vegan
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Does anyone else support animal research?
- Thread starter Razzie
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I too believe that animal research, in most cases, is a necessary evil. I don't think that a bunch of rabbits should have makeup smeared in their eyes so that I can get a new color of eye shadow, but medical research, conducted in a humane manner, is necessary. In order to accurately discover more about the immune system, for example, you need to look at it in a complete being. Even if you were to just look at cells only, where would you suggest getting the cells from? We can barely get people to donate blood, how do you expect to get them to donate their liver cells? Also, even though mice don't get the same diseases as humans, you can selectively breed mice with specific mutations to study the effects on the immune system, transplant tolerance, etc. Animal research has led to great advances in medicine. I am more than happy to find a better way to do research, but right now, there isn't anything. I think that as long as the animals are treated humanely and we live in a country where every chain restarant sells meat dishes and we wear leather coats and shoes, it really isn't fair to single out animal research as abusive to animals. Have you ever been to a slaughter house or a dairy farm? Those animals are treated much worse! I'm not saying the pain and death the animals may be caused is ok, but is it more ok for one of your friends or family members to suffer and die from cancer or heart disease because the discovery of a cure or effective treatment for it is delayed indefinately because animal research is made illegal? Besides, any respectable place that does animal research has a committee that oversees the animal housing conditions and use for research. There are protocols that must be followed, and strict guidlines for animal handling and experimentation. Anyone who is that pissed off about medical research should request that they only recieve the medical procedures and medications that have not been developed through the use of animal research. I wonder how they would feel about once they saw what they got?Last edited:
vegan
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from cells culture
studying how to cure a disease by forcing it onto a sane body? therefore not looking at the source of the problem what caused the disease but instead mutating the virus and creating a new one even stronger? even though i don't have an opinion on it, there's a theory saying that aids came out of lab experiences. if you want more killing viruses don't change anything, keep forcing one animal's disease to another species.
they are not.
what is the punishment given to child torturers and mass murderers?
time in jail
what do these animals live?
a life in a cage + torture during the experiments
this never was and will never be a "humane treatment". it's a big joke
i'm against all animal exploitation.
but questions were asked about animal experimentation, so we answer them.
because A and B are "wrong" doesn't mean we can't talk about solving A while B is still a problem.
yes
and my grand father died last year of a cancer
and i have a friend who died one month ago of a cancer after 2 years of treatment. he was 40 years old. (anecdote, and i promise it's true : his ex-wife worked in an animal lab before)
and he explained to me the suffering you can't imagine.
but making someone else (many more i should say) suffer instead of you is not a solution.
and as you will see if you read the rest of the thread, some are far from convinced of the utility of animal experimentation.
what protocols? the security rules so the animals can't escape their cages?
it doesn't add to the animals' suffering to use products that have been tested on them (be it useful or not) in the past but will not anymore in the future.
all products commercialised have been tested. it would be stupid not to use aspirin because it has been tested.
actually, in europe the cosmetic products baring the mention "not tested on animals" can contain any of the ingredients tested before 1998.
But where do you think the cells originally came from?
You didn't listen to what I said. I didn't say anything about viruses before, but I guess I'll say something now. As far as viruses are concerned, especially epidemics, discovering what caused the disease isn't enough. You have to know how to treat or cure the disease to solve the problem. Knowing AIDS or hepatitis is spread by sex, contaminated needles, etc. doesn't help the people who already have it. Also, not all mutations cause a stronger virus. Many would destroy the virus, or make it weaker in many areas, such as replication kinetics or drug resistance. What I was talking about before was mutations. By making a mutation, you don't make some deformed, disease ridden mouse, you change one thing, like their ability to make one protein or to use one immune receptor in their T cells. It does look at the source of the problem because, if the mutation creates a difference in how the animals immune system reacts to a certain situation, such as a transplant or a disease, then you know that the thing that you mutated is important in the acceptance or rejection of the transplant or in dealing with the disease, and you can then begin to develop therapies for based on this information. You can't just force one disease on another species if the species can't contract the disease. That's why they do AIDS research on primates, because only humans and primates can contract the disease. You can't give a mouse or a rat AIDS. As far as the animals not spreading diseases to other species, what about the black plague (rats to humans)? Or rabies (mammals to humans)? Or west nile virus (mosquitos to birds/humans)? If AIDS came out of lab experiences, it was probably a result of using primates who were already infected with the disease. It wouldn't have been the result of giving the primate AIDS, because people didn't know about AIDS yet.
