Animal Research

[onthebutton]

Wow. Just wow.

I work in medical research. I've done tons of experiments on mice and rats. There is some stuff in this thread that can only be classified as just plain dumb. I'm going to come back to this thread when I'm more sober to comment more, but it may be next week. Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby come first---I hope that all of the alcohol products I plan to consume between now and Sunday were thoroughly tested on animals!

[Howard Treesong]

What about a hypersmart rat versus a brain-dead human? In other words, change the condition on intelligence. In that event, Zeebo, does your answer change?

I too view animals as property and think that there are great distinctions of kind (not just of degree) between humans and every other species. But I quite frankly have difficult articulating the difference precisely, which suggests to me that the distinction is not so crystal-clear as I thought.

I think Ja is asking good questions that nobody here really has answered. I'm very uncomfortable (for Sam Harris reasons) about a faith-based answer to this issue.

[HP]

[ QUOTE ]
Now look, I'm all for studying rats. But I also think that studying babies should be fine too, that is, assuming that the mommy and daddy are cool with it. Nobody would ever study babies like this, but why not? I suppose that they care about humans being in pain more than rats being in pain, but why? Is it really because we're "more advanced?" Seems to me that rats are way more advanced than babies. Babies can't do anything for themselves. They rely on caregivers. Let a baby go free in the wild, or your backyard for that matter, and it will be dead in a few days at most.

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I think the main reason we care about babies more is for whatever reason, humans naturally show more compassion towards other humans, than they do towards animals. Most of the time.

We've evolved to not want to hurt babies. I think that's about it

btw, [censored] the golden rule. Numero uno ftw

[HP]

btw sort of on a tangent here, it's my understanding that if some one owns a dog, and you kill/torture it, you are breaking the law and can be punished in some way. However if it was a pet ant, this is not the case. This tickles my mind

Anyone care to explain the rationale behind this?

I think all there is to it here is people care more about dogs than ants.

[JaredL]

[ QUOTE ]
btw sort of on a tangent here, it's my understanding that if some one owns a dog, and you kill/torture it, you are breaking the law and can be punished in some way. However if it was a pet ant, this is not the case. This tickles my mind

Anyone care to explain the rationale behind this?

I think all there is to it here is people care more about dogs than ants.

[/ QUOTE ]

Do ants have the cognitive capacity to suffer? I actually don't know (googling didn't produce much) but if not (or they have have little) that's one reason.

[HP]

[ QUOTE ]

Do ants have the cognitive capacity to suffer? I actually don't know (googling didn't produce much) but if not (or they have have little) that's one reason.

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change ant to rat

googling rat laws...

edit: meh, can't find a list of which animals are protected by law in some way. It'd be sweet if some one could find such a list, if only for one particular state or something

[Tablerat]

JaBlue,

I think it's important to list the fundamental reasons, beyond the neurophysiological similarities between species, why researchers use rats and mice as study models. These reasons justify, in my mind, animal research according to the standards and practices outlined by various governmental agencies. These standards are adaptable and imperfect, but they are the most practical and realistic given the needs and demands of the scientific community at large. So this brings up the issue of ethics versus utility.

If one agrees that scientific research is necessary and/or beneficial within a certain country, for example, then the next step is to decide how to conduct that research. (I'm not trying to be patronizing here.)

You mention that rats' "neurological makeup is actually pretty similar to ours". So next, and taking this issue independently from ethics, is to compare the practicality and utility of testing on rats versus humans or chimpanzees even. Off the top of my head, and I'm not well educated on the finer differences, the main practical reasons for using rats are (in addition to physiological similarities)

- Shorter gestation cycle, more offspring per cycle, and shorter lifespan overall
- Cost and convenience to the researchers - in obtaining the animals, care, and housing, and ultimately disposal; also the size of the animal
- More simplistic physiological pathways (on the whole); If a researcher wants to study a particular neurotransmitter, for example, then first study it in a more basic model, with fewer variables.

Then one weighs the preceding arguments in utility versus the expected outcomes of the research itself; i.e. will testing on rats be useful (from a macroscopic perspective) to humans?

These issues must be weighed independently and afterwards, against the ethical issues. On ethics, I don't think it is necessarily "ethical" to do research on animals with developed nervous systems and brains, but it is practical and useful in many cases - again, according to strict governmental guidelines. Are there more alternatives today, like computer modelling and more effective analgesics, and how do these alternatives, in the research community's mind, compare to direct testing on animals? Like hanster alluded, it is simply not feasible to test on humans because it takes 9 months for usually just one human offspring. Not to mention all the other obstacles and implications to human testing. Practicality supersedes ethics in my argument of testing rats versus testing humans.

Finally, if one disagrees that scientific research is necessary or beneficial to humans then that person has a stronger ground on which to argue against animal testing.

(Btw, my username is completely coincidental, haha.)

[BeaucoupFish]

Research is done on humans all the time as clinical trials. Why are you focusing on early developed humans ("babies")? Is there some reason you think "babies" are useful for research?

I really don't see any ethical dilemma here when you compare 'animals' to humans. Animal research as a standalone topic, sure. But human vs. animal experimentation as being equal....I don't see your point at all.

btw Did anyone read The Plague Dogs (Douglas Adams)?

[AlexSem]

HUmans can relate to a baby suffering but not so much for a rat suffering.

Rats are annoying and their suffering doesn't bug me. A baby I associate with a lil cousin, or little brother/sister and so on and hence it'd really bug out the people doing the experiments.

Also, the costs of using babies would be substantially higher than using rats. Is this meant to be a serious post?

[TylerD]

Slightly OT, but I find militant Animal Rights activists some of the most despicable human beings alive.