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I understand the motivation behind this opinion and would like to see testing of beauty products on animals outlawed. But pigs with lipstick is not really what you take the most issues with, is it? It's about giving rabbits cancer so we can test new cancer drugs on them. Assuming we make that illegal, how do you propose new cancer treatments should be tested?
Why would it be ok to test on non-human animals but not on humans?
Do you participate in modern medicine? Do you have any vaccinations or taken any antibiotics? Animal testing makes it possible. What alternative do you propose?
Notice how you didn't answer the question.
I did, but let me be more explicit for you. Animal testing is necessary because it makes modern medicine possible.
Now, if we outlaw animal testing, what alternative should we take? That's three timese now. You haven't been able to give an answer yet.
Maybe there currently aren't alternatives specifically because they aren't needed as in why develop alternatives when the status quo isn't challenged and testing on animals is the norm?
No one likes animal trials, most of all the researchers themselves who work with the animals. For example researchers cannot take any vacation during the trial. In fact someone needs to be in the lab at least once a day, including Sundays and public holidays.
Also animal trials are expensive.
Research on alternatives is progressing. It's not like there is a big conspiracy of sociopaths that get off on animal suffering and want to keep the status quo because of that. It's simply really really really hard to simulate a body to the necessary level.
Meat eaters will never challenge the status quo.
Edit: As usual, those friendly and loving fellas have nothing but downvotes. Keep on killing them!
That isn't an answer to the question:
Why would it be ok to test on non-human animals but not on humans?
Because humans are more valuable. If you had to choose between saving one human, and one hundred rats, which would you choose? We test on rats until we deem it safe and ethical enough to progress to testing on humans.
That doesn't make the lives of animals worthless. And they are treated as less than worthless. Animals can have rights and human lives can still be saved. Is it worth one human life to save a million rats? All the rats? Humans are not infinitely valuable. Not compared to another sentient, sapient creature like a rat.
What is it about humans that makes them more valuable? And valuable in what way?
Can you answer the question, "If you had to choose between saving one human and one hundred rats,which would you choose?" The answer to your questions is related to this one.
It's not related because that choice is not what is happening. You don't have one button that kills/saves rats and one that kills/saves a human.
What is happening is that we have deemed it morall ok to medically experiment on non-human animals but not on humans.
This is like asking why is some random stranger any more valuable to you than your closest loved one.
I am not going to medically experiment on either, so no, it's not like that.
You value one over the other and you know it.
You are all over this comment section attempting to slip out of good points but we see you. The good points stand.
Consensually harvested Lab-grown human body parts.
Good idea. We just need to wait for the technology to catch up. Thanks.
But that technology will never exist without us trying that with animals first.
Catch, meet 22.
We're already trying to scale existing methods, which means we already have the technology, it's just not cheaper than the subsidized meat industry.
Meat‽
Are you suggesting that we test vaccines on artificial hamburger meat?
Making something that tastes like meat is WAY different from actually making a complete immune system, fully working organs and everything else you need to test vaccines. We basically need full clones.
Also how can you harvest lab grown organs consensually? It's not like they can talk...
You could theoretically make lab grown organs in a millennium or something but doing it consensually doesn't make any sense because you can't do it with or without consent, because they would presumably not be sentient.
Both occurr.
There are experimental medication trials with volunteer human subjects, often people in a situation where they have nothing to lose and whatever small contribute they may give to advance knowledge on a given field may very well be their last (or only) act of compassion towards others.
Make-up and so called beauty products can and should be tested on humans alone. But medications and other alike present too much of an unknown outcome to test outright on humans. Too many could die before any good data could be gathered to improve whatever is being developed, which would render most research undoable.
Animal testing is, as we stand, a necessary evil we must all carry with us. Let us hope we find a way to end this in a very near future.
The animals didn't consent either and will also die.
Death is an integral part of life.
You can argue, because the concept and notion of consent is exists and is understanble by us, humans, we are burdened with the task of safeguarding those who can not understand it.
