Anyone here against tests on animals that cause them to suffer?
- Thread starter Lucidfox
- Start date
If the animals given the diseases were made to not feel any pain then I would be a lot more willing to accept that kind of testing. But don't they feel just as much pain as we do from those diseases? Isn't there some way animals can be bred to not feel pain from those diseases? Hell, we've managed to clone sheep.
Edited to add:Although I do admit, a lot of those animals are better off in a lab than in the wild. And I guess they'd go through no more pain than house pets that live in families with children(my sister's bf has picked up his kittens by the tail before and even lifted one up by the nose real quick)
Edited to add:Although I do admit, a lot of those animals are better off in a lab than in the wild. And I guess they'd go through no more pain than house pets that live in families with children(my sister's bf has picked up his kittens by the tail before and even lifted one up by the nose real quick)
That is probably easily possible for many studies, but I doubt you would approve the method:Lucidfox said:
You simply remove most of their brain, painlessly of course, under anesthesia. For example a cat with ALL of the brain removed can still walk, once you get a walking rhythm started in its legs. Acute studies that do not require consciousness are very easy. I have made more than one on cat, with a JHU doctor I was helping. We simply put the cat under, did the study and instead of stopping the anesthesia, just killed it while it was deeply anesthetized.
I see nothing wrong* with that as I eat beef, wear leather shoes, etc. and know the sources do suffer to provide it and that cat did not. I do not wear fur coat or eat veal as production of that involves a short unnatural lifetime of real cruelity.
For some studies, especially longer term ones, it would be necessary to leave part of the brain. For example, an investigation of drug control of blood pressure without the more basic regions of the brain that do influence blood pressure would be rather pointless, (I think), but a "zombie" animal subject, with all the higher functional areas of he brain removed, should work just fine and painlessly.
Provided there is a reasonable chance some human suffering may be reduced by the study, do you approve?
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*Except for the fact that only a block away (or less?) from Johns Hopkins Hospital complex there are many poor black children who have not eaten meat in a month. Not using unwanted cat and dog bodies for food is a stupid Western World waste.
The first time I visited Rome, there were thousands of scrawny, half-starved, stray cats everywhere on the streets. The next time I was there was after the American expansion of the Vietnamese War and many Vietnamese had sought refuge in Rome. I am not certain that their arrival explains the fact that on that visit I saw few cats or not, but it is an interesting fact. I like to eat food of other cultures, Ethiopian with your fingers etc. But when there is meat in the dish at a Vietnamese restaurant where I am eating, I do not ask what type of meat it is.
Even the variations within western cultures are strange. I grew up in the hills of West Virginia, so I eat squirrel, often ones I had shot. I later married a Norwegian and still had a pump air rifle, which could be used even in a park as it made little noise when fired. One day I had it with me on a walk in the woods and came home with two squirrels. I cut out the main back mussels and the hind legs off (throwing the rest away) and was cooking it for my lunch when new wife returned. I offered her half, and she asked what it was. I told her, and she said: "I would rather eat rat." Squirrel is not food in Norway, but her comment made me think, why not rat, if cleanly “farm raised” or trapped in large corn storage depots, etc.?
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That sounds much better, it is only the suffering I am against. Here's an even better idea, they take all the animals from nearby shelters that are about to be euthanized and they use them for the studies, so then that way, unadoptable pets won't die for nothing.Billy T said:
For a few tests that might be possible, and may even be done, but for most you need to know that the animal you use is healthy. They raise cats exclusively for experiments, or at least they did when I helped out of doctors on their technical problems at JHU. The cats got excellent care, regular medical exams and were expensive. I do not recall exact numbers, but think the sponsor of experiments we were doing paid around $250 for the cats we used.Lucidfox said:
There are enough human scum to test things on before moving up to the higher animals.
Billy T said:
samcdkey said:
Non sequitur, dearie. Do you also wonder whether anyone feels so strongly about slavery as to refuse to set foot in any building built with slave labour?
No I don't refuse it, but every time I need it I correct the discrepency by torturing an innocent human child to death.
Actually sometimes I go out and buy shampoo which was tested on animals just so I can torture some kids.
I do this funny thing where I like write a report on the torture session too, like a scientist. With hypotheses like "children will eventually vomit if their testicles are mashed with a hammer for 48 hours straight" and then write "child started vomiting before passing out, was reanimated via electric shock before testicle poundings proceeded at 0300 hours."
