[HN Gopher] Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
___________________________________________________________________
Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
Author : erwald
Score : 146 points
Date : 2021-06-13 10:48 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.erichgrunewald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.erichgrunewald.com)
| soyftware wrote:
| I like how the article starts with talking about software,
| because I find the case for ethical software, and ethical
| treatment of animals to be linked.
|
| There should be no animal exploitation. If humans want human
| things they should test on humans which volunteer to be tested
| on. Everything else is exploitive to others.
| tsbischof wrote:
| Much of the problem comes from the fact that there is
| insufficient incentive for the studies to be effective in the
| first place. The sample size issue is real and often justified
| due to a lack of resources, but this results in minimum
| publishable units which are anecdotal and an over-reliance on
| meta-studies which attempt to aggregate these positively-biased
| results. Increasing the sample size is not always possible, but
| sometimes there are alternative trial designs which can yield
| different but more reliable outcomes.
|
| Another aspect of effectiveness comes from whether the animal
| studies are actually designed to advance anything at all. For
| example, if the goal is to develop an imaging technique in
| humans, then the purpose of animal experiments is primarily to
| confirm that the idea is not wrong, debug the machinery and
| protocols, and generally get things to the point that the system
| is no longer the point of failure when running experiments on
| humans. Instead it is common to see series of publications on new
| imaging methods and contrast agents which grind away at small
| animals with no visible attempts to progress upward, which pushes
| back the time at which you can actually learn how the system
| works. Publishing this way is far safer but ultimately pointless:
| drugs for Alzheimer's is a classic case of optimizing for animals
| and completely missing in humans.
|
| This is at least partly why pre-registration of experiments is
| becoming normalized, as it is in human clinical trials. The goal
| here is to require basic statements of purpose and methods prior
| to execution, such that it is possible to improve the (often
| quite expensive and time-consuming) experiments beforehand and
| not during the manuscript review process. Many research groups
| lack this internal quality control and as a result some
| institutions are stepping in to require or provide it.
| metta2uall wrote:
| Lets also consider how much more money and brainpower would be
| redirected to the development of significantly more advanced
| technologies if experimentation on animals was to be even
| partially banned. Things like more advanced simulations,
| tissue/organ engineering and better non-invasive testing of
| humans. "Necessity is the mother of invention" and currently
| animal testing is often the "easy" and "obvious" way to do
| something.
| ezconnect wrote:
| How would you prove the simulation and organ engineering works?
| Test it on humans?
| refurb wrote:
| Imagine how quickly we come up with more efficient ways to get
| to the moon if we just banned all current rocket technology!
|
| (Thats silly. We'd just stop going to the moon for a few
| decades to centuries).
| mattkrause wrote:
| Nobody really LIKES doing experiments. Even _in vitro_ work is
| slow, tedious, and expensive. Anything involving living
| organisms is orders of magnitude more aggrevating.
|
| If we could simulate things instead, we absolutely would:
| cheaper, faster, less suffering, etc. But we can't.
|
| The canonical example is a nematode called _C. elegans_. It 's
| small: 959 cells, 302 of which are neurons. It has been studied
| _thoroughly_. We have a complete "wiring diagram" of its
| entire nervous system, we know the origin and fate of every
| single cell, it has been sequenced and probed and imaged with
| every technology under the sun. If there is an organism we
| should be able to simulate, _C. elegans_ is it. But there aren
| 't any good models of it, in the sense that you start a
| simulation and it behaves like a "real" worm. There are a lot
| of factors that we know we don't understand/can't model well:
| the passive diffusion of neuromodulators is probably important
| but is a nightmare to simulate. There are undoubtedly other
| factors we don't even know matter yet too.
|
| The worm is, of course, really simple. A human brain has about
| 300M times more neurons (and combinatorially-many more
| connections between them).
| bronzeage wrote:
| Morality and compassion are traits humans evolved in order to
| build society and have lasting social relationships. There's
| nothing natural about them, nature is full of animals exploiting,
| killing, hunting other animals. Nature limits compassion to
| family and sometimes tribe / pack. Imagine a lion with compassion
| for zebras.
|
| It's easy for those feelings to spill over to other animals over
| their intended purpose (building a human society), but people
| need to realize those feelings have overreached their purpose.
|
| I argue that the only reason this guy had written this article in
| the first place is the introduction of mice into his family,
| which triggered the natural response of compassion to family
| members.
|
| Humans only recently managed to convince themselves to extend
| compassion beyond their tribe, which is what they were programmed
| to.
| endisneigh wrote:
| TLDR: instead of testing on animals we should use computer
| simulations and tissue cultures instead.
|
| The authors comparison of kernel bugs to lab testing mice is
| ridiculous to be honest.
|
| The author cherry picks examples like cosmetics to justify their
| view, failing to acknowledge a long history of successful testing
| on animals that led to drugs that help reduce human suffering.
|
| All in all I think the post is bad
| soyftware wrote:
| > history of successful testing on animals that led to drugs
| that help reduce human suffering
|
| By causing the suffering of living, sentient beings. There's a
| clear and obvious slippery slope here.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "we should use computer simulations"
|
| As much as I like technology, I would be afraid to use a drug
| that was only tested this way or even in cultured tissue. The
| biological system is too complex with too many unknown factors
| for me to believe this is highly effective method for
| everything.
| ezconnect wrote:
| How would you know the simulator is accurate?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| This makes the argument that a drug working on animals is weak
| evidence that it works on humans, but skips over the issue of
| toxicity. If drugs never had side effects, I'm sure everyone
| would be perfectly happy to immediately start with human trials.
| Why waste all that time?
| k__ wrote:
| Can it be made more effective?
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Maybe by using a different animal, such as a human
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| One of the features of arguments for "ethical" treatment of
| animals is that they are often so unethical. For example, it is
| often argued that animal research is unnecessary because computer
| models are sufficient. Of this misleading article that conflates
| animal research with animal testing. It turns out that living
| this are complicated, and how they react to chemicals is largely
| impossible to predict. And humans still die of disease, and are
| interested in curing those diseases. And, we really don't think
| that experimenting on humans first to answer basic biological
| questions, when almost identical processes occur in rodents, is
| reasonable. So we learn things first in animals. It's fine to say
| that many drugs fail to meet expectations when tested in humans,
| but pretty much everything a physician learns about metabolism in
| a biochemistry course was worked out in rats or mice, and most of
| those things were never validated in human tissues because the
| human tissue is not, and should not be, available. And patients
| are better served by doctors familiar with biochemistry.
|
| One might argue that since we know so much, we have learned
| enough and further research in animals is unnecessary (or can be
| modeled). But while we now know most of the components of the
| body (at least those encoded by the genome), we are spectacularly
| ignorant of what those parts do, how they interact, and how those
| interactions respond to environmental changes (such as disease
| and drugs). And we can only explore those questions in animals.
| Jiro wrote:
| Has there ever yet been a case of someone saying "animal testing
| is explotative, but it's actually pretty darn effective"?
|
| I suspect that it's motivated reasoning. If you don't like animal
| testing, it's going to distort your perception of how effective
| it is.
| eigenket wrote:
| As an academic who isn't directly involved in anything close to
| animal testing (I'm a physicist) I always find it strange that
| people working in biology have to jump through incredible hoops
| relating to how the animals they work with are treated, but then
| the lunch place in the biology department sells sandwiches with
| chicken, ham etc in with incredibly minimal oversight for how the
| animals are treated.
|
| The difference in standards between "science animals" and "food
| animals" is quite stark. It is very similar to the difference in
| treatment people require between dogs and pigs. No one really
| cares if pigs suffer, even though they would be furious if dogs
| experienced the same treatment.
| rtkwe wrote:
| I don't think that's that weird, they're setting standards for
| their own behavior and the food source is largely beyond their
| control. That space probably isn't even directly controlled by
| them but by the larger university.