Many die, unwillingly, unknown, unnamed, for others to live. It's an unchanging law of nature.
We can and should, are morally obligated to, curtail the cruelty that still holds our reality together. It is wrong but exists and, to a degree, is necessary as reality exists today.
This is either intelectually dishonest or very creepy that you don't understand "volunteer" or the concept of consent.
Do you mean that human volunteers actually have no other choice?
I mean that animals don't volunteer and don't consent, so saying "both occur" is just wrong in the context of the rest of the comment.
I can't find the article but a man that was fatally dosed with radiation in a nuclear plant accident was subjected to treatments, without prior consent, to study radiation poisoning, that prolongued his life to a point his existence was only pain and suffering.
It was an incredible act of cruelty to a human being but the knowledge gathered from it has improved the collective knowledge on how to address something that can meaninglessly kill others.
I can't even imagine the mental state of those that took part in the study and witnessed the living decay of a human being while knowingly prolonging his suffering.
Animal testing is fundamentally wrong, I don't want it to exist and I agree with you, but the world is not all sunshine and flowers.
i'm going to ignore your posting history and assume for a moment you aren't a contrarian debate pervert. what exactly is the point you are trying to get across?
you agree that animal testing is fundamentally wrong, but because someone was unconsensually subjected to unethical experimentation, we need to keep the animal testing?
why do you feel the need to agree with people but then say 'but that's not how it works today'?
i see these types of comments in every comment section about societal problems. 'i agree X needs to change to Y, but we don't have Y today, sweaty. 💅' like- what? are you all really just trolls, or do you really think you're being insightful and helpful? because this isn't what a discussion looks like. it's dis-miss-ion.
i'm going to ignore your posting history and assume for a moment you aren't a contrarian debate pervert.
Thank you for your consideration.
why do you feel the need to agree with people but then say 'but that's not how it works today'?
Because those people are correct. But at the same time, right now, there is no viable option (to my knowledge) to completely erase the things we agree on.
i see these types of comments in every comment section about societal problems. 'i agree X needs to change to Y, but we don't have Y today, sweaty. 💅' like- what? are you all really just trolls, or do you really think you're being insightful and helpful? because this isn't what a discussion looks like. it's dis-miss-ion.
I'm not dismissing anything; I'm admiting it is wrong while at the same time admiting there are no alternatives to end it today, tomorrow or in the foreseeable future.
The simple admission of something being wrong, opens the doors to debate. Debate generates change of thought. Change of thought enacts action.
We do not need to fully agree on anything and none of us is required to understand the other perspective but at best we may be cordial enough to respect that we are in our right to hold different opinions, without the need to consider the other is mocking us.
i'm going to ignore your posting history and assume for a moment you aren't a contrarian debate pervert. what exactly is the point you are trying to get across?
Way to enter a discussion. I'd prefer if you could keep it civil.
you agree that animal testing is fundamentally wrong, but [...] we need to keep the animal testing?
This might sound off topic, but bare with me here: Do you agree that CO2 emissions are fundamentally wrong (leading to a mass extinction event, etc)?
(I will continue this argument under the assumption that we can all agree on that) And do you concede that these emissions are, for the foreseeable decade(s) inseparable from modern human life? Not that they are a basic necessity to survive, but that you and I are indirectly causing such emissions in one way or another for every day that we are alive and continue with our day to day actions (heating, cooking, buying stuff, transportation, etc). This may change in the future, but let's focus on today.
(Again I assume that you are not the 0.1% of the population that lives without any modern amenities (you have some way of writing comments on the Internet for example), and will continue my argument) Given these two basic building blocks of our mutual understanding of the world I would like to rephrase the question you find so inconceivable:
"you agree that emitting carbon is fundamentally wrong, but we need to keep emitting carbon?"