In most cases, that is not possible. For example, I participated in a study using rhesus monkey to learn how to improve spinal cord injury, such as is often result of car accident, theraphy. The doctor I was working with had several "favorite" therapies, all evolving flow of various cold fluids, usually mixes of various steroids, within the dural sheath from above to below than main injury point. Idea was to flush away dead or lose cells and with the cooling reduce swelling etc. (We removed posterior part of one segment of the back bone and dropped a steel ball down a tube to directly strike the spinal cord in as reproducible an injury as we could make then did nothing for half an hour to simulate the ride in the ambulance to the hospital etc. and then began the fluid under test.) All of this course under deep anesthesia. These monkeys were then graded on their recovery every day, twice a day of the first few weeks, for several months. Several later participated in a test of electrical simulation, via an implanted stimulator as possible aid to control of epilepsy.*Lucidfox said:Just did some more research on the subject, and I found that animals that are given diseases are kept under anesthetic while the results are being recorded, then they're humanely euthanized, so I'm hsppy now...
A doctor Cooper in Boston was already doing this in humans based mainly on his theories with little prior animal research. (Having an MD degree and state license, permits almost anything not known to be harmful to be done to you, if the doctors wants.) His results were encouraging, but both he and his patients expected this and there is a strong "placebo effect" with epilepsy, so we wanted to know if this procedure really had any benefit. There is always significant infection risk with chronic opening the dura covering the brain, so if no significant non-placebo benefit, this opening for the electrode wires is not justifiable. Unfortunately, the statistics and limited number of monkeys in this study at time I left was not sufficient to reach any conclusion and the study may not have been able to continue without me. (I adapted a cardiac pacer and made the electrodes, externalized EEG machine connections (Basically, a DIP socket with two titanium "T" shaped screws bolting it to Keyhole slots in the skull and "dental cement". Each of the 8 connectors pins went via spot welded wire to a tiny inverted EEG pick up electrode that penetrated the skull also to touch the dura. - this makes for very reproducible contacts with the brain and avoided all of the EMG artifacts of normal external EEG electrodes, which are not feasible on an alert monkey in a restraining chair)
As you might imagine, I have thought about this problem considerably and despite some initial reluctance to "use" (The doctor got angry with me for using "use.") animals, especially higher primates, this way, it only took a few times in the hospital and OR to see the agony of humans we were trying to help to make me leave all doubts behind.
If he is reading Valach, who suffers chronic pain from old motor cycle accident, I am sure understands and will back me up on this. I bet he wishes that some of what the doctor learned in our spinal injury study was available when he needed it.
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*No rehesus monkey naturally suffers from epilepsy, (evidence of evolution selection, I think, as falling out of high tree is not good for having many offsprings) so first we had to make a focal epilpsey site in their motor cortex (so 2 low-paid girls watching them, feeding them, etc could see and time their seziures easlily, without EEG machine). Unfortunately, for both them and us, only about one in four would develop a reqular pattern of "useful seizures", say at least two and not more than 10 per day, so we could notice any change associated with when they were and were not receiving electrical stimulation. One results was clear, and I fully expected it. - Once a seizure starts, turning on the stimulation does not change its duration. (At the time, the mechanism of seizure termination was not clear, at least to the doctor, so I studied it some and came to the conclusion it is simple metabolic exhaustion of the discharging nerves. I do not know if this is the accepted "stop mechanism" or not. It was interesting to note also that the doctor always referred to this monkey as a or the "preparation" not as monkey. "Put preparation 22 in the third chair today and lets record him." etc.
All my work was on most Satudays (and some Sundays) as the primate lab's only volunteer. Once I had to finish an operation for the doctor who was called away to spinal cord injury problem in hospital emergency. I was told my name is on a couple of his papers, but I never saw them and that was not important to me.
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My stance on this is probably just like Christopher Reeves', but I don't know what his view was on animal suffering. Personally, I'm very partial to mammals. I'm an extremely avid dog lover and did my best to keep my last Elkhound alive after he was diagnosed with renal failure. He saved my live: I did my best to save his.
Nevertheless, we must have research into diseases and injuries, such as spinal chord injury, and stem cell research seems to offer the most promising hope. Like it or not, researchers intentionally paralyzed mice to prove that reimplanting stem cells in their spinal chord helped restore the function. This paves the way for similar future research to benefit humanity, and this is what is most important "to us" and "for us." Beyond this premise you get into a lot of philosophical debates that lead no where. There has to be a comprise in ethics. If you were chronically ill and almost dead, and the hope of an instant cure lay in the hands of killing a mouse, would you not allow it?
http://www.sci-info-pages.com/2006/06/stem-cell-therapy-restores-movement-in.html
Billy T: As a side note, there is a new class of medication that affectively treats trigeminal neuralgia. I have a very similar condition but it is not facial. I was using Carbamazepine with limited results, but a new anti-convulsant call Gabapentin has worked wonders during the last few months with no side efeects - yet? No more pain.
