Animal Testing for Medical Purposes

[The Vegan Marxist]

Even as an animal rights activist, I can't ignore the fact that the testing of animals for medical purposes are absolutely necessary for us, as a species, to survive. Yes, I'm a Vegan, and yes, I'm an animal rights activist, but I'm also in support of science and rationality. I'm not upholding speciesism, because I don't believe any single specie is of higher superiority over other animals, homo-sapiens included. But I do understand evolution through the biological order of natural selection.

And so, to understand that all species will kill whatever other specie that is needed to be killed in order to survive, the human race shouldn't abandon this understanding. I'm not the type of vegan and animal rights activist who will tell another human being that they can't wear leather or furr in the winter, and that they'll have to starve or die from cold weather, because these animals don't deserve to die. I'm sorry, but that would be me abandoning any rational thought for idealist morality.

At best, I'm against anything dealing with animal testing in regards to whatever isn't for medical purposes, or for the sake of our survival. But to abandon any animal testing for medical purposes, I would then label you as a pseudo-animal rights activist, because animal testing doesn't just help humans medically, but animals themselves as well:


"Without animal research, millions of dogs, cats, birds, and farm animals would be dead from more than 200 diseases, including anthrax, distemper, rabies, feline leukemia, and canine parvo virus, according to Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), a nonprofit group that supports the responsible and humane use of animals in biomedical research. Today, those diseases are largely preventable, thanks to vaccines and treatments developed in animal research." (Boerner, P. Animal Research)

http://www.cvma.net/doc.asp?ID=2403

Besides, most testing done on animals for medical research are on that of rodents, such as mice, rats, etc. Any other animal is grossly exaggerated, and for what isn't is actually greatly decreasing. My only stance on animal rights in regards to medical research is for there to be as less of harm done on animals as possible. We should look towards a humane means of medical research in regards to animal testing.

People's thoughts?

[EvilRedGuy]

I agree that any animal/fish/whatever should be used as testing if absolutely necessary and there was no way to test this cure against a zombie epidemic or whatever, however we should minimize animal suffering as much as possible. If synthetic meat and fur is possible it should be used (unless you were stuck in a place where you had no option and had to survive) instead of harvesting, also i have one question.

Your "And so, to understand that all species will kill whatever other specie that is needed to be killed in order to survive" Quote, does this apply "Intelligent Life" aswell and just "Wild Life"? Because then you are wrong.

And REMEMBER: Any animal suffering (intelligent or not) should be eliminated, but we intelligent life (humans) have the ability to not go by instincts and kill animals.

EDIT: I voted for the first poll, but i believe testing should be as reduced/eliminated as much as possible.

[Winkers Fons]

It can be unpleasant but I do believe it is often necessary. Obviously we should not inflict suffering just for the fun of it but we also should not hesitate to perform tests that could save the lives of humans and other animals.

Also, I think animal testing is much preferable to human testing in cases where the subject can be killed or permanently injured. We all know how human testing turned out and I don't even think most fascists would like to repeat that particular episode in history.

[Lobotomy]

I'm for it for medical purposes. I think when it comes to cosmetic products though, it gets a little more ethically sketchy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Your "And so, to understand that all species will kill whatever other specie that is needed to be killed in order to survive" Quote, does this apply "Intelligent Life" aswell and just "Wild Life"? Because then you are wrong.


The term "intelligence" is so wildly abused that a lot of people don't even know how to really define it. Granted, there's animals far more intelligent than others, but that would then be a level of intelligence, rather than a distinction between "intelligence" and "no intelligence."

[pastradamus]

To make a short point, im for animal testing if it is not possible to reserch and test a medicine in any other way.

[Dogs On Acid]

As long as no suffering is involved then test what you want. From medication to cosmetics.

But if pain or severe uncomfort comes into the equation, then I find it cruel and very backward, unless it's extremely important.

Animals shouldn't suffer...

[Lobotomy]

I would assume that often they can't be 100% sure if the product will cause suffering or not.

[blackandyellow]

I think it boils down to this question: how many monkeys would you torture and kill to save a human life?

For me, as bad as I may feel for the monkeys, i would kill them all if it saved one person.

[Dogs On Acid]

I think it boils down to this question: how many monkeys would you torture and kill to save a human life?

For me, as bad as I may feel for the monkeys, i would kill them all if it saved one person.

If that person was a rich bastard living off fellow humans, I'd rather let the innocent monkeys live.

[Rufio]

If that person was a rich bastard living off fellow humans, I'd rather let the innocent monkeys live.
OK, maybe they can stop testing for cures of conditions that only affect rich bastards!

It's sad, it's not pretty, but as long as it's the best way to do this kind of science then I tihnk it has to be done. The advancement and health of humanity is the most important thing, not at any cost, but I think the cost is worth paying. Of course we should make it up in other ways, such as not totally obliterating the rest of the natural world...

[Dogs On Acid]

OK, maybe they can stop testing for cures of conditions that only affect rich bastards!