Neither you nor me have committed suicide, so there must be some reasoning that is acceptable to you, which justifies keeping a human alive even though it requires continuing something that is fundamentally wrong. Of course, different people draw the line at different points. But I hope I was able to show you that, even if you draw the line differently for this issue, the reasoning is not completely foreign to you.
If humans would treat nature and themself better we wouldn't need any "beauty" products or even any medication in the first place. Just to artificially look "better" or live longer?
Everything that happens to us, is because our own selfishness ego to think we are the "alpha" product who owns everything, while we are just dumpshit animals with no respect for nothing.
You wan't to test some product? Go test it on criminals and leave those poor animals alone. But no, testing on non volunteer human is not ethical correct??
Oh yeah that's where we draw the line.
If humans would treat nature and themself better we wouldn't need any "beauty" products or even any medication in the first place.
How?
Just to artificially look "better" or live longer?
Vanity is a flaw, I agree. Age is not something to be ashamed of.
Everything that happens to us, is because our own selfishness ego to think we are the "alpha" product who owns everything, while we are just dumpshit animals with no respect for nothing.
Hubris is to blame for many mistakes people do but no animal or living being has respect for anything else besides the immediate survival. Animals will destroy others habitats, food, brood, etc, because the others impede their way.
You wan't to test some product? Go test it on criminals or orther deranged humans and leave those poor animals alone. But no, testing on non volunteer human is not ethical correct??
Why criminals? Why not simply use any individual. If consent is the crux of the matter, let's go that way full force.
Oh yeah that's were we draw the line.
Yes. It's called self preservation. All life is to be protected until there is no other option than to end it and carry the burden for such choice. We don't live in Dante's Inferno.
Deranged much?
Assuming a young adult develops, idk breast cancer or something. Your sister or your daughter or you maybe. Should we treat it?
If we don't they'll die.
But careful, it will cost a hundred rats and a few rabbits their lives.I will just answer that question even though it doesn't make sense because we are in this shit together...
We wouldn't have to treat cancer if we haven't been so stupid in the past... Back to the roots with less plutonium, uranium, 4G, 5G, wifi 4,5,6, processed food, poluted water... You name it !
Maybe it's time to find a solution for the root cause and not a solution for the symptoms...
That's the difference !
Reducing carcinogens would reduce the cancer rate a bit. Banning smoking completely would probably be the best first step. But most of the items on your list are either already heavily regulated (radioactive elements, food and water) or don't actually have any impact on cancer rates (the list of radio spectrum parts)
Also you're lying to yourself if you truly think that getting rid of modern advances all together would eliminate cancer. Cells sometimes mutate when dividing and in a fraction of those cases it leads to cancer. That's life. There will always be a chance of that.
If you want to look at it from such a fundamentalist angle, sure, animal testing is immortal. You'd only be able to test new drugs on terminally ill patients then.
If you're willing to humor me, let me take you on a tanget. I promise it'll make sense: Do you agree that CO2 emissions are fundamentally wrong (leading to a mass extinction event, etc)?
(I will continue this argument under the assumption that we can all agree on that) And do you concede that these emissions are, for the foreseeable decade(s) inseparable from modern human life? Not that they are a basic necessity to survive, but that you and I are indirectly causing such emissions in one way or another for every day that we are alive and continue with our day to day actions (heating, cooking, buying stuff, transportation, etc). This may change in the future, but let's focus on today.
(Again I assume that you are not the 0.1% of the population that lives without any modern amenities (you have some way of writing comments on the Internet for example), and will continue my argument) Given these two basic building blocks of our mutual understanding of the world:
Neither you nor me have committed suicide. So there is a reason that we continue on living, despite our continued existence being linked to habitat destruction and animal deaths. We are working towards a better future and try to change that, but for some reason we consider our current lives more important than the lives of animals that are threatened as a consequence of our existence. I don't know why, and you probably neither. I guess it's just some deeply rooted desire for survival.
