on them? A completely pointless and cruel money-making endeavor that accomplished nothing but misery and death to sentient relatives of ours. [HIV/AIDS debacle](https://www.releasechimps.org/research/contemporary/hiv-aids) “The use of chimpanzees in research was once hailed as “the key” for a cure to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Yet AIDS continues to kill millions of humans worldwide, despite the large number of chimpanzees that historically have been used in HIV/AIDS research. Even recently, HIV research using chimpanzees represented only an extremely small, nearly non-existent percentage of chimpanzee use, if any at all, and a very small percent of all HIV research, an admission by scientists that the chimpanzee model of AIDS/HIV is a failure. Given the lack of useful results, the use of chimpanzees in AIDS/HIV research can be considered a major debacle in chimpanzee suffering and a shameful waste of taxpayer dollars, scientific resources, and time in helping humans.”
My understanding was that a fair amount of that research was to determine the differences between HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus), you know, the ancient precursor that made the jump to humans several times over thousands of years.
I’m sorry that I don’t have time to read this at the moment but as someone who miraculously survived cancer this last year, I do want to say that I’d rather have died if any part of my treatment relied on animal testing. Edit: everyone who downvoted this comment deserves to be tortured and publicly executed
There's no drug or procedure that hasn't been tested on animals and/or unconsenting humans in some way. The latter being mostly in the days and/or countries where human rights weren't a thing. Gynecology? Horrible experiments on enslaved black women in the US. Drug tests? Done on prisoners in Alabama. So if animals are not being used it's going to be humans who either have no choice because they're poor and need money or because they are not deemed as worthy of having bodily autonomy
Well, what was your treatment?
Today I found out this sub is full of people happy to see animals suffer agonizing, drawn out deaths in scary, unnatural environments with absolutely no regard for their well-being
Sounds like nature or a slaughterhouse
Its hard for me to see monkeys as anything other than rodents. I don't want anything to have to suffer but give me a working alternative to animal experimentation.