| nerdponx wrote:
| An able-bodied person with decent income should have no
| trouble being at least mostly vegetarian, if not most vegan,
| in North America.
| sqqqqrly wrote:
| I don't want to be.
| eigenket wrote:
| Many people don't want to avoid things that have massive
| negative externalities but at some point we have to take
| responsibility for the harm we cause.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Speak for yourself bud. We only have one life, and it is
| not for you to decide what other person should eat based
| on your moralist principles.
| boston_clone wrote:
| from an ethical perspective, why wouldn't you want to
| live in such a way that minimizes suffering?
| eigenket wrote:
| Moralist principles aren't really my issue here. Its
| kinda sad that animals suffer but I understand that not
| many people care about that. My issue is the massive
| ecological harm done by eating other animals compared to
| eating plants.
|
| Climate change and ecosystem collapse are real, concrete
| problems that are coming home to roost, and I find it
| incredibly sad that educated, prosperous people don't do
| the bare minimum they could to reduce these problems.
| lurquer wrote:
| I want the climate to change.
|
| Why do you assume things you believe are 'problems' are
| problems to others?
| revax wrote:
| Here's one of many examples
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322
|
| >Around 30% of the world's population is currently
| exposed to climatic conditions exceeding this deadly
| threshold for at least 20 days a year. By 2100, this
| percentage is projected to increase to ~48% under a
| scenario with drastic reductions of greenhouse gas
| emissions and ~74% under a scenario of growing emissions.
| pinky1417 wrote:
| People often feel differently about food animals than they
| do about lab animals. Part of it has to do with the kinds
| of animals. People get very upset about the treatment of
| beagles, which are used in research for human eye
| applications, but not cows. The species seems to be a major
| factor.
| xwolfi wrote:
| Yet I think both these concerns come from very wealthy people
| who have time thinking those thoughts.
|
| Most people, when they have enough money to buy a bit of meat,
| are relieved to have such a good intake of protein. And most
| life, in the broader context, doesn't even have the ability to
| compute this question.
|
| I wonder if we're not overthinking it a bit. Sadistic pleasure
| in torturing animal should be prevented but also because it can
| derive to human treatment, and we should accept that animals
| that would never have been born if not for food or experimental
| purpose are just necessary for our greater good until we find
| something that really works better.
| eigenket wrote:
| I mean pretty much everything that has ever been written, and
| will ever be written on hackernews counts as come(ing) from
| very wealthy people who have time thinking those thoughts.
|
| I'm not sure why you wrote that here rather than on some
| discussion on programming or whatever else.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Assuming you are not living in a good desert, you can eat a
| delicious healthy plant based diet for very little. Plant
| based diets are not something that need to be left to the
| very wealthy at all.
|
| To those who literally cannot access those foods, I don't
| think anyone holds them accountable.
| wumpus wrote:
| > No one really cares if pigs suffer
|
| It's surprising that you don't have any family, friends, or co-
| workers who do care about that kind of thing. My academic
| astronomy group has a bunch of vegetarians and vegans. While I
| have no idea why (it's none of my business), it's my life
| experience is that a large fraction of them do care if pigs
| suffer.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| runawaybottle wrote:
| Death is not the same as torture. Kill me before you ever
| torture me.
| telesilla wrote:
| Please, see the Animal Welfare Section on the Wikipedia page
| for slaughterhouses. There is nothing here sensational, just
| facts. It's important that those who choose to eat meat
| understand the contract they sign when financially supporting
| the industrial animal processing system.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse#Animal_welfar.
| ..
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Again, these conditions, of industrial farming and
| slaughtering, are only the norm in some countries in the
| world. For beef, that's the US, Argentina, Brazil and
| China, predominantly. In the rest of the world, large scale
| farming or slaughtering is not the norm.
|
| Generally my point in this discussion is that you should
| not bundle together factory farms and slaughterhouses in
| the US with, e.g. small dairy farms in the Pyrenees or
| Austria, or Bantu farmers in Africa, etc. There is one way
| that people eat meat in the Americas, Australia and China,
| and quite another in other parts of the world.
|
| So when you say "those who choose to eat meat" financially
| support the industrial animal processing system, you're
| painting with an overly broad brush and I don't think it's
| serving anyone's purposes to do so.
| atweiden wrote:
| > Generally my point in this discussion is that you
| should not bundle together factory farms and
| slaughterhouses in the US with, e.g. small dairy farms in
| the Pyrenees or Austria, or Bantu farmers in Africa, etc.
| There is one way that people eat meat in the Americas,
| Australia and China, and quite another in other parts of
| the world.
|
| The countries which you claim aren't factory farming are
| just importing most of their meat from countries which
| do, see: https://oec.world/en/profile/hs92/poultry-meat
|
| And even if you assume the existence of supposedly
| "ethical" animal agriculture -- which is considerably
| farcical given the non-consensuality of murder in any
| case -- it's inherently irrelevant because these niche
| models of food production don't scale to feeding the
| world.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nerdponx wrote:
| Too bad most food animals are tortured, sometimes for their
| entire life, before being killed. The unluckiest ones are the
| females kept alive for breeding.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| That is true of battery chickens and of meat and dairy
| cattle in factory farms, but not for "most animals", like
| you say, and certainly not the world over. On the contrary,
| around most of the world, farm animals are among the
| happiest, healthiest, best-fed and best-cared for animals
| on the planet.
|
| Of course you will not know that if you selectively look at
| the factory farms with feedlots that are the norm in the
| US, Argentina, etc. These are indeed atrocities. But, for
| the time being, they are not representative of the majority
| of farms in most of the world.
|
| You can see that if you take a slow train ride through the
| French countryside, for example. You'll see houses, barns,
| trees, grass and small herds of cows busking in the sun,
| peacefully chewing cud, just like large beef and dairy
| industries want you to think _their_ animals are kept
| (which obviously they 're not). Or, if you take a walk
| around the countryside where I live, you'll see that every
| meadow and plot of land has a few sheep or goats browsing
| serenely, often next to the road, typically without even a
| fence to keep them in, because it's unnecessary. I know one
| particular dairy farm on a Mediterranean island, with a
| fully modern barn and automatic milking machine, where, if
| you visit during the day, you'll see maybe a dozen goats in
| the barn that can house a couple hundred. The rest are out
| in the mountains, browsing, and will return on their own in
| the evening. That's how terrified those allegedly
| mistreated animals are. The barn is their home.
| atweiden wrote:
| The French AOC [1] regulates what's allowed to be
| marketed as Comte etc by stipulating location, breed,
| population density, etc; however aside from cheese, I'm
| not aware of a similar set of standards existing for
| animal products. As someone who has lived in a rural area
| with much animal agriculture, I can tell you labels like
| "free range" roughly translate to "Let's put as many
| animals as we legally can fit onto this plot of land
| modulo our budget, then neglect them to every extent
| allowable by law, followed by killing them because we
| need the money". You specifically give the example of the
| animals having a shed to shelter in, which IME is an
| exceptional rarity.
|
| In any case, cherrypicked examples of "free range" farms
| that actually provide shelter for their animals are about
| as irrelevant as saying hunting is "more ethical" than
| factory farming. We cannot feed billions more people
| sustainably on diets heavy in animal products, no matter
| the method, especially so with the more inefficient
| methods like free range and hunting. There's a reason
| factory farming exists.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appellation_d%27origin
| e_contro...