Oh, btw, I am actually curious what your answer is to the 100 rats question someone else posted in the comments. Or maybe rephrased a bit: is there any number of rats (or rabbits or fish or dogs) whose deaths you're unwilling to accept and that makes you say "no, take my sibling/partner/parents instead"?
It's in part an issue of consent. The animals can't consent to what's being done to them, so to force testing on them is fucked up.
The alternative is voluntary human testing. In an ideal world, we would have good models and simulations to filter out the riskiest drugs (these kinds of models aren't being prioritized in part because people are fine with animal abuse), and then people would volunteer to be parts of trials.
In our current world, we could pay people to take part in trials. We already do this at least in the US, but usually after initial rounds of animal testing. So increase the payout dramatically for the initial rounds which are much riskier. We already pay people to do other forms of risky jobs, why should this be different?
You know who else can help test cancer treatments? Humans with cancer who want to try them.
Models and simulations are already used to develop new drugs. But the tech is simply not there yet to rely on that exclusively.
Voluntary human trials are already a requirement as well. The problem is that there are not many cancer patients that are beyond saving and still in the condition to take part in such trials.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but in Germany it's illegal to pay someone to take part in clinical trials. You are paid money to compensate you for your time and travel costs, but it's not proper pay. And there is very good reason for that. If you make medical trials a viable income, you will inevitably get poor people to take part in them. You may consider that more ethical than animal trials. I do not.
The comparison with risky jobs is not valid, because we do our best to make those jobs safer. A trial for a new drug inevitably involves getting infected with the disease the drug is supposed to cure.We should make it easier for cancer patients to opt-in to trials.
I do consider that more ethical, however it's still far from ideal. We can do our best to make medical trials safer too, not sure why it would be different
If you're a suitable candidate I'm pretty sure they already explicitly ask you if you'd like to participate.
I'm curious what methods you suggest to make medical trials more safe. In e.g. construction we can regulate personal protection equipment and mandate machines to do the heavy lifting instead of the workers. We can mandate more time off and corporate fitness programs to keep the people healthy. But how would you make a safer clinical trial?
Better non-animal pre trial tests (this is a broad category of things), full health care such that any side effects will be cared for and they'll be compensated for accordingly, better information sharing so people can give fully informed consent.
those are the main things that come to mind off the top of my head, I'm sure there are other things that could go into it too
Oh, I had hoped for some proper thoughts on the matter. The first suggestion is too vague and the other two are already the status quo. In fact I have heard (anecdotally) someone got treated for something that, with 99.9% certainty, was unrelated to the clinical trial they, were participating in. But it occurred during the trial, so their health care costs were covered in full by the clinical trial. And if you ever witness that participants of a clinical trial were not fully informed you should report it. The ethics committee and lawmakers take that extremely seriously.
Edit: to better explain my previous point about safety. When we talk about a usual job being dangerous what we mean is that you're supposed to do A, but B might happen and hurt you (build the scaffolding for a house, but pinch your hand when connecting two pieces). Therefore we mandate PPE, maximum working hours, machine assurance, etc. This is possible because the actual job is tangential to the risk associated with it.
A clinical trial is, going from beginning to end: we have simulated this drug in the computer and tested it on cells. Now we need to check for interactions with other parts of the body. For statistically significant results we need 50 animals, we put cancer in them, wait two weeks and then start treating them like we would treat a human who has this cancer. We vary dose and when to give it, maybe the mixture of compounds if the drug is not just a single active component. A lot of the animals will have to be put down when it becomes apparent that this configuration of the drug does not work. But we have a better understanding of the working of the drug in the body now. After that trials move on to human patients. First we start with people who are sick and for whom the current method of treatment did not work. They will die soon anyway, but there is a small chance that the new drug will work on them. Again we vary dose etc, but now we know much better what range of dose is useful. This results in much more difficult to handle data, because taking a few random people will introduce wild variations in confounding factors. But it's a necessary step to show that the drug works in humans, because we can't move on to testing the new drug on people for which the old method of treatment would have worked. After this trial is done it is finally time to try the new drug out on people who come to the hospital to seek treatment. The doctor may offer you the chance to participate in a trial for a new medicine if they think you're a fitting candidate. This trial will test the medicine for the first time against a proper sample of the population. Only now can we say for certain how much better it is than the old drug (or maybe it's worse) and tease out details from the data (e.g. It's usually better, but it's worse if the person has a cold and is overweight when starting treatment. Or it causes severe allergic reactions for people who have asthma that is triggered by grass pollen)
It's important to note that at every step of the process a drug can fail testing. Researchers want the drug to fail early, because every step costs money and time. When we get better simulations or artificial organs to test on they will be used, because it's so much faster and cheaper than going to animal trials with a promising drug, only to find out after three months of hard work that it doesn't work.
