animal experimention - mistreating animals

Well...we started talking about the theme 'is animal testing/experimentation the same as mistreating animals', but canute suggested that it belonged in its own thread.

Let us talk about it here then, and I think that most people haven't got the faintest clue what scientists do with animals so we might go into detail about that if required.

Let us not restrict ourselves to the obvious it is evil/it is necessary debate. We have seen many of these in the ethics forum.

 

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What is the original thread that someone suggested that they were both the same thing?


Don't scientists follow strict governmental guidelines for handling animals?

 

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Some friends of mine at the St. pual campus (UofM) were doing immunology experiment on goats, exposing the goat to a stimulant and then bleeding them and trying to refine large quantities of antibodies for that stimulant. After they were done with the goats (about 70 of them) they were told that the goats were to be euthanized because they were of no further use, this horrified them and so they began looking for people to take the goats, about a third did get new homes, the other 2 thirds were euthanized. Thats the closes I know personally of animal experimentations. May field leaves me limited to biomolecules so I don’t think I will ever hurt anything larger then single cell organism in a lab. Even so I agree with animal experimentation, it is needed to understand the nature of life, it is necessary.

Now that stuff about testing cosmetics on lab rabbits thats just weird, I’m sure it does not hurt the rabbits (does being shaved and then have gooey crap slobbered on you hurt?) also the rabbits get a place to live and free food, good deal.

Which brings me to the most outrages thing that happened at the UofM just a couple of years ago: a variety of lab rats were breed to study several genetic mental disorders, a animal rights group free them setting back these studies by many years! The mice them self’s could not live on there own (if you were a epileptic mouse long do you think you would last?) and died.

Here is a nice link I found on google about animal exp.
http://www.umanitoba.ca/manitoban/20020220/features_5.shtml
eer just so you don't get the wrong idea I was talking about the University of Minnesota

 

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A bit scattered...

My Philosophy on the eating, killing, and maiming of animals is this--

While, on a personal level, I feel that torture of animals etc is wrong, cruel, etc, and I would never and have never tortured an animal, it's almost like a right that nature has given us to do what we will with really anything. The world, animals, plants, other humans, whatever. While we humans can be pretty stupid, when compared to most animals even that dipsh*t sitting a few computers down from you is a genius. They'll have a right to not be eaten, to not be maimed, when they evolve it.

Truthfully I don't feel that way. I guess I'm not strong enough, because I have a ton of animals at my house and I really do love them. I'm not a vegeterian because meat tastes too good.

The mistreatment of animals is wrong. But that's the way it is because we're the best. If it we weren't the smartest thing on Earth I don't doubt for a second that someone else would be experimenting on us, eating us, etc. As sick as it is, that's just the way it works.

 

Re: A bit scattered...

In general people mistreat other people quite frequently.



as for WCF. I might have some disappointing news for him. I also work with molecules, regulatory molecules, but that doesn't mean I don't have to kill animals. On the contrary. It happens quite a lot in our line of work.

Personally I have not so much trouble with using animals for scientific experiments. I don't particular like killing mice, but I am not really worried about it either. These mice wouldn't even exist without science. We try to treat them in the best possible manner.


Some Q and A then:

Q: Do we torture animals? A

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robably at times.

Q: Is it worth it in the light of progress of scientific knowledge? A

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robably not.

Q: Do we do it out of pleasure? A:In general we like doing science. Working with animals is a necessary evil.

Q:Are there strict rules for handling animals? A:Yes, but does everybody stick to the rules at all times? Probablya not.

Q:Is modern science possible with animal experimentation? A:Not really. As a matter of fact we haven't used this many animals before at any point in time. This mostly due to the rise of transgenic animals. A transgenic animal is basically a walking experiment and a treasure of knowledge for the average scientist. A colony of all these different transgenic animals has to be maintained though. That's a lot of animals.

Q: Do a lot of mice die for nothing? A: yes.

 

nope that pretty much what I expect to hear.