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| "Most animals" in the world are the animals we raise for
| meat. Well, mammals anyway.
|
| 60% are food animals
|
| 36% are we humans
|
| 4% are wild animals
|
| So there's that.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In fact, we eat more animals every year than are alive at
| any one time. E.g. 50B chickens are eaten every year, but
| only 19B are alive at any moment.
|
| Its essentially true that the only animals that matter
| are the ones we raise. By the numbers anyway.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| Numbers please. Where do they come from?
|
| Also, it doesn't matter how many food animals we have,
| what matters is how the majority of them are treated. And
| the majority are not meat and dairy cows raised in
| feedlots in the US, because that kind of farm animal is a
| small proportion of all meat an dairy animals bred the
| world over. From Our World in Data:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-meat-
| production-by...
|
| You can see that pork and poultry make up the largest
| amount of meat produced. Though the plot shows _meat_
| rather than number of animals, remember that it takes
| seveal pigs or goats to make the same meat as one cow,
| and many more chickens. There are way more pigs and
| chickens farmed the world over than there are cows and
| cow farming (cow _factory_ farming) is concentrated in
| the US, Argentina, Brazil and China:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/beef-and-buffalo-meat-
| pro...
|
| It is those places where the images of tortured cows,
| that live their whole lives connected to milking and
| impregnating machines come from. It is such conditions
| that have to be eliminated. But in most of the rest of
| the world, those are not typical conditions and the
| numbers of animals raised are many, many fewer.
|
| Edit: which is not to whitewash the pig and poultry
| industries. Chickens in particular are treated horribly,
| even the so-called "free range" ones (in many places it's
| enough for the chickens to be kept in a gigantic barn
| with a tiny bit of yard outside for the chickens to be
| considered "free range", legislation is often an absolute
| scandal). And there are many large pig farms were pigs
| are kept in absolutely inhumane conditions.
|
| But, again- that's true in some places, not the world
| over and not for most animals.
| tsbischof wrote:
| In practice it generally comes down to demonstratable utility
| more than direct concerns about animal well-being. At the most
| basic level, if you can learn a useful lesson from subjecting
| an animal to whatever conditions, then the work is generally
| approvable. But if the researcher has not done their due
| diligence in experimental design then the whole operation is
| pointless, or worse than pointless if they then go and p-hack
| their way through a publication.
|
| For a physics analogue, think of animal experiments like a
| beamline proposal. In order to get time on the beamline you
| need to explain what you are doing, what your experiment is
| intended to accomplish, and why the experiment achieves those
| goals. With these basic checks you can hopefully ensure that
| the allocated time is not obviously going to be wasted. Animal
| experiments can easily be about as expensive in terms of money
| and time as a beamline-based project, including the cost for
| the beamline operation itself.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It appears that universities are held to different standards of
| reputation than are poultry farms and slaughterhouses.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| Last year of college we could submit our own experiment. I did
| a physics one so it didn't apply but my peers at the time
| mostly did biology related experiments.
|
| As a rule of thumb, as our biology professor put it, just make
| sure the animal you're experimenting on do not look like a baby
| (big head, big eyes, small mouth, makes squeaking sounds). This
| is why experiments on fish were ok but "fish embryo" would get
| much more scrutiny.
| wallscratch wrote:
| Yeah, but maybe this is an argument for treating the food
| animals, rather than ridiculousness of standards for science
| animals.
| eigenket wrote:
| Of course, I agree. I hope my comment didn't imply otherwise.
|
| Actually I would argue for the wholesale reduction of the
| category "food animal". Its largely unnecessary, there are
| very few people (e.g. with unusual medical needs or living in
| unusual situations) for whom eating other animals is
| necessary.
| ummonk wrote:
| Imagine the two following hypothetical societies (we
| clearly live in neither society):
|
| A) humane open pastures where animals grow to middle age
| before being killed for food, resulting in expensive meat
|
| B) pure agriculture where land is cleared and irrigated for
| agricultural produce, completely devoid of animal life
|
| I would argue that society A would be better for animals
| than society B.
| eigenket wrote:
| The two situations aren't really comparable without more
| information. Clearly the people in A are still eating a
| craptonne of plants, and also have access to much more
| land per person than B, since they can afford to have a
| lot dedicated to very unproductive pasture.
| ummonk wrote:
| Yeah, it's hard to compare and the greater yields of
| crops certainly bodes well for A.
|
| Though the productivity differences aren't as large as
| one would think - protein conversion ratios for smaller
| animals tend to be 2-3. It's worse for beef (~10) but you
| have to consider that half the cows are creating milk
| which has a high protein conversion ratio. And it's
| potentially even better for animals when you consider the
| quality of protein - e.g. see
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.8362
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's worse for beef (~10) but you have to consider that
| half the cows are creating milk which has a high protein
| conversion ratio.
|
| Half?
| skak wrote:
| Only female cows produce milk.
| aflag wrote:
| All cows are female.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Pastoral societies usually inhabit ecosystems that don't
| support human-edible crops
| whiddershins wrote:
| We don't know this.
|
| Our understanding of nutrition is closer to none than to
| complete.
|
| The more deeply you research this, the more true my
| statement will seem.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There are shades of grey on this kind of thing. Testing cosmetics
| seems a less painful ordeal than some of the more brutal examples
| given in the article.
|
| Another thing. If animal testing was outlawed, the same testing
| would probably end up being done on poor people instead. Is that
| worse? I think so.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > If animal testing was outlawed, the same testing would
| probably end up being done on poor people instead.
|
| That's... quite the leap. The entire point is that ethics
| committees are much more averse to human testing than to animal
| testing, so we're less conscientious about animal testing.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| In ... all countries?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes, it's safe to say that, in all countries, people are
| more comfortable with animal testing than with human
| testing.
|
| The quality of results from human testing is many orders of
| magnitude better; if you're willing to do it, there's no
| point in doing _any_ animal testing.
| tffgg wrote:
| 1. He refered to countries using humans for testing being
| a leap
|
| 2. Using humans for testing makes no sense bc. animals
| are exactly used to avoid early testing on humans
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What do you believe is the conflict between these two
| statements?
|
| >> if you're willing to do [human testing], there's no
| point in doing _any_ animal testing.
|
| > animals are exactly used to avoid early testing on
| humans
|
| These are two statements of the same idea.
| tffgg wrote:
| Since ethics has been invented for human society, there is no
| surprise for being averse to humans. Neither is that good or
| bad by nature
| [deleted]
| cute_boi wrote:
| I think this is a bad take. Poor people will be tested after
| animal testing so it is not that worst. There are many cases of
| this one example is [1]
|
| Animal testing is unnecessary most of the time. Even when its
| necessary they are brutally tortured and after testing is over
| they are simply killed. But you know companies don't think
| animal deserves to live. We can use simulations etc but you
| know its hard to change culture.
|
| 1. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ethics-in-human-
| experimenta...
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Poor people will be tested after animal testing so it is
| not that worst.
|
| > Animal testing is unnecessary most of the time. Even when
| its necessary they are brutally tortured
|
| If animal testing involves brutally torturing the test
| subjects, then surely it would be much worse for poor human
| test subjects if they are swapped in, compared to what they
| go through now. Those steps that involve torturous pain would
| have to happen with the human subjects instead of the
| animals.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The use simulations for many things already. That hell's them
| to determine what to test on animals in many cases, and still
| they have failures. It's very had to simulate things that we
| don't know everything about. That's why they do the testing.
| rmak wrote:
| poor people aka men.
| amelius wrote:
| > Another thing. If animal testing was outlawed, the same
| testing would probably end up being done on poor people
| instead. Is that worse? I think so.
|
| Also, some Asian countries would get a huge advantage as they
| don't seem to care as much about animal rights, unfortunately.
|
| Anyway, it's a bad argument, but one that has to be taken into
| account as the practice won't stop anyway.
| foobar33333 wrote:
| Or human rights
| cheschire wrote:
| Agreed. A lot of testing is already done on poor people who are
| tempted by the income from clinical trials.
|
| If we remove animals from this process, the first time a lot of
| products will touch living tissue is during these trials.
| xg15 wrote:
| > _You may have heard of a recent scandal where researchers from
| the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (UMN) intentionally tried
| to introduce bugs into the Linux kernel codebase as part of a
| research project. [...] This upset a lot of people - the Hacker
| News thread has received over 3000 points and around 2000
| comments as I write this._
|
| I remember when that thread hit the HN front page.
