Is animal testing necessary for medical research or can we do without it/replace it? I dislike the idea of causing animals pain but is it the ONLY way to find cures for human diseases? I really find it a moral dilemma.
On one hand I strongly oppose utilitarian justifications of violence but then again I’ve probably used medicine myself produced with animal testing, so I don’t know really!
Many reactions can be computer tested. But, alas, some reactions can only be animal tested.
(And some reactions can only be human tested.)
Certainly, the ideal is to minimize pain in all forms. Unnecessary causation of pain is as close to the definition of “evil” as it comes. If causing animals X amount of pain might spare humans X*100 amount of pain later…it might be worth it.
(If causing animals X amount of pain to spare humans from suffering X/100 amount of pain later…it probably isn’t worth it.)
Yes, it is indispensable for most medical research, at least at the present time. Nothing can replace it. One common criticism is that some drugs etc. are found to work on mice but didn’t on humans, therefore animal research is unnecessary. I don’t think one exception invalidates the many norms.
I assume OP is not talking about non-necessary things like cosmetics, and I don’t think we should compare the two. It doesn’t help to rely on hearsay or false comparisons.
Research animals are sometimes better cared for than some “pets.” But people picture scientists cackling while shocking a mouse. There are strict animal welfare requirements, and research has to be approved by an institutional review board prior to conducting anything.
Yeah I think people who believe that we should do away with all medical animal testing are naive. Better a rat die than my mother I say.
A common argument holds that we can do all our animal testing of drugs and cosmetics using computer simulations now.
How’s that supposed to work? To program a simulation, you have to know at least the fundamental properties of the system being simulated, in order to program a simulated behavior of the system. Basically, it sounds like to do a simulation, you already need to know the answers you’re looking for, at least at some level.
Aside: Who here remembers the story arc in Bloom County, in the mid-1980’s or so (?) in which Opus learns that his mother is being held in a Mary Kay cosmetics testing laboratory, and he sets out to rescue her?
At the start of the story, he envisions a cute fluffy bunny being dusted on the nose with some cosmetic face powder, which the cute fluffy bunny says tickles. When he actually meets such a bunny, he learns that the research consists of dripping caustic chemicals in their eyes until nothing is left of their eyes but burnt-out sockets. Finally, he finds a darkened lab in which he sees a caged silhouette of an animal that might be his mother, but just then the Storm Troopers barge in and put an end to the rescue attempt.
My only issue with it has been in times past when they would use animals taken from dog pounds and maybe even stolen to do research.
But from what I know from people at Bayer, a company in our area that does animal testing, is that the animals used are carefully bread and cared for. Given special diets and conditions so as to rule out any other factors that could complicate testing. The people doing the tests are not sadists and understand the importance of their work.
It is absolutely indispensable. We’re nowhere near being able to program a computer model with the level of complexity required to predict each and every possible unexpected interaction, side effect, or reaction that could happen when you add a new molecule to an incredibly complex system of millions of different molecules working together. It simply cannot be done; at least not in the foreseeable future.
Incidentally, before I was allowed to do any research at our institute - even a simple DNA extraction - I had to sit through many hours’ of ethics training, a good chunk of which focused on treatment of experimental animals. Any institute receiving federal money (ie, all of them) has to bend over backwards to make sure the animals are treated well and spared all possible discomfort compatible with getting the science done.
Human lives are obviously more important than any other animal or plant life.
Humans are extremely well adapted to feeling sympathy and empathy, and when we see animals suffer, it brings out this reaction in most of us. This doesn’t make it a valid or moral response, but a biological one. It’s how we evolved, and it has served us well.
Causing pain, and harm, to other living things is a way of life for many living creatures. Some do it for their own survival (to eat, to defend, etc), some do it for fun (dolphins and apes and such often torture and kill small creatures as a type of recreation).
Obviously we should try to do what makes humans happiest and healthiest, and that means minimizing animal suffering. But that also means we absolutely must continue animal testing that involves some pain and suffering in animals.
Not everyone believes this. It’s a common belief, but not universal.
Are the people who don’t value human life over animal life willing to sacrifice themselves in the place of a mouse? I suspect not.
Causing pain to the animals is also bad scientific practice most of the time. Pain and stress will cause the animal to react differently to whatever is being tested.
Not quite. What you would need is a complete understanding of the physical structure of what you are simulating, down to the atoms & molecules. That doesn’t tell you all the answers you want to know - you still need to learn how all those things interact. But it’s still beyond our present stage of knowledge, as well as what our computers can simulate as of yet.
Remember that animal testing would definitely be needed if you want to study diseases that affect animals, after all. There are animal diseases that, while they don’t affect humans at all, have major economic impact, therefore studying them on their hosts is important to eradicate them (see Rinderpest, PPR, the various vesicular diseases like Foot and Mouth). And some diseases affect both animals and humans, so a drug that was tested and approved for humans can also be used to treat an animal condition.
Animal use is regulated by the IACUC, a committee that studies the projects, and regulates and evaluates why are animals use, how many are used, how they are used, how are they treated, and under what terms. And they would prefer to use as few animals as they can.
In many (if not all) projects, unnecessary suffering is not allowed. Many projects have guidelines, such that if they notice some clinical signs, the affected animals will then be humanely euthanized. And yes, methods of euthanasia are also regulated. While a mouse can be done with cervical dislocation, a horse would need a proper dose of sedatives and barbiturates. In some cases the study period may be cut short if a significant portion of the animals have to be euthanized due to the experiment.
There is a whole veterinary specialty dedicated to the correct care and use of laboratory animals, and they know not only how to treat them, but all the regulations concerning their use.
Animal testing, at least by most serious institutions, is not “WEEEE, we gots animals to play with!!!”.
In discussions like this, I like to point out that I do horrible things to fruit flies* on a regular basis as part of my research. No one ever seems to be willing to stand up and fight for the rights of fruit flies, for some reason.
*Though even with fruit flies, we at least anesthetize them before ripping their ovaries out.
There are different regulations of invertebrates vs vertebrates, and then the regulations governing different species, to as much detail as possible. I took a class where we had to dissect the nervous system of cockroaches, and also of lobsters. Then we picked the claws and had had lobster claw for lunch. So… um… yea, the regulations are different.
It should be controlled to a minimum necessary, but I cannot take strong appeals seriously when we still allow animals to be killed for food or hunted for fun- neither of which is necessary, and in the case of food is actually dangerous to the planet and the humans on it, both individually and collectively.
This as a meat eating person who does not hunt or fish for pleasure but would do so for food if necessary!
Sure. The point I was attempting to make (perhaps poorly) was that even the extreme animal rights PETA-type nutcases never seem to be bothered by the fact that we raise and kill many millions of insects for research purposes. I don’t how many millions of flies I’ve bred and killed that have never seen the outside of their food vials (about the size of a cigar).
I worked at the NIH during and after college. In both of my labs, we worked with mice.
One of the post-docs was doing an experiment that required a pregnant mom mouse, with intact fetuses. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the momma mouse gave birth during the night prior to the “experiment.”
I remember ogling the momma mouse and all her cute new babies the next morning at work. Oh how sad, one of the babies was born dead. Awww, the momma is nuzzling the dead baby, trying to wake it up. Wait. What the fuck is that mouse doing. Holy fucking shit the momma mouse is EATING its dead baby. Death to all mice!!!