I can't speak for what all researchers do. Do animals sometimes get tortured/abused in research? I am sure they do, and I am very sorry for that. Do they get tortured by everyone who uses them? Definitely not. With the people I work with, the animals aren't strapped down and given medical procedures in full consciousness. If a surgical procedure is conducted, the animals are given medication to put them under for surgery and pain medication afterwards.
I didn't say we can't talk about solving A while B is still a problem, I said don't single out A when B is not only a problem too, but an even bigger problem than A, as far as animal abuse is concerned. I would love to find another alternative to using animals for research. So far, there isn't much.
Like I said before, I know animals do suffer in some institutions under some researchers, but not all of them. I lost people to cancer too. Lots of people do. That's why it is a disease that needs to be cured!
It is not many suffering for the benefit of one individual. It's not like only one person would benefit from a better cancer treatment.
I have read most of the thread and although some people aren't convinced of the utility of animal experimentation, others believe that it is necessary in certain cases. Everyone has their own opinion.
No, like I said before, there are protocols which describe exactly how medical procedures are to be performed on animals, and any new procedure must be approved by the animal board, which consists of animal care personnel and veterinarians who make sure the animals are treated as humanely as possible when the procedure is being conducted.
Why? Doesn't that support the testing on the animals in the past? It doesn't add to the animals suffering in the past, but it helps to validate and support that suffering. How is using medications/medical procedures that were previously tested on animals ok, but any new research isn't ok?
I can see us going back and forth on this subject forever. I just want to take a minute to say that I do not in any way undermine your beliefs about this subject. I think that, as an open-minded person, one should carefully weigh the opinions and beliefs of both sides of a situation. It is important to hear and understand what the other side has to say, in order to make a truly educated and informed opinion about a subject of controversy. Everyone has, and is entitled to their own opinion. I think that while research can be bad and can cause the suffering of animals, it is important to realise that there are many researchers out there who try their very hardest to treat the animals they work with as humanely as possible in order to help both man and animal in the future.Last edited:
vegan
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from humans, so at least you’re studying the cells of the good species.
from people who gave their body to the science i suppose.
even maybe from donors alive for skin cells for instance (a cell is really really small)(just guessing)
the regular treatment would be considered torture if they were humans. like i said, our worse criminals don't get a tenth of what the animals get.
i am not talking about one specific sadist, but about all the experiments.
imaging living in a cage of which they take you out only to inject you diseases, chemicals, put you in extreme conditions to see how you react, drop a product on your skin to see how harmful it is, force you to smoke non-stop to see the damages of tobacco, expose you to UVs to study the risks of cancer, cut your skin to try a new transplant...
no need to add a sadistic behaviour to find torture there.
- afterwards is too late
- many "scientists" are not scrupulous at all about this
- often, the pain itself has its part in the experiment and the animal is left suffering on purpose
see my login and you'll understand i haven't singled out A.
but here some people are willing to discuss animal experimentation but will stop listening if we talk of the other aspects of animal exploitation. so to keep the discussion going, "on topic".
but you're right, the real topic is not "animal research", it's "animal exploitation, all of it".
but not by making others suffer.
if you don't have food and so steal the food of your neighbour, you've not helped the global situation in any way.
look at the statistics of animal experimentation and you'll see that it's still many suffering for few supposedly helped
to torture someone as humanely as possible is an oxymoron.
other example :
the us army killed many innocents in iraq. as a result, the country was freed for the reign of a tyrant.
do the iraqis have now to refuse to leave in a "free" country because they were against the way it was freed? (well, of course if you've only seen the cnn news, you must be convinced they were for the war)
and does that mean that because they have benefited from a bloody action that they have now to support other bloody interventions?
so to finish, i'll humanely have a LD50 test on you.
it's simple, to test the toxicity of a product, i make you and your friends ingest the product until 50 % of the attendance is dead (has reached the Lethal Dose).
hooray to the dawning of a new concept, the humane torture.