 

It baffles me why people complain about being abducted by alien scientists for experimentation. Clearly, on the arguments given here so far, these aliens have a perfect right to dissect live humans whenever they wish. We should be happy to be abducted.

The arrogance of the views expressed here is irrational. We don't have the right to do a thing just because we can do it, or because we think we need to for the sake of 'knowledge'.

There may be good reasons for abusing animals as we do, but nobody has given one here yet.

 

That is because we have different standards. Curiosity is reason enough for me. It isn't good enough for you.

 

Go on - do you really, deep down, believe curiosity is good enough reason to do this to sentient beings? You must have some doubts hidden away somewhere.

As you'll know Weismann cut the tails off twenty-two successive generations of rats to test a naive form of Lamarckism. I find it hard to see such behaviour, then or now, as anything other than cruel, ignorant and arrogant. Why didn't he cut the legs off horses instead? Ah, but we like horses.

 

not really...I just try to use as little animals as possible.

I can't believe people waste money and effort to go to church. Still they do. People are just not the same.

 

I don't think aliens give us all are food and water and housing do they? Aliens don't keep us alive but scientist keep lab animals alive. It’s a trade of we provide for you and you be a laboratory experiment.

 

It should be remembered that humans have been used in scientific experiments i.e. http://www.heart7.net/mcf/1.html. And I’m not quite sure that people would agree that if the government gave housing and food to a group of people it would be ok to test them, unless it gave them the choice. But isn’t that the point, that animals don’t have the choice to how we treat them? Their helplessness can make us feel like gods, especially when we have the potential to cause pain, which is why I believe that people dealing with animals in testing and slaughter houses should be closely monitored.

As for the argument that curiosity is not enough of an reason to cause pain, it seems enough of a personal reason but I doubt its enough of a social reason. Anyone read Those that walk way from Omelas? Would that be enough of a reason?. . .
http://www.geocities.com/su_englit/leguin_omelas.html

Btw Rabbits are used for cosmetic testing because they don’t have tear glands, and so when you place shampoo on their eye it stays there and you can see how much it damages over time. I could scribble pages about lab testing, military testing and slaughter houses but I know people just don’t want to know. . .But I would point out that animal testing is a huge business, and there are a lot of people who don’t want scientists to find alternatives.

 

maybe we can find alternatives for animal testing for cosmetic products and such (one alternative would be just to release the compound and see what effect it has on the population), but we shouldn't think that there would ever be an alternative for the use of animals as experimental models for pure science.

 

Wow…we shouldn’t ever? Btw what is pure science, since biomedical and most biochemical, molecular biology would be thought of as applied science?

Is this some problem with thinking that animals need to be used as experimental models since they are the part of nature which is being taken into the lab?

 

You can't do research on an organism without the organism.

 

but we do research on humans without using them as lab animals.

 

i'm all for animal rights but some activists don't know a goddamn thing. i have a cute little mousy who was "rescued" from the lab. he's an albino mouse who had never been outside in its life. i found him wandering around in the same spot where he had been "released", no idea where to go or what to do. snow came shortly after so he would have died if i hadn't brought him home. people have cut our (expensive!!!) mist nets trying to free birds, but they don't know how to take them out so they leave them on the ground to die after a painful struggle caught in the net.

cosmetic testing is pointless and causes unnecessary suffering. i don't think we'll never get away from using animal models although i'm all for using humans to do the same work. i would just hope that researchers do what they can to minimize suffering to their subjects.

 

We substitute humans with mice, rats, monkeys, fruitflies, nematodes etc.

All though a lot of biological information is general in nature, a lot of things are also different between humans and other species.

 

This is dishonesty and arrogance. If you can't work out for yourself the simple moral truth that it's wrong to cause unnecessary suffering then there's nothing to say that you'd understand, or nothing that you'd admit to yourself that you understand.

I won't go on. There's no future in this discussion.

 

i agree...because that is a discussion for the ethics forum.