|
| About 1-2 days before that, another article was on the front
| page: It was about how Facebook was experimenting on it's users
| by manipulating the newsfeed and inducing certain emotions -
| e.g., filtering posts such that positive news dominate the feed
| or such that negative news do. There was some outrage in academia
| and larger society over Facebook's behaviour and Facebook was
| largely accused of doing unethical research on nonconsenting
| subjects.
|
| The overwhelming opinion in the HN comments was that Facebook's
| actions were perfectly ethical: Facebook's users somehow already
| gave general consent to be experimented on when they signed up.
|
| Then days later, the kernel research story dropped and everyone
| was suddenly up in arms and quickly turned into fervent
| supporters of informed consent in research.
|
| Now talk is about actual lab animals and most posts apper very
| concerned about the various shades of gray on this subject.
|
| I find that does tell a lot about the priorities of the HN
| readership.
| detaro wrote:
| You might want to re-read those threads, because the community
| takes were not as clear-cut as you claim. (If anything, large
| threads often are a sign of _non-agreement_ , because people
| strongly disagreeing creates more comments) And of course not
| everyone participates in every thread, which makes judging
| overall sentiment even harder - that someone comments less or
| not at all on one thread doesn't mean they don't care about the
| issue.
| tffgg wrote:
| How can one claim it is ineffective when it is the most
| effective?
| omega3 wrote:
| Unpopular opinion but I'm yet to hear a convincing argument that
| the reduction of suffering is something that we should strive
| for.
|
| Edit, looking at the replies I'm disappointed in hn, expected
| better.
| h2odragon wrote:
| I've got a good one: happy critters _taste better_. Modern
| factory farmed pork is fine, and $2 /lb is _awesome and
| wonderful_ ; but I'll never have pork like the pig I raised as
| a child, or the pigs the neighbor ran in a retired peach
| orchard, from such a lifestyle.
| [deleted]
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Because you wouldn't want to be subjected to suffering
| yourself. It's not complicated.
|
| All humans everywhere desire the end of their own suffering.
| We're awful at minimizing it but you can see our hamfisted
| attempts in our seeking out of pleasures and avoidance of
| activities which are unpleasant, stressful, and painful.
|
| When we observe other humans/animals hurting most of us feel
| with what is suffering.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Exactly. If anyone reading this is puzzled about whether
| reduction of suffering is worth striving for, you only need
| to observe yourself when you are suffering. Do you want more
| suffering or less suffering?
|
| I suppose a person could argue that the universe is just a
| bunch of atoms and that living beings and their suffering is
| just chemicals behaving in a certain way and in that sense it
| doesn't matter any more than any other chemical reaction but
| it seems like that argument would also render the concept of
| "striving" to be moot.
| dang wrote:
| That's obvious flamebait, and tedious self-congratulatory
| tropes like "Unpopular opinion" and "expected better" are flame
| multipliers. Please don't post like that here.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27492086.
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| I have yet to hear a convincing argument that human life
| matters at all, but I operate as though it does because it
| feels like it does and in some sense that's all the reason you
| should need.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That seems like a perfectly legitimate question. Is it a good
| idea to anthropomorphize other animals? Is it beneficial to
| society overall to make macro-level policy decisions based on
| moral beliefs that are more of a personal thing?
|
| FWIW, HN on the weekend is a different beast entirely than it
| is on weekdays. Even dang needs some time off, and the
| reduction in moderation can be glaringly obvious. Makes me
| really appreciate how much of the 'HN we all love' is a result
| of his efforts as much as it is a general consensus by
| participants on this site.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The way you are using the word anthropomorphism implies that
| there is a difference between humans and other animals and
| that we should concern ourselves with human suffering, but
| not with animal suffering. If you think we shouldn't concern
| ourselves with the second, then what is the argument for
| concerning ourselves with the first?
|
| Of course we make policy decisions based on moral belief. We
| do outlaw murder and rape, for example.
| dang wrote:
| I think this is probably sample bias. HN on the weekend isn't
| a different beast entirely, and FWIW my and other mods' time
| off doesn't particularly correlate with weekends. Thanks for
| the kind words in any case!
| eurg wrote:
| If the reduction of suffering is not something that you
| internally see as valuable, you might want to check with a
| psychologist (I mean that plain matter-of-fact-ly). While I can
| construct philosophical arguments and know what nihilism is,
| outside of thought experiments this is highly unusual for any
| individual capable of any empathy at all.
| omega3 wrote:
| Thanks for the diagnosis, I think it's not as highly unusual
| as you might think. I bet outside of their relatively small
| social circles humans aren't preoccupied with reduction of
| suffering or altruism in any meaningful way. Of course, it's
| not a fashionable thing to say (see the downwotes) and I'd
| love to be proven wrong but I just don't see it.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Most people may not be concerned with reduction of
| suffering but those that argue for not killing animals for
| food definitely are. I'm not sure why you think it has
| anything to do with being fashionable.
| dsomers wrote:
| I disagree, the rate of vegetarianism has been increasing
| over the years and the rate of people demanding more
| ethical meat products e.g. free range eggs and chicken
| becoming more popular too. This is the free market catering
| to demand that was almost non existent 30 years ago.
| adrianN wrote:
| There is a difference between not actively working on
| reducing suffering and not seeing a point in reducing
| suffering.
| shawnz wrote:
| Most people probably don't preoccupy themselves with
| reduction of suffering, but that is not the same as saying
| most people don't see value in reducing suffering.
| logifail wrote:
| > I bet outside of their relatively small social circles
| humans aren't preoccupied with reduction of suffering or
| altruism in any meaningful way
|
| Could it be that reduction of _observable_ suffering is
| what many people are actually concerned about, not the
| underlying suffering as such?
|
| It's OK to buy a burger - just as long as you don't have to
| watch how it's made.
|
| It's OK to buy a $5 imported shirt - as long as you don't
| have to observe the conditions under which it was produced.
| eurg wrote:
| Some additions:
|
| I want to second the clarifications by adrianN and shawnz --
| there is a difference between not actively caring about
| suffering, and not even seeing the point in anyone caring
| about it.
|
| It seems my "I in fact believe you should see a psychologist"
| worked exactly as well rootusrootus implied it would. Many
| seem to think I want to label the previous poster as a
| psychopath, and do so in hatred. That was not my intention. I
| admit, I fail at communication, regularly, even more so the
| more I try to refrain from it.
|
| Although suggested otherwise, my message did *not* contain a
| diagnosis. Given this extremely limited context, I doubt
| anyone could give a proper remote diagnosis. And I especially
| did not attach a psychopathy label to the previous poster. I
| personally know of at least three mental/neurological
| atypical (and not voluntarily chosen) states that cause
| people to (partially) adopt nihilism, and I'm sure mental
| health professionals have seen quite a few more.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I mean that plain matter-of-fact-ly
|
| When you find yourself having to qualify such a statement,
| that could be a useful indicator that what you said isn't
| constructive.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Its true though, not being able feel empathy for anyone or
| thing that is not normal. So any individual who can't would
| be well served going to a psychologist or being expelled
| from society entirely. Reduction of suffering being good is
| generally viewed as axiomatic. I don't want any part of any
| moral code that doesn't assume that. And I frankly don't
| care about the feelings of those who are indifferent to
| suffering.
| matz1 wrote:
| >or being expelled from society entirely
|
| So the main reason to exploit animal is because the other
| human hate it and that other human could harm you. I see
| so it has nothing to do with the animal suffering itself.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| No its because the presence of such people in society
| only increases total overall suffering (animal or human).
| matz1 wrote:
| But why would I care about the increase of animal
| suffering (if not because other human may angry) ?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I think it is a pretty big leap from 'maybe this is not
| automatically good' to 'you must be a pscyhopath.' If
| there were no trade-offs, then it would be a short
| discussion and we could definitely fall back on axioms.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| I mean more likely the OP is just being edgy and is only
| performatively apathetic at a surface level, but the only
| thing we have to go off of are their words, which do
| point to some deeper problem.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Theres a huge difference between the statements "Lots of
| humans eatanimals for sustenance and there is a tradeoff
| between the value we derive vs the suffering of the
| animals" vs "Prove that I should care about suffering".
