Crowd funded LD50 experiments on legal RCs

[perpetualdawn]

Si, I'm not here to battle with you or anyone, and that is why I said "It's definitely debatable if one life has more value than another", I'm not sure of it. It's not *my* premise, it's *the* premise of animal testing. And there is a whole ton of grey area in there.

However, if I was given a dilemma where I had to take either a rat's life or a human's life, I would take the rat's life. Would you?

 

[Si Dread]

Sure, sorry, don't mean to be confrontational, No hards!

If there is firm evidence, I support some animal research into cancer & other truly serious illnesses. I would prefer we didn't do it, but if it has efficacy (& I for one am not clued up enough on this subject to have an opinion on it) & it helps save childrens lives, fine.

But for recreational drugs, nah, I can't support it.

I do get where you're coming from though, & it's an interesting & divisive topic for sure.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

what world of rainbow and unicorn scientific research do you freaking live in dude?

Er, probably the same one that F&B, the most brilliant theoretical chemist to grace this board, lives in. I don't think you'll find many references to rats and mice in Shulgins works either.

 

[Folley]

However, if I was given a dilemma where I had to take either a rat's life or a human's life, I would take the rat's life. Would you?

I don't think I'm prepared to make that decision. 8(



I'd personally break the necks of a hundred rats to stop just ONE drug overdose... it still won't bring Jimi back though Random Bluelighters injecting mice with 25c until they die will literally help nothing however. If you're going to be doing science, you need to come at it from a scientific standpoint. What will this accomplish? What does it prove?

It's a good starting block for discussion, but let's PLEASE think this out a little more before we pick up the needle lol

Er, probably the same one that F&B, the most brilliant theoretical chemist to grace this board, lives in. I don't think you'll find many references to rats and mice in Shulgins works either.

Shulgin's "research" isn't exactly that complete. P/Tikal is basically just a journal of trip reports with some chemistry on the side. He was studying the effects, sure... but his efforts were mainly on finding new, novel chemicals. Not bioassaying the ones he already had lying around.

 

[perpetualdawn]

^ coming at it from a scientific standpoint is exactly what I'm talking about here. It is an experiment to determine the LD50 of 25C-NBOMe in mice/rats. The purpose would be to compare this LD50 to the LD50s in rats/mice of other more familiar compounds such as LSD, MDMA. In this way we would have a better idea of what is this fire that people are playing with. It wouldn't be a way to definitively determine how toxic this stuff is to humans at all, it would be just a clue to how careful we need to be with it.

 

[Folley]

Well, what do you plan to do with an established LD50 for mice..? I really doubt that could be extrapolated to humans for such a new and unpredictable drug.


Nicholas Sand has already done some work with the NBOMes, perhaps you'd be better off looking into his research and trying to revive that.

 

[Si Dread]

If you want to know how this stuff affects humans, you need to use humans in your research.

Can you imagine the logistics of this work? Firstly, you need to produce doses tiny enough to give to a rat without killing it instantly. You'd then need to gradually increase this miniscule dose until 50% of your test group die. Then you'd need to extrapolate that information to humans, which in isolation like that, is almost impossible. The only way you could successfully do this would be to move on up the food chain once you've run out of rats, to rabbits, cats, dogs & eventually, primates. Otherwise, all you've done is get a rough idea of how much 25c NBOMe it takes to kill half a dance-floor full of rats.

 

[StoneHappyMonday]

Shulgin's "research" isn't exactly that complete. P/Tikal is basically just a journal of trip reports with some chemistry on the side. He was studying the effects, sure... but his efforts were mainly on finding new, novel chemicals. Not bioassaying the ones he already had lying around.

A journal of trip reports with some chemistry on the side?

If that's how you read Shulgin man, you'd better get publishing. You obviously have something more wholesome to offer.

And unless we have different definitions of bioassay I'd suggest that exactly what he was doing, quantitatively. He tested every drug personally for active threshold doses before passing onto acquaintances for their opinions. Yes his efforts were on finding new novel chemicals, but not at the expense of safety. And his route to safety involved actual human beings, namely himself, rather than rats.

 

[babylonboy]

Chemistry on the side? What's your background in chemistry, exactly, Folley? It seems a little bit like you're talking out of your arse and looking silly, mate.

The ethics aside, you had better believe that the authorities take a pretty dim view of private individuals performing experimentation on animals without any kind of overview, approval, or at least qualification. How do you think being the mad amateur scientist injecting rats with lethal doses of designer drugs in your basement is going to look to a jury?

Si, distasteful as it may be, rats actually are a pretty good model for humans, that's the reason they're so often used in research. Whatever your view, objectively, how a chemical interacts with a rat is a better clue to how it will affect a human than is that drug's interaction with most other animals.