Now, the safety concerns in clinical trials is that we have a current drug that works, and we have a new drug that may work. Is it ok to not treat someone with the known working one, just to see if the maybe working one helps? Most people say no. The danger is inherent in the thing, which is why we have such a lengthy process. There is no PPE you can wear to reduce the effects of cancer when the trial requires you to have cancer. We must get to the stage of "it's most likely working better than the current treatment" before starting testing on otherwise healthy humans.
Yeah, sorry for being vague. I'm not super knowledgeable about the field, just like if you asked me "how do we make deep sea welding safer?" I would maybe come up stuff like "put the welder in a shark cage" or "have them wear plated body armor so they don't get sucked in" or "make sure to train the diver really well and only go if they're feeling really well prepared/alert" but idk if those are actually the best way to make it safer, or whether they're already done.
Let me ask you this: are you opposed to professional fighting? Boxing, wrestling, wwe, etc? what about football or other sports where injury like concussion is common? That's a huge risk to health being done for money, and lots of poor folks are able to use those sports to get out of poverty. I don't think that's good, there should be nobody in poverty and the people doing sports should be doing so entirely voluntarily. Likewise my proposed bandaid to ending animal testing now is not ideal, but imo it would be just as valid as doing dangerous sports for money
And I do think a lot of people would be willing to try experimental medicine for their ailments voluntarily. It's fulfilling to be able to help contribute to humanities knowledge and help ratchet us forward, and being well compensated sweetens the deal even more
Fair enough. If you can recognize that you have a strong opinion based on ethics, and are willing to read up on how things are currently done and what the problems are (both with the current way and with the way that your ethics would like it to be) thats fine.
Let me ask you this: are you opposed to professional fighting? Boxing, wrestling, wwe, etc?
I'm not a sports guy (at least watching sports, I do exercise weekly) and would barely notice if those would no longer exist tomorrow. So I am certainly not one to defend their existence.
And yes, I am super critical of professional sport and how much these people hurt themselves. In German we have a saying: "Sport ist Mord", sports is murder. I think in the broad population it's also used as an excuse if you're lazy and don't want to exercise, but for me it appropriately hits on the problem of professional sport. Some are better than others, for example I have not heard of many negative consequences from swimming on a professional level. But I think the problems that people get from playing rugby on a professional level are absurd. There are measurable levels of IQ drop after a few years of working as an athlete. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would willingly do that.One difference is that in order to get to such a level you need talent and need to be into it from a young age. Yes, some people can lift their family out of poverty with it. But not because they needed some quick money.
A better comparison to paying big money for participants of clinical trials than sports is selling your kidney. You only need one, technically, so it's safe on paper. But it's a surgery that comes with some inherent risks to your life. And there is a reason we usually have two.And again, the injury is tangential to the performance. In clinical trials a sizable fraction of the "patients" die (cells, animals, humans. The earlier in the trial the bigger this fraction. Animal test are there to hopefully have the number be zero when we get to human trials), until we know what dose is effective and safe at the same time.