| eurg wrote:
| I know that rule of thumb, but it's only a rule of thumb. I
| haven't yet seen a way to suggest seeing a doctor via the
| written part of the web that won't immediately get
| interpreted as name calling by many people.
| matz1 wrote:
| I personally don't care about animal suffering, whatever you do
| to non-human is fair game to me. I draw the line between human
| and non-human.
|
| The only reason I may care about animal suffering is because
| the other human that care about animal can get angry and cause
| me trouble.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Now I'm curious: why do you care about human suffering?
| matz1 wrote:
| I guess its just matter of subjective preference, like some
| people hate eating chocolate some people loves it.
| _Microft wrote:
| You dropped a controversial opinion with absolutely nothing to
| back it up and are now disappointed of the replies. What else
| did you expect instead? (Well, beside something "better")
| omega3 wrote:
| > What else did you expect instead?
|
| I've expected for people to formulate an interesting,
| persuasive counter argument. That's how you advance a
| conversation. You don't advance the discussion by ad hominem
| remarks or ignoring the argument like some people have done.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| You wrote down a truly idiotic thought with no argument or
| justification whatsoever and you expect people to take you
| seriously, where did you learn to be so brave and clever.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack or respond by
| breaking the site guidelines yourself. Regardless of how
| bad or annoying another comment is (or you feel it is),
| you owe the community better if you're participating
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| _Microft wrote:
| There was no argument that could have been countered. You
| stated the opinion that you have not heard any argument yet
| that suffering actually should be minimized but did not
| list any of these arguments much less explained why you did
| not find them convincing. There was nothing anyone could
| possibly have debated in a reasonable way.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| You seem like a self-interest oriented individual, so perhaps
| you will find this idea worth considering:
|
| The animals are in some ways like our collective ancestors, who
| have continued living the way we changed from.
|
| The machines are in some ways like our collective offspring,
| finding new ways to function while we stay where we currently
| can't move from (carbon-DNA mechanics).
|
| It has been observed that machines learn the same way animals
| do -- mostly by watching and repeating, not by "listening" to
| what they're told to do.
|
| So in how we treat the animals is going to translate into how
| we are treated once we are no longer in power.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| Do you honestly not understand what an outrageous comment this
| is?
| [deleted]
| Omavel wrote:
| There is no alternative for animal testing.
| eesmith wrote:
| > try to imagine that we live in a world where no one has ever
| used animals in research before, and someone proposes it for the
| very first time
|
| Why do I have to imagine? We live in that world. At some point in
| our history people decided to use animals in research.
|
| It seems like this is a slight-of-hand - it's asking us to
| imagine _ourselves_ , _now_ in that environment. But most of us
| are far removed from hunting, killing animals for food, raiding,
| etc. and don 't live in a time where most kids died before
| adulthood and where pricking your thumb on a rose could cause an
| infection leading to death.
|
| In our history, we know that people treated other people pretty
| poorly, and animals even worse. There was no problem in using
| animals in research.
|
| > Even if you can find one particular invention - insulin is
| often brought up
|
| Manned flight and space travel were both preceded by animal
| experiments.
|
| The first unmanned balloon flight had a sheep, a duck, and a
| rooster -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ballooning#First_un... :
| "The sheep was believed to have a reasonable approximation of
| human physiology."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_and_apes_in_space comments
| "Before humans went into space in the 1960s, several other
| animals were launched into space, including numerous other
| primates, so that scientists could investigate the biological
| effects of spaceflight."
|
| A few examples drawn from medical history:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christiaan_Barnard - "Barnard
| performed experiments on dogs while investigating intestinal
| atresia ... Barnard was able to reproduce this condition in a
| fetus puppy ... Jannie Louw used this innovation in a clinical
| setting, and Barnard's method saved the lives of ten babies in
| Cape Town. This technique was also adapted by surgeons in Britain
| and the US."
|
| Same page - "Gil Campbell who had demonstrated that a dog's lung
| could be used to oxygenate blood during open-heart surgery. (The
| year before Barnard arrived, Lillehei and Campbell had used this
| procedure for twenty minutes during surgery on a 13-year-old boy
| with ventricular septal defect, and the boy had made a full
| recovery.)"
|
| I picked Barnard because I know he was one of several doctors who
| practiced on dogs to get experience on how to do human open heart
| surgery.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Kantrowitz - "Using dogs and
| other animals as experimental subjects, Kantrowitz developed an
| artificial left heart, an early version of an oxygen generator
| for use as a component in a heart-lung machine and a treatment
| for coronary artery disease"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C - guinea pigs were
| discovered to be a good laboratory animal model for scurvy and
| the identification of vitamin C. Note that while Lind did human
| testing to identify that citrus fruits prevented scurvy, that
| didn't pinpoint vitamin C.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Interestingly, in the past there was a lot more self-
| experimentation done by researchers.
|
| The history of such self-experimentation is chronicled in a
| book called "Who Goes First?":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Who-Goes-First-Lawrence-Altman/dp/052...
| fabian2k wrote:
| There's certainly more that could be done to prevent bad or
| futile research on animals. But there are areas where there is no
| reasonable way to replace animal testing. How else would you test
| the safety of a new drug or other chemical? You can't do this in
| vitro, and going directly into humans is not an acceptable
| solution in my view.
| tsbischof wrote:
| You do not cut out animal research but you push for a clearer
| path to safely start research in humans. Instead of repeated
| and overlapping pre-clinical studies, focus on designing
| studies to move as rapidly into humans as possible while
| retaining a reasonable risk profile. The longer people do work
| on animals the more they optimize for and are invested in the
| animal solution.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > But there are areas where there is no reasonable way to
| replace animal testing.
|
| Two specific examples for which animal testing seems essential:
|
| 1. Prediction of nanoparticle clearance from in vitro studies
| does not correlate with clearance in vivo. If you want to know
| where the particles go (do they hit the target organ/tumor at
| all? do they ever leave the body?) you need to do in vivo
| testing.
|
| 2. Adolescent idiopathic adolescent scoliosis can now be
| treated by vertebral tethering and growth modulation, not just
| bracing or fusion. Zimmer Biomet Spine recently had a device
| approved to deliver this treatment [0]. Exploratory research to
| establish cause-effect relationships between tethering and
| growth modulation depended on large animal models. It's not
| good to accidentally make a patient's spine worse because you
| don't understand what's going on.
|
| [0] https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/recently-approved-
| device...
| erwald wrote:
| there are a number of replacement methods, though i don't know
| if they cover all the cases. these include using tissue
| cultures, diseased humans and software modelling. also, when
| drugs have been deemed sufficiently safe, they can be further
| studied using human volunteer trials.
| entee wrote:
| We already do all of this in drug discovery research before
| putting things into animals. We try computer modeling (very
| inaccurate but a good pre filter) then cell culture, and only
| after that do we use animals. Not only is it ethically the
| right thing, it's the economical thing. Animal studies are
| crazy expensive (each mouse costs a couple dollars per day
| just to keep alive and you need a lot of them) compared to
| cell culture and modeling.
|
| The problem is that in your scenario, many many more humans
| would be harmed. While animal models are flawed, there are no
| cell culture tools that even come close to recapitulating the
| system wide effects you get in a whole organism. Without
| animal tests, all the drugs that hurt a mouse (and there are
| very many that fail in mouse tests for this reason) would
| instead do it to humans.
|
| You can ban animal research, but if you do, know that
| virtually none of the medicines you take would exist. It
| really is that stark.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > How else would you test the safety of a new drug or other
| chemical?