 

[Folley]

Alright, that was a bit out of line. Moreover it's a chemistry book with some trip reports and anecdotal stories on the side... still, not the kind of full fledged scientific research that maps out the effects of chemicals in the brain. That is in NO way meant to disrespect Shulgin. His books weren't meant to fully characterize the effects of each drug in the brain and he couldn't possibly have been expected to do so.

This is a different time, however. We need to move past a simple understanding of how these drugs get us "high" and actually start to understand what changes they are making in our bodies. I don't believe this is exactly the best approach to that, but it is likely something that will need some attention when this type of research is more accepted.

 

[Help?!?!]

I'm pretty sure Shulgin didn't test every one himself besides the fact that he wasn't testing LD50's he was testing for active effects/doses so the point is fairly moot either way. While I don't nessacarily agree with animal testing what other choice is there...? Cloning humans, raising humans on farms for testing, or just throwing chemicals to the public willy nilly so people will just die or get some strange disease somewhere down the road? Putting value on life isn't truly possible but sometimes we have to make difficult choices either way, it's unfortunately how reality is.... Believe me, I wish just as much if not more than most that things could be different but right now we don't have a plethora of options. For all we know anyways if we tested on humans and they died, we could well kill a being that could advance medical testing far enough to make testing on any actual living being at all obsolete as insane and far fetched as it that sounds.

 

[perpetualdawn]

OK first off, let's not sweat too much, because I'm sure this will never happen in the context of community funded research. But let's pretend, because it's an interesting thought experiment.

The idea is not to try and pretend rats are humans and then dose accordingly, that would be ignorant. But if we had LD50 of 25C-NBOMEe for mice, we could compare this to the LD50 of, say, psilocybin in the same animal. Now, pretend we find out that LD50 for 25C-NBOMe in mice is 0.1mg/kg. If we know that the LD50 for Psilocybin in mice 285 mg/Kg, we can look at the huge difference there and make a pretty safe bet that 25C-NBOMe is going to be much more toxic than psilocybin for humans as well.

I don't know about you guys, but when I was 18 and thinking about dosing acid for my first time, I did a lot of reading first, and came to the conclusion that it was probably pretty safe. One of the things I looked at was the ridiculously high LD50 of LSD. I predict that the LD50 of 25C-NBOME (or other NBOMEs) is comparatively extremely low. I imagine some other 18 year old coming across that piece of information, and it could help them make a safe decision.

 

[Si Dread]

I disagree. The single surest way to avoid the dangers associated with drugs use is to avoid drugs use. Prescription drugs kill thousands every year, yet they were thoroughly researched before they came to market & probably tested on the full list of animals I posted above, & then some. The research might help save lives, but it won't prevent accidents. Not even avoiding drugs altogether ensures you're safe from "accidents". They happen!

Si, distasteful as it may be, rats actually are a pretty good model for humans, that's the reason they're so often used in research. Whatever your view, objectively, how a chemical interacts with a rat is a better clue to how it will affect a human than is that drug's interaction with most other animals.

As I said, I know too little about this subject to be able to react with anything other than distaste. But I did also say that I understand that this stuff might seem necessary in regards to cancer etc. Whether it is actualy necessary or not is not something I am qualified or knowledgable enough to comment on.

 

[Ziiirp]

I'm pretty sure Shulgin didn't test every one himself besides the fact that he wasn't testing LD50's he was testing for active effects/doses so the point is fairly moot either way. While I don't nessacarily agree with animal testing what other choice is there...? Cloning humans, raising humans on farms for testing, or just throwing chemicals to the public willy nilly so people will just die or get some strange disease somewhere down the road?

How about testing it on receptor sites/diseased organs, that were cultivated via stem cell fertilization and are kept "alive" artificially in solution ? Or just be patient and wait 50 years, till the whole human body can be emulated by a program. Who needs all those pseudo-medications anyway (cancer/terminal disease research excluded) ? It's all about religion in the end. If you believe, that living beings are more than the sum of their parts, you would never kill clueless, innocent beings for the sake of rescuing lives, that suffer under the modern lifestyle (fastfood, poisonous cosmetic products etc.). It is not exactly about killing those animals. It is about the pain they are in before eventually wasting away.

Putting value on life isn't truly possible but sometimes we have to make difficult choices either way, it's unfortunately how reality is....

You mean society. There is a difference.

Believe me, I wish just as much if not more than most that things could be different but right now we don't have a plethora of options. For all we know anyways if we tested on humans and they died, we could well kill a being that could advance medical testing far enough to make testing on any actual living being at all obsolete as insane and far fetched as it that sounds.