Yep, I don't think the benefit we get from animal testing justifies exploiting animals like we do. I'd rather die because we don't know how to cure me than force any animals through what we do to them in testing, and I think it's selfish to say they should suffer for our gain. And to be clear there are aspects of my life where I act hypocritically there (e.g. crop deaths) but I'm working towards getting to a spot where I don't depend on that kind of thing, and if we as a species actually put our minds to it I think we could solve those problems so it didn't take such a tremendous amount of personal effort to stop contributing to it. But we need enough people to even recognize it's a problem worth solving first.
In our current world, we could pay people to take part in trials.
The majority of people I know today regularly participating in cosmetic trials are desperate for a bit of cash. That would just make imporvished desperate people go to get cancer in exchange for temporary survival through money, we would be treating poor people like the animals we wanted to save instead.
Not much different than how people are accepting of terrible jobs for terrible pay because theres no other choice.
Ah, yes, testing drugs pre-animal trial on the poor and disenfranchised sound so much better, truly the end of a dystopia
Edit: Not to mention, the meat industry produces despair of the same level while being entirely superfluous (something animal testing, unfortunately, is not) and on a scale which would be an ocean compared to the drop that is animal testing
That's already basically what we do, lots of homeless folks do drug trials for money. And there are tons of super risky jobs people do because they pay well. But it's not good, it should be that people do all those things for reasons other than their only options being that or poverty
This being your only option would be poverty, not an alternative to it. And highly dangerous jobs aren't comparison here, testing drugs before animal testing is is no way a level of danger comparable to being a woodcutter
Human testing is necessary, and while the disenfranchised are already subject to it, skipping animal testing and directly proceeding on the most vulnerable would be truly despicable.
Furthermore, if the issue is consent, then this "solution" does not resolve it at all. What you get from subjecting poor people to the choice of cold & hunger or being a test subject is not consent, and once again minorities, disabled people, LGBT and women would be the primary victims
"This being your only option would be poverty, not an alternative to it."
it shouldn't be anyones only option. Extremely dangerous jobs are already lots of peoples only option, and it's a bad thing. That doesn't mean "turn around and torture animals instead"
the problem is, right now there's not much incentive to find cruelty free filters (i.e. making sure a novel compound is "safe enough" for human trials), in fact finding them is disincentivized because animal tests are mandatory. So we should incentivize finding better ways to test and screen new drugs. Not torture animals.
But I would prefer, if I had a fatal disease, to be told "we don't know how to cure this because we can't test a cure without torturing animals" than for there to be a cure at the cost of all those innocent animals being tortured.
You'd be surprised how many diseases were fatal once. Aside from fixing broken bones or something like that, drinking tea, suffering and praying it will get better are your only options for the vast majority of diseases if you truly want to live with a clear mind.
I'm not saying discard all present knowledge. I'm saying stop testing on animals and find other ways to test treatments going forwards
Fair enough. It would put a stop on developing new medicine for a while (5-20 years maybe?), but I can understand the opinion that "what's done is done, we just should not continue doing that".
The thing is, new chemical compounds are being developed all the time for all kinds of applications. What you're saying is not really "we should let sick people die rather that try to get a cure", horrible enough as it is, but rather "let's dump whatever shit we come up in the environment without testing its effect first", and while things are bad currently, there is no depth to how worse things could get if we didn't even bother trying to prevent the worst from happening
No, I'm saying let's find a cure without torturing innocent animals
Halt all animal testing and put 100% of those freed up resources towards developing lab grown organs and tissues. If we want to study heart disease we should be growing human hearts and testing them, not using a "good enough" animal model. It could be the next big leap, like the Human Genome Project was.
I did my undergrad in toxicology which is all I can speak about with any sort of knowledge. What you described is more like what my professors actually did when they told us about studies they have done. They try to use the fewest amount of live specimens possible. They start on a computer (in-silico), then they move onto cultured himan cells (in-vitro), then onto animals (in-vivo). Pharmacology will move onto human testing but toxicology doesn't. Pathogens don't selectively choose to damage a heart or liver, they have an effect on the whole body.