|
| Use computer models first as much as possible, while we know
| they are imperfect. In vitro-studies before in-vivo. Then test
| on volunteers (paid), starting with very very small doses of
| whatever you want to test to reduce the risk to the maximum,
| and measure the effects on living systems as you go to better
| understand how it is metabolized.
| fabian2k wrote:
| What computer models? I can imagine that it is possible to
| predict some already known toxicological mechanisms for
| similar molecules. But we're certainly not even close to
| anywhere where we could predict unknown toxicological
| interactions.
|
| And in vitro tests are very limited in that area. Of course
| they're still done and useful, but they can't replace animal
| tests. And testing on paid volunteers is still ethically
| problematic, you're targeting pretty desperate people if you
| remove animal experiments which could detect toxic compounds.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| There is no computer model that is even close to being
| accurate enough. Science actually understands very little
| about the human body on a very micro scale.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| IIUC, you are proposing computers -> petri
| dishes -> people
|
| Whereas the status quo is computers ->
| petri dishes -> animals -> people
|
| So you think safety testing should be _less_ rigorous?
| foobar33333 wrote:
| And that poor people who take up these positions should be
| the first line of defense in testing.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Safety of people matters a lot, but I keep thinking about
| the following observation - in drug trials we routinely see
| many drugs that work in vitro, work in mice but don't work
| in humans, and many drugs that seem safe for mice but have
| bad side-effects for humans. Shouldn't this cut both ways
| symmetrically? Does that imply that we have a bunch of
| drugs developed for as-yet-uncured diseases that work in
| vitro and _would_ actually work for humans but just won 't
| work on mice, so we never tried them on humans and will
| never know because it's unethical to try?
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Do you work in this field? I don't, but even as a layman
| I'm quite certain that the research process is more
| involved than you appear to be suggesting. As far as I'm
| aware, trials in animal models don't stop at mice -- I've
| heard of researchers testing for safety and efficacy on
| mice, and then progressing to guinea pigs and
| subsequently macaques. Some animal anatomies behave more
| similarly to humans when confronted with the same disease
| than others.
|
| I know what I'm an expert in and it certainly isn't this.
| I trust actual scientists to know what they're doing.
| refurb wrote:
| As someone who has done drug development this is a horrific
| idea.
|
| I remember using computer modeling - the lead said "oh yeah,
| tweak the molecule here and you'll double the potency". Cool,
| make the tweak and...potency was 1/10th.
|
| And we do toxicity filtering already, before we get to animal
| models (why trying something you know will fail?). Despite
| this we have plenty of highly toxic molecule make it through.
| I remember the rats who testicles went necrotic after the
| first dose. Never saw that coming and thank god it didn't
| happen in humans.
|
| We're so far away from even modeling molecules docking with
| receptors. Toxicity? You'd have plenty of phase 1 volunteers
| dying every year. Or being horribly harmed.
| foobar33333 wrote:
| >Use computer models first as much as possible
|
| Are we not doing this already? I would assume this is even
| cheaper than producing the thing and testing it. And I'm not
| sure how confident I would be with computer models since we
| don't know a whole lot about how biology works enough to
| simulate it (given the simulation would mostly be trying to
| replicate previous potentially flawed studies)
| nceqs3 wrote:
| You are correct, if you could build a computer model that
| could even somewhat predict the efficacy of a drug you
| would instantly become the wealthiest person in the world.
| foobar33333 wrote:
| I imagine the only real way to do such a thing would be
| to simulate physics on an atomic level and have a perfect
| atomic map of the body. Which we are no where near
| achieving yet. But once we have that sorted, all kinds of
| incredible simulations could be done.
| refurb wrote:
| You would need to do that, but not just for the target in
| question but the entire human body - there are so many
| feedback loops and mechanisms in the body to counter
| whatever your trying to do. Add on top toxicity and
| that's why biology is so hard.
|
| Reminds me of the story of Lyrica. Logic was it targeted
| GABA receptors - made sense too since it looked very
| similar to GABA itself. Sweet! And it had the same effect
| as a GABA agonist would. Pretty god damn smart people
| thought that one up!
|
| Then a few years _after_ approval someone figured out it
| actually worked on glutamate receptors.
|
| Complete luck that it looked like GABA, behaved like a
| GABA agonist. It just didn't work that way at all though.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| The article specifically talks about this and you haven't
| really made a concrete reply to anything they say.
|
| The quality of discourse on HN goes up when we all meaningfully
| engage with the content. The goal shouldn't be to see who is
| fastest to post a dismissal of the headline.
| carbocation wrote:
| The article doesn't actually talk about it in any meaningful
| way. They talk about it in a statistical fashion: most animal
| studies are underpowered, most don't publish, etc.
|
| And sure, I think we can all agree that nobody should be
| doing useless experiments, whether on animals or not.
|
| But that in no way proves the article's argument, and it
| hardly even supports it.
|
| Are we going to test out new CRISPR therapeutic delivery
| systems in humans? We don't have a non-living system that
| replicates a circulatory system, an immune system, and a
| liver. If the author has a suggestion for how to do things
| like this safely and effectively without animals, I didn't
| hear it.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Failing experiments and learning something in the process
| is the bread and butter of science
| fabian2k wrote:
| The article is makings lots of points, I don't find it well
| focused which makes it harder to make specific replies. For
| example it talks a lot about animal experiments in cosmetics,
| but one of the quotes mentions that those are already
| outlawed in the EU. So I'm not sure what the point is here,
| if it is to extend that ban to other countries the author
| should say so, and it's a point I'd certainly agree with.
|
| The author also claims to some extend that animal experiments
| can be replaced by other methods. In the general case this is
| simply wrong, you cannot replace all animal experiments.
| There are cases where you can gain similar information from
| other experiments without animals, and those should certainly
| be further developed. But this is really hard to discuss in
| general, the specifics matter here and not all animal
| experiments are equal. Animal experiments are also expensive
| and time consuming, if there are established and reliable
| alternatives they will find their use.
| wzdd wrote:
| > if it is to extend that ban to other countries the author
| should say so
|
| The article explicitly states this in no uncertain terms as
| the final sentence in the paragraph you are talking about:
| "I see no good reason that [animal testing for cosmetics]
| should not be banned totally and everywhere."
|
| I agree that the article is unfocused. However for the
| specific issues you are mentioning here, it is simple to
| search the article to see if the author has covered the
| relevant point you are making.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The article gives a lot of examples of cruel, useless or
| ineffectual animal testing but does not address useful or
| critical animal testing at all. They are simply implying all
| animal testing is in the former category.
|
| > The quality of discourse on HN goes up when we all
| meaningfully engage with the content. The goal shouldn't be
| to see who is fastest to post a dismissal of the headline.
|
| The same could be said about comments.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I mean company can always do better like giving animal better
| life before testing and not enthusiast after testing? But what
| happens now? Those animal are tortured, kept in worst condition
| and after testing is done you know what happens. Most of the
| testing is not harmful but the way companies handle the testing
| is worst to animal.
|
| If something is going to human probably means it is safe which
| should mean safe for animals to some extent imo. But to save 1%
| of research cost you know researcher don't care about animal
| life :/
| giantg2 wrote:
| Is it actually better to keep them alive after testing? I
| would think many studies could leave them with issues. Not to
| mention they would just be sitting in a cage somewhere.
| nathanyukai wrote:
| better animal life means higher research cost, drives drug
| price up, delays research speed, end up "costing" human
| lives, so which is more important ?
| jonlucc wrote:
| For what it's worth, I'm an in vivo pharma researcher, and
| the standard is to not euthanize unless we need tissue.
| Unfortunately, I'd guess that 99% of the time, we need to
| collect blood, spleens, livers, etc. and doing so _reduces_
| the number of animals needed in that study as well as the
| number of studies we run with animals. There are already a
| lot of pressures to keep animal numbers low, not least of
| which being that each of the cheapest mice is somewhere
| around $28 (you can see the prices yourself on their website,
| but I think my company gets some discount on those prices).