No, it does not mean I am right and you are wrong, if you had seen what I said before, you will notice that I said that I do not in any way undermine your beliefs on this subject. Because that's what it ultimately comes down to. Beliefs on both sides. I am listening to what you say. If I wasn't listening to what you said, I wouldn't have responded to the first reply that you made. I only chose to pick apart some of the things that you said, because that's how you made your reply to me. I don't think that you're wrong, I just realize that you think differently about it than I do. There is no right and wrong in this situation, because, like I said before, it's all about beliefs. That's also why I said that we could argue this back and forth forever. That's why I'm not going to reply to your previous post, because no matter what I said, you'd come back with something else and then I would and on and on forever. I think it is at the point that we should stop discussing, because if we continue, we are just going to futiley argue back and forth in an attempt to change each others minds. That's not what I wanted at all. I was just voicing my opinion like everyone else.
xtcvitality
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^^ Nobody can "Win" this argument. It is impossible. It is the single greatest moral dilemma regarding science. Science would not be where it is today without animal testing. That is a fact that no animal activist can deny.
Psychonaut777
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^ I personally enjoy people saying that they will never use a product resulting from animal testing or other absurd claims. It happens and you can't really change that, so you might as well benifit from it. Putting yourself at potential risk (ie not getting vaccines) and putting those around you at risk, becuase you think that animals were hurt in the development of ________ is just rediculous. Sometimes we just have to deal with what is infront of us. Go use your makeup and bathing supplies which were tested on animals to make sure you look your best today.justsomeguy
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envennom said:
no way man, you're way wrong!! we can get to the bottom of this!
JerryBlunted
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skywise said:
You must be joking. I think most of the people left this thread because we realized it is a dead end argument. I still say that I support the use of animal subjects when necessary for vital research, at least until something more humane comes along that can feasibly replace that research. That isn't the case today, despite the future promise of computer modelling.justsomeguy
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^^^^
he was winking at us!! i don't know why he was doing it!
JerryBlunted
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Oh I missed the wink... sometimes shit like that is really easy to miss on the Internet... kind of funny considering what percentage of normal communication is nonverbal that we can still get ANYTHING across on here.
I think that we can get to the bottom of it eventually, I just meant that I thought that vegan and I should stop talking about it together, because all we were doing was undermining each others arguments trying to prove our respective points. Even though I think we both had important and meaningful things to say, we weren't discussing them in any constructive way with each other. I really hope that is something that we all can solve. It really does bother me. I just know that it isn't a black and white issue. It's just not that simple. Where do you draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable animal research? Every single person who responds to this thread will have a different answer to this question. Therein lies the problem of trying to solve the issue.Last edited:
JerryBlunted
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envennom said:
I agree with this statement in regards to animal testing and pretty much any other issue facing us today. The problem is that the perception of right and wrong is extremely subjective and influenced by one's culture, values, and experience.
I don't think it is wrong to kill animals when necessary, Vegan thinks it is. There is no objective way to prove one of us right or wrong so what it comes down to is a values clash. As a communal society it is imperative we come to some sort of compromise in order to continue to function, however it is unlikely people who feel strongly on either side of a hotly contested issue will ever be completely validated by society.
It's definitely a messy and complex situation in the world we live in today, but at least we have forums such as this to debate, it helps clarify what we each think personally as well as provide an opportunity to hear the thoughts and feelings of others that may be more difficult in a face to face situation.I think that another thing that makes this issue (and most animal issues) so hard to solve is that it is exceedingly difficult to figure out how to prevent or reduce animal suffering, death, enslavement, use, abuse and neglect by man when we can't even solve these problems within our own species.Last edited:
vegan
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and mostly, i put the "necessary" level higher than you do.
if a lion tries to eat you, i consider it necessary to fight back and maybe kill the lion, because there is no other option.
i don't consider animal research, meat, etc. as necessary because there are other options.
with animal research, you're not in the case of "i have to fight back right now or die" but in the hypothetical and uncertain possibility that it might help science in the future. but if as some scientists think, animal research is slowing science rather than helping it, by stopping it right now and developping more effectual methods, we would reach the results faster and without torturing and killing billions of sensitive beings.