The reason why it's done this way is because toxicology is playing catch up to industry. There are more compounds being produced than researchers have time to examine. It would be nice if a company had to prove that it's new chemical is safe but unfortunately that type of legislation will never pass in the west. Would you be willing to be dosed with BPA or PFAS to determine if it causes cancer in place of an animal? Without clear evidence that it was companies would still be making water bottles with BPA. You might be tempted to say just look at population data but it's just not that simple.
In so far as toxicology research is concerned, animals are needed. It would be great if companies would stop removed poisoning the environment and us but unless we have undeniable prove to shove right into their ugly faces that what they're doing is hurtful, they won't stop. Right now the only way to do that without causing a ton of human suffering is to test on animals.
Tons of work is being done to reduce the numbers of animals that are tested on and new AI models are really taking off. Eventually though a living thing needs to be subjected to it to ensure our simulations aren't just removed.
Okay, so the problem is that industry is allowed to move faster than toxicology. That seems extremely stupid.
As for in-vivo testing, the goal should be to eliminate the need for animals and move towards a holistic lab grown testing environment of cloned organs, circulatory systems, body parts, etc. That's a bit beyond what we can do, which is why we should devote everything we have to making it happen. Like I said, the next Human Genome Project.
Oh I absolutely agree that it is extremely stupid that industry is allowed to move faster than what toxicologist can research. It makes me very angry but if I start telling people this I just get called a leftist nut. Everyone assumes that someone is making sure they're safe. Well I sat in those people's classes for six years and they do not get enough funding to live up to the publics expectation. Part of me thinks that's by design, because poorly funded toxicology research is big businesess' wet dream.
Regardless of how much you and I might want it to be different that's not how it is right now and there are problems that need to be solved right now. It's not an either, or, that's a false dichotomy. Abandoning current toxicology research in order to prioritize advancing research methods means that until those research methods have matured, industry would have an opportunity to go without scrutiny. It's bad enough nowadays when there is barely enough funding to pay attention, imagine a decade where no one is paying attention to the new things industry comes up with while those methods are developed.
I don't like animal testing, none of my professors did either. Who do you think taught me to respect and understand why we test on animals. Some of them were doing research into new methods like you described, others were testing new chemicals with established methods. It isn't a dichotomy, at least in-so-far-as toxicology research is concerned. I don't have any experience in pharmacology or cosmetics.
This is a problem that needs to be solved right now, or as soon as possible.
As for letting businesses run rampant without testing or scrutiny, who says they'd be allowed to do new things? We don't have to let them do whatever they want. Just put a pause on introducing new potentially toxic shit into our water and food and air etc.
But that would hurt the money's feelings, so it won't happen. Obviously.
If it were only as easy as flipping a switch. I wish I could be as idealistic as you are right now, I used to be. Part of my journey fighting injustice how I think I best can has been to learn how to hold my idealisms hand and let that lead me. Rather than listen to it's endless screaming. If I didn't I would have burnt out long ago.
I guess I just want you to understand that the people I'm speaking for, most of my former professors and my colleagues, share your concerns and are trying. They're trying to stop testing on animals, they're trying to stop industry from running ahead of them, they're trying to protect the environment just as much as humans.
There is so much working against my professors from developing it, to myself and my colleagues trying to enforce the regulations proposed. In this system we need funding and government support to do any of that which we just don't have. The only ones with enough money to do that are the ones who have the most to lose from us doing our jobs. So it just doesn't happen.
Oh don't get me wrong, I understand nothing I'm talking about is something that will realistically happen. I'm hardly idealistic about that.
My only point is that it's something we, as a society, could choose to do. We simply choose not to, and choose instead to let business interests get away with everything.
It's a question of political will, not technical feasibility.
It's important to keep the true ideal end goal in view when working on incremental shifts towards it.