| Also, my time is valuable, and adding mice increases the
| amount of my time is spent working on that study.
|
| I'm also on the IACUC for my company, and I can assure you
| that we do care about animal life. We go to great lengths to
| ensure that research is being done in ways that maximize
| animal welfare to the extent that is possible. The FDA
| requires animal studies for safety and efficacy, and we can
| debate the morality of testing in mice, then NHPs before
| humans, but the system as it exists prioritizes de-risking
| first human doses as much as possible. Given that system, it
| is the job of the IACUC to oversee and approve every
| procedure done to an animal in the facility or in our
| company's name at other facilities. It's a big job that, at
| least at my place, is taken very seriously by researchers and
| up the chain of management.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Most of toxicological studies are cargo cult level science, so
| yeah it's hardly surprising it's "ineffective". The worst part is
| that it is codified in regulations and it's now a political
| problem to fix it, which makes it a lot harder.
| amelius wrote:
| Would you rather have your drugs tested on potatoes?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Adult humans who have given informed consent would probably be
| preferable to potatoes. In most cases, at least.
| amelius wrote:
| What if the human dies in 10% of experiments? What if it's
| 90%?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I'd be surprised if most people who advocate that drugs be
| tested on consenting adult humans would themselves give
| consent... especially to drugs which weren't already shown to
| be safe when tested on animals.
|
| It would be interesting if every citizen was required to act
| as a research subject every year, to more equitably
| distribute human testing.
|
| But of course most people would freak out if such a
| requirement was ever seriously floated, as they want drugs
| tested on others not on them, so it would never happen.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| I think there's an argument to be made that informed consent
| can't be given by someone who doesn't understand the
| underlying science, which is virtually everyone.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think you're going to have trouble finding adult humans
| that are willing to infect themselves with, e.g., vibrio
| cholera to test new vaccines (or, for that matter, to have
| their guts biopsied for immunological assays).
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| What if those people are people who can be exploited and
| coerced into "giving consent" because they are poor, and need
| the money?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Who cares, they're poor lolz, save animal lives. /s
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'm guessing the "/s" stands for "straw man" in this
| case.
| disco_nap wrote:
| As an academic neuroscientist doing animal experiments, my hope
| is that animal research will eventually be obsolete, but think we
| are 1-2 centuries away from the required technology to do
| mechanistic and ethical experiments in ourselves. The article
| points out some questionable experiments but left out what we
| have learned/developed using animal models. This includes sars-
| cov-2 vaccines [1], the molecular identity of neurotransmitters
| [2], and gene therapies for SMA1, which typically kills children
| before their fifth birthday [3]. Animal activist's hearts are in
| the right place and we try to treat them as ethically as we can.
| I personally known several patients with ALS who have died and
| feel incredible urgency as a scientist. Animal testing is
| currently highly effective and irreplaceable. I would urge people
| who's perspective on animal testing is shaped by interactions
| with their pets to volunteer with charities that aid families
| with seriously ill children [4].
|
| 1 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/08/america-...
|
| 2 https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/classicessay...
|
| 3 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1706198
|
| 4 https://www.rmhc.org/
| throw737858 wrote:
| In what way is it exploitative? Animals are not people, there is
| no way to exploit them!
| valgor wrote:
| Anything, living or not, can be exploited. Being a person or
| nonhuman animal does not exempt one.
| refurb wrote:
| Are we exploiting plants when we grow them for food?
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| Not sure if you're being facetious not, but that is an
| interesting question.
|
| I'd wager that it isn't exploitative however, because
| plants are not sentient, and (AFAWK), do not have
| thought/feelings or emotions.
| refurb wrote:
| Not facetious. Parent said "anything live can be
| exploited".
|
| I guess my next question would be - if a lion eats a
| gazelle. Is it exploiting the gazelle?
| metta2uall wrote:
| They have similar brains and experience basic feelings quite
| similarly to humans.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Some animals are people.
| dang wrote:
| I've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. If
| you continue to do that we will ban your main account as well,
| so please stop.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| trainsplanes wrote:
| That's a viewpoint that's up there with "babies can't feel
| pain", which was also common until the end of the last
| century[1], but has completely vanished since then.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_babies
| spodek wrote:
| Do they circumcise boys without anesthetic under similar
| pretense?
| bronzeage wrote:
| The pretense isn't not feeling pain, it's not wanting to
| remember it.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Yes
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Much as I don't like the ethics of animal testing, I don't see
| the cruelty inflicted as any worse than factory farming, and even
| quite a number of "pastured" or "free range" husbandry
| operations.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| Ethical treatment of animals is a high priority in sponsored
| research:
|
| https://olaw.nih.gov/resources/tutorial/iacuc.htm
| valgor wrote:
| A lot of that stuff is known as humane washing in the animal
| rights world. Exploiting and inflicting suffering onto animals
| is almost always unethical. The only way to treat animals
| ethically is to not test on them at all.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Well, fuzzy cute ones anyway. Surely we can test on E-Coli?
| How about slime molds? Maybe the occasional insect? What
| about shrews - they are nasty and mean.
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| Would you still hold that opinion if you contracted an
| illness that can be cured as a result of animal testing?
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'm not OP but speaking for myself, yes.
| anonlinear wrote:
| The claim that "probability of meaningful transfer between
| animals to humans can be astoundingly low, far below 50%"
| requires more scrutiny. Let's say drug b is being tested for
| treating condition A. Assume that it's found effective in rats.
| It seems the claim then is that probability of it also being
| effective in humans is less than 50% and sometimes 0%. But this
| in itself isn't a good enough argument against animal testing. If
| one can show that there were drugs c, d, e.. etc that were found
| ineffective in rats and as a result did not have to be considered
| for human trials. If there is a good enough probability that not
| effective in rats A implies not effective in humans, it will
| still lead to huge benefits to science and clinical trials.
| zbjornson wrote:
| We have no idea how many drugs would work in humans but are not
| being considered because they don't work in animals. If we
| assume it's about the same as the number that work in animals
| but don't work in humans, we're missing out on a huge number of
| therapies.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Unless someone can get out a replacement at least equally
| effective (and not too expensive), I think we have to rely on
| animal testing for some of the products.
| faebi wrote:
| Still a better usage of an animal life than eating them. I prefer
| to advance humanity, even minimally. If you put these numbers in
| comparison to animal farming, their suffering and their
| murdering, then it's absolutely worth it. For me it boils down to
| a simple set of questions. Would you murder 10'000 chickens to
| save your grandma's life? How about 10'000 cows? How about 10'000
| rats? How about 10'000 rabbits? How about 10'000 monkeys? How
| about saving yourself? Your wife? Your child? Your children? Tens
| of humans? Hundreds of humans? Thousands of humans? I am willing
| to sacrifice an insane amount of animal lives in order to save
| anyone human. We could talk about reducing it, but I would agree
| only once we replaced the meat industry.
| kj98uo wrote:
| Well, how many other humans would you murder to save your
| grandma's life? Or your wife, your children, someone you love?
|
| What about terminally ill humans who have < 1 year to live
| (assuming the particular testing results won't get skewed by
| their particular ailments)? How about prisoners sentenced for
| heinous crimes?
|
| What about humans who are "not productive"? People who have
| been sentenced to more than 10 years?
|
| You might draw the line at other species. Someone else might
| draw it differently to not do experiments on intelligent
| species like whales, dolphins and primates (who _are_ used in
| lab experiments too). Or someone might include the categories I
| mentioned above in the list of test subjects.
|
| The big second question is the effectiveness of transferring
| the results of tests from animals to humans. Coldly speaking,
| while there are experiments that yield useful results on
| animals, there are also extremely pointless experiments that
| are done for the sake of doing.
|
| I won't go on and on but to your statement about " I am willing
| to sacrifice an insane amount of animal lives in order to save
| anyone human", would you do it to save Hitler (who is a proxy
| for someone who, maybe, you should think twice about saving)?
