Experiments on Animals

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Astacus
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Experiments on Animals

Post by Astacus »

Hi, first of all, I'm not a vegan, but i respect your type of living, its definietly healthier and some day i will propably switch to Vegan. I agree that people have no nutritional need to consume animals, but what about experiments on animals? VeganAtheist is saying that we have no right to take advantge over other sentient beings - I agree. But dont u think that eperiments are the only necessary thing? I mean how would we produce medicaments and and discover news about physiology without experiments on animals? How to leave them 100% alone and not slow down the progress of pharmaceutic industry which provides us medicaments, tests directly on humans? How can we study the physiology of new discovered species without doing experiments in laboratory. I'm just curious. Peace.
Twizelby
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by Twizelby »

not sure, this is a topic that I haven't fully researched. I think a lot of testing, probably the majority of it statistics wise is cruel and useless like suffocating animals on hair spray or seeing how long a rat can swim before it drowns. A lot of this work can be tested on human cells in a petri dish now rather than a sentient animal. I also know that studies on fruit flies have opened up a huge amount of data on genetics and cancer research. This is also one of the reasons I avoid the term speciesist, because I will always favor the life of a human over an animal and saying speciesist makes it akin to saving a white person first in the case of an accident. I guess I would have to look at it on a case by case basis. that being said I don't buy hygienic products that do animal testing. the other issue implied in your question is about vaccines. I am curious if someone has a more educated response to this. like all things the topic of animal rights gets a little murky once we get past the unnecessary killing and eating of animals in a "developed" country.
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Neptual
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by Neptual »

Astacus wrote:Hi, first of all, I'm not a vegan, but i respect your type of living, its definietly healthier and some day i will propably switch to Vegan. I agree that people have no nutritional need to consume animals, but what about experiments on animals? VeganAtheist is saying that we have no right to take advantge over other sentient beings - I agree. But dont u think that eperiments are the only necessary thing? I mean how would we produce medicaments and and discover news about physiology without experiments on animals? How to leave them 100% alone and not slow down the progress of pharmaceutic industry which provides us medicaments, tests directly on humans? How can we study the physiology of new discovered species without doing experiments in laboratory. I'm just curious. Peace.
Cats, dogs, mice etc. are not humans, and therefore will not experience the same effects that we will to certain drugs. If this is the case then why do we continue to test on animals? Because testing in humans is "unethical" yet forcing other animals to take painful, and dangerous test is "ethical."
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TheVeganAtheist
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

Astacus wrote:Hi, first of all, I'm not a vegan, but i respect your type of living, its definietly healthier and some day i will propably switch to Vegan. I agree that people have no nutritional need to consume animals, but what about experiments on animals? VeganAtheist is saying that we have no right to take advantge over other sentient beings - I agree. But dont u think that eperiments are the only necessary thing? I mean how would we produce medicaments and and discover news about physiology without experiments on animals? How to leave them 100% alone and not slow down the progress of pharmaceutic industry which provides us medicaments, tests directly on humans? How can we study the physiology of new discovered species without doing experiments in laboratory. I'm just curious. Peace.
Im against experimenting on animals. Data collected has to be extrapolated to humans since how we react to stimuli is different then other animals. Just because a rat may have an increased reaction to a particular drug, doesn't mean a human would. I would suggest listening to the following interview regarding the problem with animal testing:
Exposing the Bad Science Behind Animal Testing: An Interview with AFMA's Dr. Ray Greek (Radio Interview):
http://animalvoices.ca/2011/09/27/expos ... ray-greek/
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Volenta
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by Volenta »

TheVeganAtheist wrote: Im against experimenting on animals. Data collected has to be extrapolated to humans since how we react to stimuli is different then other animals. Just because a rat may have an increased reaction to a particular drug, doesn't mean a human would.
I do agree that a lot of experimentation – probably most of it – can not be justified (cosmetics as an extreme one). But are you against all kind of experimentation of just when it is not necessary? And when I say not necessary, I mean to say that the harm being done if you would not experiment is (potentially) greater than not doing so (against disease or something). I think you could justify that.

And when testing on rats for example, they should be sure that the experimentation have impact on the genes or organs/bodyparts that are similar to humans.
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TheVeganAtheist
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

Volenta wrote:
TheVeganAtheist wrote: Im against experimenting on animals. Data collected has to be extrapolated to humans since how we react to stimuli is different then other animals. Just because a rat may have an increased reaction to a particular drug, doesn't mean a human would.
I do agree that a lot of experimentation – probably most of it – can not be justified (cosmetics as an extreme one). But are you against all kind of experimentation of just when it is not necessary? And when I say not necessary, I mean to say that the harm being done if you would not experiment is (potentially) greater than not doing so (against disease or something). I think you could justify that.

And when testing on rats for example, they should be sure that the experimentation have impact on the genes or organs/bodyparts that are similar to humans.
That sounds like a hypothetical. How does one know in advance if a particular experiment will result in useful necessary data that is worth more than the suffering needed to gain it?