As for in-vivo testing, the goal should be to eliminate the need for animals and move towards a holistic lab grown testing environment of cloned organs, circulatory systems, body parts, etc. That's a bit beyond what we can do, which is why we should devote everything we have to making it happen. Like I said, the next Human Genome Project.
This idea is how you end up with manmade horrors beyond my comprehension. Cloning an organ or two is one thing, but a whole body? That's asking for trouble.
I figured it was pretty clear I wasn't talking about entire human clones? It'd all be piecemeal, different cloned systems would be used as testing environments. There'd never be a whole human clone involved, that's just creating an entirely new set of ethical problems.
You couldn't just clone a single organ. You would have to clone basically all of them to know for certain, including the brain. Having them be separate isn't any better, it could actually be worse. You're trying to do things we not only don't have the technology for, but would be very morally questionable.
Testing on animals is morally questionable! Although I'm talking about cloning full systems, so they could still all be kept separate rather than just being a whole cloned body. You'd have one model that's a clone of the entire digestive system, another that's a clone of the nervous system, another that's a clone of the circulatory system, and they'd be connected or disconnected from each other as needed.
Also, yeah, I'm very aware this isn't something we can do yet! That's why I called it the next Human Genome project.
Animal testing, beyond just being wrong, is a crutch and it's holding us back.
How exactly are you going to keep any of those alive without the others? I don't think you've actually thought this through to be honest.
Also how do you morally do tests on a human brain?
All they need is oxygen, water, nutrients, and disposal for CO2/waste. If we can clone entire systems, we could keep them alive too.
As for the brain, I find the ethical minefield of brain death is a helpful topic for understanding a possible path towards ethical testing environment. If the technology exists to grow cloned organs and keep them alive outside the body, growing cloned brains should also be possible. From there, growing a vegetative brain that can never wake up (because there was never any 'there' there to wake up) would open up many possibilities for testing on the brain. Imagine if we could test on human brains without needing to translate from animal models. It'd be a huge leap forward.
And no one has to get hurt anymore.
This could at least be a goal, even if you want to keep hurting animals in the meantime and aren't willing to halt all animal testing. Do you really think we'll be forced to test on animals forever? In a thousand years will we be testing new drugs on mice? I doubt it.
The problem with testing on organs or tissues is that you won't be able to see side-effects that affect unrelated organs. Maybe a stroke medicine increases the risk of internal bleeding or heart failure. Currently, medicines are tested on human tissue (HeLa lines - there's another sad story behind them, but I digress), and, if they pass, on mice. Only once they pass both are they even tested on humans.
What stops them from testing on unrelated organs? If you want to know if a stroke medicine increases the risk of heart failure, test it on heart tissue. If you want to know if it increases the risk of internal bleeding, grow gastrointestinal tract and blood vessels to test it.
That's not enough. The medicine may contain chemical A, which is broken down into B and C by the digestive system. B breaks up blood clots in the brain, but the liver converts it into D, which causes internal bleeding. Also C can damage the heart, but only if you are old.
Testing A on any tissue will not show any benefit to reducing clotting. Conversely, testing B on brain, liver and blood vessel samples will not show any risk, because it needs to first go through the liver and then reach blood vessels. And finally, unless you have an animal with a short lifespan (such as a mouse), you won't see the effects on infants, the old, pregnant females, etc.
And we couldn't construct a holistic cloned testing environment that can break A down into B and C and D, and then observe the effects? So you aren't just testing it on isolated tissue samples, but on entire cloned systems with all of the interactions of an actual human body?
That's not something possible at the moment, I understand that. I just think it would be better to focus all of our efforts on making it possible.
I've seen how this turns out.
What you are proposing may seem nice, but any ethics committee would shut this down instantly, anywhere in the world.
But let's imagine we can do this, somehow, and that all the ethical issues are resolved. Harvard might be able to grow their "thing", or order it from some specialized company; how do you not condemn all research in developing countries?