I can marginally tolerate, if they test on already elderly rodents, that "naturally" developed cancer, whether a promising carcinolytic is dangerous at all before going into stage 3 (human testing). But what I cannot tolerate is, when they test a random potentially cardiotoxic serotonine releaser and market it as the next anti-appetizing med for overweight Americans (who are to lazy to work out and naturally live healthy). It is the same as testing recreational drugs on animals. Unnessecary.

 

[Thomas Davie]

^ coming at it from a scientific standpoint is exactly what I'm talking about here. It is an experiment to determine the LD50 of 25C-NBOMe in mice/rats. The purpose would be to compare this LD50 to the LD50s in rats/mice of other more familiar compounds such as LSD, MDMA. In this way we would have a better idea of what is this fire that people are playing with. It wouldn't be a way to definitively determine how toxic this stuff is to humans at all, it would be just a clue to how careful we need to be with it.

I do understand where you're coming from, and if you though I was being antagonistic towards you, I apologize.

Here's where I'm coming from. I do this shit for a living. I dearly wish I didn't. I know from experience that it is very difficult to extrapolate from animal models to humans, and quite frequently the methodology is sloppy, poorly thought out, a waste of time, money and animal lives. Getting approval to work with animals is difficult. The more invasive the work with the animals becomes, the more exponentially difficult it becomes to get ethics approval to do the work whether or not you've got the money. If you're caught doing non approved animal research, well careers can and do get fucked.

Any institution that would do the sort of work that you propose I would not consider reliable.

Tom

 

[Black Rabbit of Inle]

Why the hell don't they just kill two birds with one stone?

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads...ates-to-longer-deaths-amid-scramble-for-drugs

Use Death Row inmates for LD50 testing, you get your human data and it's not needlessly endangering someone/something that doesn't deserve it...

 

[Halif]

I don't know about you, but I live in a world full of shit humans.

Then remove yourself. Tom, you seem to have a very human(e) perspective on the work you do, and it seems that you don't like being involved. I am not a person who whittles things down to black and white; however, it would seem to me that in this case the answer is clear. Remove yourself from that work. I'm sure it's not easy, and I don't know your life circumstances, but yes, what you feel is correct - the amount of suffering caused by using animals in medical (or other) research is one of the greatest blights on humanity in this day and age.

Death is natural and ultimately unavoidable. There will always be diseases which cause suffering and take life. There is no justification - none whatsoever - in taking any living creature, and systemically torturing it.

I find it perplexing and disturbing how often I hear people comment that testing on <insert any creature> is better than testing on humans. On what authority can people claim one life form to be 'worth' more or less than any other? Humans seem to have a severe case of superiority complex and see the Earth and its creatures as simply here for our use - as our slaves.

Most people would be sickened to know, let alone see, what goes on in medical testing facilities, and if the context of the facility was removed, and a man in normal clothes was cutting the legs off a dog in the street - do you think people would find that acceptable? And yet, in a different context people see it as "necessary".

The human population is expanding, and we want to remove anything that stops it. Becuase.... ? Why? What are we doing here? We're merely making the Earth a living hell at this rate.

 

[babylonboy]

Use Death Row inmates for LD50 testing, you get your human data and it's not needlessly endangering someone/something that doesn't deserve it...

Well, isn't everyone, like, abolishing the death penalty? We already did over here, in the developed world. Doesn't the United States have that whole "cruel and unusual" thing? I could go on, but basically, this is a very, very stupid idea.

 

[Black Rabbit of Inle]

Well, isn't everyone, like, abolishing the death penalty?

Maybe, but it isn't abolished yet. While it's still possible it would be the best way to get this data.

We already did over here, in the developed world

So the US isn't the 'developed world'? Because they haven't completely abolished the death penalty there.

I could go on, but basically, this is a very, very stupid idea.

No stupider than trying to crowd fund animal testing when the data doesn't translate well to humans anyway.

 

[babylonboy]

Maybe, but it isn't abolished yet. While it's still possible it would be the best way to get this data.

"Sure, it looks like using slaves is on the wrong side of history, but until it's actually illegal, it sure is the cheapest way for me to get this sugarcane harvested".

So the US isn't the 'developed world'? Because they haven't completely abolished the death penalty there.

Yes, that is the point I was making, that there's countries like Germany and Sweden and the UK that don't have the death penalty, and there's countries like Chad and Iran and Niger and the USA that do. I'm pretty happy to be in the former camp. Additionally, the USA does still execute people, but even Texas doesn't subject unwilling humans to lethal medical experimentation.

No stupider than trying to crowd fund animal testing when the data doesn't translate well to humans anyway.

Yes, it is. Much, much stupider.