Would you force humans into painful biomedical experiments if it somehow could be shown that their sacrifice will benefit humanity in a meaningful way?
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Volenta
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by Volenta »

TheVeganAtheist wrote: That sounds like a hypothetical. How does one know in advance if a particular experiment will result in useful necessary data that is worth more than the suffering needed to gain it?

Would you force humans into painful biomedical experiments if it somehow could be shown that their sacrifice will benefit humanity in a meaningful way?
I wonder if it really can't go beyond hypothetical. Let me at least try to make it a bit more concrete.
- There are a lot of experiments already being done (and this is sadly not reversible), so there should be enormous amounts of empirical data already been available. All this data can be shared and bundled.
- The more we know about the human and rats genome, and which genes correspond to which characteristics, the more we know about treats we share.
- You could furthermore calculate the probability distribution of success to see whether it's really worth it.

I do not think that if something looks really morally bad, the discussion should be closed and that there are by definition zero exceptions thinkable.

As for the human experiments: it's a very good question which I struggle to answer and can not really answer. On the one hand I think that if it really benefits other sentient beings more than the inflicted suffering, I would be in favor of it. On the other hand I do really think individual rights are of enormous value and should be defended. And this way of looking is not because of being human, but because humans have much higher consciousness and are probably more capability to feel pain than rats are (would say the same for dolphins for example).

So when talking about humans born with such irreversible brain damage that the brain has pretty much the same capabilities as a rat, I think it really is just as justifiable as testing on a rat. So the same principles would apply there. It's really about using the individual which suffers the least and maximizing the reward.
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garrethdsouza
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by garrethdsouza »

Being a vegan biologist myself I feel the individuals making comments such as animal experimentation is futile not true science and hasn't amounted to anything are ignorant of the subject. the overwhelming majority of Nobel laureates for medicine/biology have required use of animal experimentation without which much of research is simply not possible.
For eg the fields of developmental or neurobiology majority depends on animal experimentation and ludicrous suggestions of "it can all be done in vitro" come from people who haven't read almost anything of the subject.
I prefer singers or Darwin's more nuanced views.
Plus the rearing conditions are mostly orders of magnitude better than meat and dairy, institutional animal ethics committees are in place with veterinary help available at hand and anaesthesia is often used for experiments with probability of pain.
So the pain component can be abolished in most cases. While there is the question of lack of consent of sentient animals it is more of a moral grayzone and much of science would simply be nonexistent without it.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/pri ... n-outrage/
If one is completely ignorant of the science or indifferent to its progress, then having overt abolitionist views become OK. While I would be appalled by cosmetic testing or experiments conducted in the absence of amnesia I wouldn't equate all vivisection at the same plane as meat and dairy whose only purpose is palate pleasure whereas this is about the understanding of our biological world.
What rudimentary understanding would we have had in the absence of model organisms from nematodes and fruit flies to mice?
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garrethdsouza
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by garrethdsouza »

//That sounds like a hypothetical. How does one know in advance if a particular experiment will result in useful necessary data that is worth more than the suffering needed to gain it?//
Science may have a low probability of success in some cases and there maybe no way to know which experiment is going to be the one successful doesn't mean one doesn't do any of it because it has a low probability. That's how science works in some cases so saying most experiments don't amount to anything isn't making sense.
Its like saying if one tries for a job and goes to 20 job interviews but is selected in one, its like saying one should have just chosen unemployment and it was all futile. No it wasn't.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Experiments on Animals

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Hi Garreth,

Thanks for the post.

You can get a sense of the statistical probability of producing something useful by looking the the methodology, and comparing the degree of certainty and robustness of the theory to other similar studies before they moved into animal models and their degrees of 'success' after the fact.

In terms of cosmetics that do not introduce new active ingredients, animal testing is generally absurd, and a means only to fend off unreasonable litigation.
Only new active ingredients need to be tested for safety, in the most general sense.

Developmental and neurobiology require brains to test on. While we may (and will likely) develop less invasive procedures to do so, it's not possible to reliably do most of these experiments without a sentient brain.
It may be worth asking what these fields actually do in terms of improved human and nonhuman animal well being, though.
If you could write a post on that, it would be much appreciated.

Other experimentation should be done in vitro, and will increasingly be so thanks to organs on chips. To apply pressure in this direction, all that needs to happen (at minimum) is tighter regulation and higher expense; capitalism will solve the issue. However, it is a time sensitive issue, and such expense also comes at a cost. Government funding would be a more ethical solution, both in providing better models faster to save more human lives, and save more animals from suffering in the interim.

However, all of that said, I agree that animal testing is among the issues of least concern (in terms of numbers, and amount of suffering), it's only so popular because people get to feel like they can shoot off their mouths without actually doing anything to change their lifestyles, which would be required of criticizing animal agriculture.
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