Does “reasonable” work for you?
The ALF (Animal Liberation Front) cheerfully confessed and promised more such stupidity (link).
What a load of absolute cock.
I’m hoping you’re joking, but I’ll answer this anyway. We don’t do initial studies on humans because much of the testing requires that the animal be sacrificed for necropsy to study the effects, tests for systemic toxicity can result in rather immediate death, tests for sensitization can seriously damage or destroy skin tissue. We do studies here where needles are used to suck out eye fluid and inject test article–know anyone who wants to volunteer for that? Personally, I don’t. And no ethical researcher would be comfortable with murdering random human test subjects because a handful of people think the guinea pigs should be allowed to run wild and free in fields full of daisies. Human trials are a part of drug and device testing, but they come way after the animal testing which is absolutely necessary to establish where the line is between beneficial and toxic doses, or whether a new device, drug, or procedure is even beneficial at all.
Doesn’t make sense. If it were true, it wouldn’t be limited to animal right activists.
If all kind of violent acts commited by all kind of nutjobs (and non-nutjobs) were more commn in the Uk than anywhere else, you might have a point.
Besides, the UK isn’t the only country with restrictive gun laws, so why wouldn’t animal rights activists be equally moronic in all these other countries.
British people have the reputation of being particularily fond of animals, by the way. Maybe this reputation has some basis in truth and it’s somehow related?? (though actually, there isnt necessarily a reason for local peculiarities).
How do you get a job like that? I am in my 2nd year in vet school, but I am looking into research with lab animals, so I am wondering if I have to take extra classes to work as a researcher?
While I don’t know MaryBeth Sweetland’s rationale, there is a logical position that states that we should only kill animals when doing so is necessary for our own continued survival. If we have any alternative that allows us to survive without killing animals to do so, we should take that alternative.
Of course, that position would allow certain types of medical testing on animals, and condoning medical testing isn’t a position for which PETA is exactly famous. But the middle-ground position is, I think, a reasonable one to take.
(For myself, I lost my ability to oppose medical testing when I listened to a researcher describe his work in UNC Hospital’s burn ward, and agonize over his own decision to burn unanaesthetized animals in order to develop treatments that would save the lives of people who had suffered life-threatening burn injuries.)
Daniel
I thought the exact same thing.
I know that it is important in treating human burn victims but I still feel sorry for the animals. 
[Tangent]
Did the researcher explain why it was necessary for the animals to be unanaesthetized?
[/Tangent]
from the article
That’s the best they could come up with? How about Animal Rights Now or Save the Cute Little Fuzzy Beasties? Shit, Help the Critters sounds better than Stop the Newchurch Guinea Pigs. At least think of how it is going to look on a resume. Stop the Newchurch Guinea Pigs just sounds soooo junior league.
They can only target the small farmers. The big corporations don’t give a fuck how many relatives you dig up. At least these little turds get to sleep at night knowing that they’ve done something to improve the planet. :rolleyes:
He did, although I don’t remember the exact reason. I believe it had something to do with how anaesthesia slows down certain biological reactions to burns, and so an anaesthetized animal doesn’t provide very good data about the injuries suffered by a burn victim.
And yeah, I definitely feel awful for the animals. But he made the point that he used as few animals as he could, and that once he’d developed a treatment, it would be in human hands until the end of civilization (or until a better treatment came along), so the agonizing deaths of a few animals now would save countless (human) animals from agonizing deaths in the future.
I know it’s not logical, but had he not agonized over his research so much, I wouldn’t have found his position so compelling.
(For context, I was temping in the hospital’s clinical research facility at the time; this was a lecture for medicals students as part of a class on medical ethics, and I was able to persuade my boss to let me audit the lecture).
Daniel
I see that there have been some resonable responses to this query. I guess what I was trying to say initially was being pro choice doesn’t make you pro abortion. Believing that humans are not the cause of global warming doesn’t make you pro pollution.
Can you find anyone who is in favour of treating animals badly? Just because I feel that some animal testing is good and that eating meat isn’t an abomination doesn’t mean I am in favour of torturing or mistreating animals. There are shades of gray.
Well, yeah.
But “animal rights” doesn’t mean “not torturing and mistreating animals.” That would be animal welfare, or something that’s simply assumed.
“Animal rights” refers to an ideology that goes way beyond simple humane treatment though: in a nutshell, they put the interests of animals on equal footing with the interests of people. They’d consider anything that exploits an animal for human gain (eating it, keeping it has a companion, using it for research, etc.), even when distress to the animal is minimized, to be immoral.
Certainly, the term “animal rights” isn’t very well-defined, but I think the above description is one of the most common meaning of the phrase, and is the one that I intended when I said “anti animal rights.”
Well, yes. But it’s too general a term to use with regards to animal rights. We still don’t have a term for people who disapprove of animal cruelty but are okay with responsible use. Metacom’s phrase “animal welfare” has a certain positive ring to it, and has the advantage of being something very few people are against, but it also has a bit of an Orwellian double-speak air. Plus, it lends itself to “welfare queen” jokes.
I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. I study the genetics of a class of transcription factors, so the mice are model organisms which we can mutate appropriately. If you’re interested in basic research like that, vet school is sort of the wrong field, but you can almost certainly set up collaborations later if you are genuinely interested. If what you want is to work with research animals in the context of providing veterinary care for them, I can assure you that major institutions all over the world are looking for competent vets for their animal facilities. Feel free to email me if you have further questions.
mischievous
If you have a research animal facility nearby, you may want to look into an internship to see if it’s an area you’re interested in. Assuming you have some skills, you could help with the kind of work that lab animal technologists do.