For a brief intro into trigeminal neuralgia and treatment: http://www.umanitoba.ca/cranial_nerves/trigeminal_neuralgia/manuscript/medications.html
Nevertheless, we must have research into diseases and injuries, such as spinal chord injury, and stem cell research seems to offer the most promising hope. Like it or not, researchers intentionally paralyzed mice to prove that reimplanting stem cells in their spinal chord helped restore the function. This paves the way for similar future research to benefit humanity, and this is what is most important "to us" and "for us." Beyond this premise you get into a lot of philosophical debates that lead no where. There has to be a comprise in ethics. If you were chronically ill and almost dead, and the hope of an instant cure lay in the hands of killing a mouse, would you not allow it?
http://www.sci-info-pages.com/2006/06/stem-cell-therapy-restores-movement-in.html
Billy T: As a side note, there is a new class of medication that affectively treats trigeminal neuralgia. I have a very similar condition but it is not facial. I was using Carbamazepine with limited results, but a new anti-convulsant call Gabapentin has worked wonders during the last few months with no side efeects - yet? No more pain.
For a brief intro into trigeminal neuralgia and treatment: http://www.umanitoba.ca/cranial_nerves/trigeminal_neuralgia/manuscript/medications.html
I am against it. I wouldn't object to being saved by a cure already developed by that method. If there was a hypothetical scenario where the cure hadn't been developed but could successfully be made by some sort of animal testing, I wouldn't do it.
That is really good news, for you and many. The use of "anti-convulsants" makes sense to me. "Trigeminal neuralgia" was commonly considered to be the "worst pain." It was treated by cutting the nerve or perhaps only the descending branch of it. That resulted in a stiff face with little expression. I have some slight familiarity with "anti-convulsants" due to my work with epilepsy so "anti-convulsants" may be sort of a "chemical cut" or "toning down" of the nerve. I would think an implant able packet for topical slow (at least a year) local release would be worth investigating as if the "anti-convulsants" are used chronically systemically, it is hard to understand how there can be no side effects. However, even if there are some mild ones, to be pain free would surely be worth it.valich said:
Anyway, I am very happy for you.
PS#1 - who makes Gabapentin? - I am always on the lookout for promising drug development companies. I listen to a lot of biomedical and investor meetings and company calls etc. via the web. I may not get much financial advantage from all this, but it is very interesting and relatively new field for me. (I love to learn and to teach.)
It is amazing what is underdevelopment - truly "magic bullets" and not just VEGF either but all sorts of RNA interference, cell signaling control, etc. In 20 years cancer and most genetic diseases will be only a part of man's history, at least for those who can pay. (Building these highly special molecules and making them stable in the body is not cheap.)
In 40 years, it may be cheap as then genetic engineered "bugs" (or even large animals) will make them (One, a clotting factor I seem to recall, is already extracted from genetic engineered goat's blood and the first such GM animal made drug FDA has approved.)
PS#2 to Exhumed (and others with similar POV) by edit:
These new drugs I mentioned in PS#1 will (and are in "Phase I" testing) requiring a lot of animal testing. There is a whole industry supplying the needed very healthy animals. For example, Charles River Labs has by far the cleanest hotel in Boston and every meal served is nutritionally balanced etc. It is a 6 to 8 story building with each floor separately air conditioned etc. Only animals can live there - you are too dirty to even visit them.
When with their help cancer is no more etc, you will of course be willing to die a painful death from it, if I understand you correctly. I will bet 100 to 1 if it comes down to that you will change your mind.
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Who is working to take away people's rights? The testing labs or the people who oppose them? Which side uses terrorist attacks against humans? Which side wants to outlaw the animals that some of us want to keep? Which side has an agenda to kill off all domesticated animals?
The people who use animals for medical tests do none of those things. I'm on their side.
The people who use animals for medical tests do none of those things. I'm on their side.
Testing on animals should only be done for important medical trials. Not for cosmetics or studying/practicing. If injuring and eventually killing rabbits or monkeys leads us to a cancer cure or another important goal it should be encouraged. Non-essential testing should be banned.