It's sad, it's not pretty, but as long as it's the best way to do this kind of science then I tihnk it has to be done. The advancement and health of humanity is the most important thing, not at any cost, but I think the cost is worth paying. Of course we should make it up in other ways, such as not totally obliterating the rest of the natural world...

He said how many monkeys would you torture and kill save a human life.

[Quail]

I'm also a vegan and for medical animal testing. I don't like it, and I think it should be carried out in a way that minimises suffering to the animals involved, but unfortunately it can sometimes be necessary. Ideally we should be working towards and trying to use alternative methods as well though.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Ideally we should be working towards and trying to use alternative methods as well though.

If possible, yes. I definitely agree.

[CommunityBeliever]

I'm not the type of vegan and animal rights activist who will tell another human being that they can't wear leather or furr in the winter, and that they'll have to starve or die from cold weather, because these animals don't deserve to die.

When human society was organised around the hunter-gatherer mode-of-production, then the use of animal products like fur, leather, and meat was necessary to fulfil fundamental physiological and safety needs.

However, the emergence of human control of the land resulted in the sedentary mode of production which is capable of meeting all fundamental needs without using animals. As a result, in contemporary society the use of non-human animals in the production process is primarily for recreation (e.g the use of fur in fashion) not the fulfilment of fundamental needs.


The term "intelligence" is so wildly abused that a lot of people don't even know how to really define it.

Intelligence is the psychometric measure of mental ability. This consists of two components: memory structures (neural networks, symbolic expressions, knowledge representations, etc) and mental processes (sensory perception, pattern recognition, problem solving, learning, planning, etc) which work to fulfil some end goal using optimal means.

[Zav]

I am for animal rights and support animal testing in the final stages of medical trials, however I DESPISE the notion that is is fine to say "Oh! Let's inject this animal with this pesticide/carcinogen/whatever and see if it dies!" and, of course, the torture that occurs with much of the practice. We are advanced enough to grow tissues and use rational science to determine the effects of a chemical/procedure on a living thing. Most animal testing is cruel and/or unnecessary.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It is empirically necessary to test the effects of new chemicals and surgical procedures on living organisms. Eliminating animal testing leaves an unacceptably large knowledge gap between testing on monocellular cultures and ethical human testing.

"Rights" don't come into it. The only way to get reliable data without animal testing is to test on humans while disregarding all ethics.

[blackandyellow]

If that person was a rich bastard living off fellow humans, I'd rather let the innocent monkeys live.

a rich bastard is still a bastard, and therefore a human. obviously we hope for a world without rich bastards (or where we are all rich bastards), but marxism isnt some sort of absolute hatred of the evil rich or whatever, its a recognition that the working class has no interest in keeping this way of production.

[Vanguard1917]

If that person was a rich bastard living off fellow humans, I'd rather let the innocent monkeys live.

Taking, i see, a leaf out of the Nazis' book - which outlawed animal testing and promoted 'scientific' tests on political opponents and undesirables...

[Dogs On Acid]

Taking, i see, a leaf out of the Nazis' book - which outlawed animal testing and promoted 'scientific' tests on political opponents and undesirables...

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6JkOgsHP-js/TboVsJFzLfI/AAAAAAAAEQw/xMS-5ZuciZ4/s1600/adolph+chaplain.jpg

[Start a Fire]

I understand the reasoning that animal suffering is justified if it is medically beneficial, but the truth is, the majority of animal testing is not necessary. A lot of animal testing is for cosmetic products, and a lot of the animal testing for medical research is inefficient and inaccurate. Other animals simply do not react the same way to medicine as humans do, and if the same amount of money and brain power that is put into animal testing was put into researching new testing technologies, animal testing would be almost totally unnecessary. There currently are alternatives to animal testing, and they are progressively being improved. If animal testing was the only possible way to test a medicine then I would be for, but I'm not convinced.


And so, to understand that all species will kill whatever other specie that is needed to be killed in order to survive, the human race shouldn't abandon this understanding. I'm not the type of vegan and animal rights activist who will tell another human being that they can't wear leather or furr in the winter, and that they'll have to starve or die from cold weather, because these animals don't deserve to die.
But leather or fur is not the only options. Many people-including myself-stay warm just fine with layers of cotton, polyester, gore-tex etc.


Besides, most testing done on animals for medical research are on that of rodents, such as mice, rats, etc. Any other animal is grossly exaggerated, and for what isn't is actually greatly decreasing.So what, the suffering of rodents doesn't matter as much? That's not the type of statement I would expect from somebody who is against speciesism.

Anyways, I wrote a research essay against animal testing for high school that I can post if anybody is interested.

edit: My main point isn't that animal testing should be outlawed, or that it is not sometimes necessary and justified, but saying that you are "for animal testing" in a general sense largely ignores arbitrariness and institutional problems regarding it. I guess you could say I'm against 90% of animal testing, which is why I voted against it.

[Boothe]

I personally am I very strong supporter of animal testing. I find that it is imperative that we as humans advance our knowledge of the world around us in the hope of improving it for generations yet to come. While it is regrettable that we must sacrifice these animals for our medical advancement, think about the advances that we have gained! Every painkiller, antibiotic, or vaccine has been developed and improved upon through the use of animal testing before being given to volunteer human patients.

With that being said, let it be known that I am also for animal rights. This especially applies to the modern industrial meat industry with its dubious history of treatment of livestock. This is partly because it disgusts me to see us treat livestock so poorly, but also because of the food safety issues that affect us as well.

Overall, I believe that animal testing is absolutely crucial to medical and scientific advancement and should supported.

[Azraella]

To make a short point, im for animal testing if it is not possible to reserch and test a medicine in any other way.

This. All of this.

[The Insurrection]

Animal testing has been largely rejected as reliable or beneficial by the FDA, US department of Health, the American Medical Association and the British Medical Journal. The importance of it is inflated and alternatives already exist, but which are not funded properly and politically not supported due, in part, by the fact the vivisection lobby is so powerful.

“The claim that animal experimentation is essential to medical development is not supported by proper, scientific evidence but by opinion and anecdote. Systematic reviews of its effectiveness don’t support the claims made on its behalf.” (Pound, P. et al. 2004. British Medical Journal 328, 514-7.)

Due to the lack of predictability of animal tests and sheer volume of such tests that are conducted, the entire process is extremely ineffective, wasteful and expensive. Reliance on such a system would not be tolerated in other sectors of professional business. And yet this is probably the largest area of scientific research endeavour.

“Currently, nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” (Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary, Food and Drug Administration Press Release Jan 12th 2006)

This means that even after all the animal tests, less than 1 in 10 drugs actually make it to become prescription drugs. This is a massive failure rate, which the FDA, one of the main drug regulators in the world, acknowledges. Despite using up to 115million animals worldwide every year, less than 30 brand new drugs come onto the market on average every year in the US (the largest pharmaceutical market). This shows how hugely wasteful animal testing is. (Anon 2008. Editorial: 'Only 17 new molecular entities were approved by the US FDA in 2007, a fall from 53 in 1996'. Science 320, 1563, and 'Estimates of worldwide laboratory animal use in 2005'. Alternatives to Laboratory Animals 36, 327–342)

http://www.buav.org/humane-science/key-criticisms/

"A review of reviews of animal tests and human outcomes found that out of 20 of such reviews, only two concluded that the animal tests were consistent with the human findings or had contributed significantly to developing new treatments." (Systematic Reviews of Animal Experiments Demonstrate Poor Human Clinical and Toxicological Utility. ATLA 2007; 35, 641–659.)

A review of 76 important animal tests for human therapeutic drugs found that, despite all the animal studies showing that the drug in question worked safely, only 55% were then repeated in human trials and of these, one third were found to produce conflicting results to what had been reported in the animal studies, i.e. treatments were not actually effective. The authors concluded that “patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the findings of prominent animal research to the care of human disease”. (Translation of research evidence from animals to humans. Journal of the American Medical Association 2006; 296, 1731-2.)

“Clinicians and the public often consider it axiomatic that animal research has contributed to the treatment of human disease, yet little evidence is available to support this view”. These authors systematically reviewed animal models for six treatments and found that for two human trials were conducted at the same time as the animal studies, while the human trials of three others went ahead despite evidence of harm from the animal studies. “This suggests that the animal data were regarded as irrelevant, calling into question why the studies were done in the first place and seriously undermining the principle that animal experiments are necessary to inform clinical medicine”. (Where is the evidence that animal research benefits humans? British Medical Journal 2004; 328:514-7.)

"A follow up review of a further six interventions for various human diseases found that the animal models failed to accurately predict the human outcome in four cases. For two of these the animal tests actually suggested the drug would be helpful when it was in fact harmful." (Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review. British Medical Journal 2007; 334; 197-200)

http://www.buav.org/humane-science/animaltestingontrial

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The vivisection industry and those who benefit from it also inflate its importance. In the last 100 years, progress in health has come from an improvement in care, prevention and standards of living, not from break throughs from medicine.

"Researchers from Harvard and Boston Universities concluded that medical measures (drugs and vaccines) accounted for between 1 and 3.5% of the total decline in mortality rates since 1900....Dr. Edward Kass of Harvard Medical School, asserts that the "primary credit for the virtual eradication of these diseases must go to improvements in public health, sanitation and the general improvement in the standard of living." These benefits have nothing to do with animal studies."" (http://www.vivisectioninfo.org/faq.html)

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There are also plenty of alternatives to animal testing, which are underfunded and under encouraged. Let's bear in mind that the vivisection industry is worth billion of dollars and accounts for 80% of the medical research. It funds universities; pays the wages of thousands of academics and funds research grants, which have a massive economic impact. The lack of motivation to de-fund animal research is a political and economic more than anything else.

Here is a list of some of the alternatives: http://www.buav.org/humane-science/alternatives-to-animals/