|
| I agree with you about replacing the meat industry but we can
| do multiple things as a species at the same time. We _can_ work
| on replacing the meat industry, working on alternate ways of
| testing drugs, on understanding animal communications and
| language (and we keep finding new indicators of intelligence)
| and on reducing our footprint as we get technologically and
| hopefully culturally more sophisticated.
| bambax wrote:
| > _I am willing to sacrifice an insane amount of animal lives
| in order to save anyone human._
|
| That is insane, and psychopathic. But it is shared by many
| (most?) humans. The result will be that there will be no
| animals left, and soon afterwards, no humans left either.
|
| Another question is, how many humans are you willing to
| sacrifice to save your wife? Your child? Is your child worth a
| specific number of human lives, in your eyes? And what is that
| number?
| cogman10 wrote:
| > The result will be that there will be no animals left, and
| soon afterwards, no humans left either.
|
| This is illogical.
|
| Humans have been eating animals since the dawn of
| civilization. We've been using animals in experiments for
| centuries.
|
| There are still animals to eat and use in experiments. Why?
| because animals reproduce. There aren't a fixed number of
| animals.
|
| We only lose species when we kill faster then they reproduce.
| For experiments and food, that's an impossibility. We bread
| to accommodate demand.
| Glavnokoman wrote:
| OK. We'll be only left with food animals and even those
| will be replaced soon with some salad cause the popular
| opinion it that this is more effective. I believe this is
| going to be a sad place and we are getting there quite fast
| now, cause for centuries the population was much smaller.
| And yet humans managed to depopulate vast areas.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| > Another question is, how many humans are you willing to
| sacrifice to save your wife? Your child? Is your child worth
| a specific number of human lives, in your eyes? And what is
| that number?
|
| As much as it is necessary.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > That is insane, and psychopathic. But it is shared by many
| (most?) humans.
|
| Is that not a contradiction? When you find yourself thinking
| that the majority of humans are the abnormal ones...
| endisneigh wrote:
| I don't understand, you're willing to kill tens of thousands of
| animals to save a single person, but are against meat
| consumption- an activity that inherently provides nutrients to
| sustain a human life?
| mjburgess wrote:
| You're not considering opportunity cost.
|
| Meat-as-food can be substituted with non-meat products which
| net lowers suffering.
|
| Since "animal" basically means "non-human" in the case of
| "animal testing", by definition, there is no substitute which
| net lowers suffering.
|
| Humans suffer _as least as much_ as non-human animals.
| eigenket wrote:
| Also the way trophic levels work humans eating plants is
| way more efficient as a system than humans eating animals
| that eat the plants.
|
| Humans eating animals eating plants is an ecological
| disaster.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Having too many humans on this earth is more of an
| ecological disaster than eating animals is. Plenty of
| animals eat only or mostly meat, and they aren't causing
| any ecological disasters.
| eigenket wrote:
| As a human you have a choice about how much of an
| ecological disaster you, personally, are going to be.
| That is the privilege and responsibility of sapience.
|
| Its worth emphasising that many animals and their eating
| habits are also ecological disasters. Cats, cane toads
| and rabbits come to mind.
| _Microft wrote:
| Add another level of indirection to make it even worse,
| that is by eating predators that eat other animals. Tuna
| fish are an example for this.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Here is a simple video I recommend that anyone who is
| interested in the effects if animal agriculture on land
| should watch:
|
| https://youtu.be/QnrtRaM28cY
|
| It's a really great intro to some of the common
| misconceptions
| technocratius wrote:
| It does so, but via an inefficient route ( _plant - > animal
| -> human_ instead of _plant - > human_), which causes huge
| sustainability and animal ethical issues.
| chr1 wrote:
| You can't eat the plants that are eaten by the animals. Not
| all pastures can be converted to fields, and converting the
| rest will actually reduce biodiversity and cause more
| sustainability issues.
| _Microft wrote:
| Only a fraction (and sometimes even _tiny fraction_ ) of
| the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein
| and calories when replacing animals sources with plant
| sources. That means that you actually will not need to
| convert all these pastures to fields because they are
| just not needed anymore.
|
| Here are charts that compare land use of different foods
| normalized per calorie / grams of protein:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-protein-poore
|
| If you want to know more, type "land use" into the search
| box of https://ourworldindata.org and pick an article of
| your choice.
| stickfigure wrote:
| This is incredibly misleading.
|
| I live in a community with ranches and farms. The
| ranchland looks like nature. Other than cows here and
| there, it's wildland. Coyotes, mountain lions, hawks, and
| all sorts of wildlife abound.
|
| The farms are manicured flat with row crops, irrigation,
| fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is vastly more
| destructive to the natural environment.
|
| "Land use" measured in abstract square feet is not a
| useful concept.
| _Microft wrote:
| > The farms are manicured flat with row crops,
| irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Farming is
| vastly more destructive to the natural environment.
|
| You might be surprised but 40% of all (cereal) crops are
| produced _to feed animals_. That would almost completely
| go away except a bit to compensate for the loss of meat.
|
| See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cereal-
| distribution-to-us...
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| So we'd be left with the other 60% and then we'd have to
| increase the production to make up for the decrase in
| production of meat. That's a very slim margin of
| improvement.
|
| The other thing we could do of course is to avoid feeding
| animals with crops like soy and corn, and instead let
| them browse freely and eat the wild grasses and shrubs
| that they would eat normally, if humans didn't feed them
| more "efficient" feeds.
|
| Obviously that would mean a significantly reduced number
| of farmed animals, but that's a feature, not a bug.
| Perhaps we can all agree on this: the true plague is
| industrial meat production.
| radec wrote:
| I would argue this is incredibly misleading.
|
| What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture
| animals? You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat
| and dairy demand with pasture raised animals. So
| realistically we are talking about factory farmed
| animals. If we are talking about factory farmed animals
| then it goes back to the needing these nature destructing
| farms you are talking about just to feed animals that
| then feed humans, this is not an efficient system.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > What percentage of meat or dairy comes from pasture
| animals?
|
| Meat and dairy are separate considerations. Even in
| industrial farming, meat animals and dairy animals are
| raised separately and often belong to different breeds.
| They are certainly treated differently.
|
| So for example, where I'm staying, about 80% of the dairy
| products are made with the milk of sheep and goats in
| small farms where the animals range freely, in the
| summer, and eat stored wild grassses as hay in the
| winter. On the other hand, most of the meat consumed is
| chicken and pork and of those animals, at least the
| chicken are kept in large battery operations. I don't
| know about pig farming. Also, where I stay there are very
| few cows, most of them raised for dairy, and the country
| has one of the smallest, if not the smallest number of
| cattle in Europe. It's in South Europe, but I don't want
| to say exactly where.
|
| Anyway when you ask questions like the one above, please
| consider that the conditions you know from the Americas
| are not the same in all of the rest of the world, and
| that most of the rest of the world simply does not eat as
| much meat, of all kids, as Americans (and by "Americans"
| I mean people in the US, Argentina and Brazil).
|
| > You can't fulfill a country like the US's meat and
| dairy demand with pasture raised animals.
|
| "Demand", maybe not. But "need"? It seems to me that this
| can be done perfectly well simply because the amount
| currently consumed is extravagant. People in the US eat
| way too much meat, per capita, compared to almost
| everyone else in the world, including most industrialised
| nations. My selection below:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-
| person?ta...
|
| Nobody _needs_ to eat that much meat. If there is
| "demand" for it, that is the matter that should be
| addressed. Why do people want to eat so much meat? There
| is something incredibly wrong in the data above, when you
| look at how the US, Argentina, Spain and Brazil eat,
| compared to the other industrialised countries in the
| chart.
| [deleted]
| rdedev wrote:
| > I live in a community with ranches and farms. The
| ranchland looks like nature.
|
| That depends on the land. Cattle and rainforests don't go
| together well
| oscardssmith wrote:
| The problem is that for every acre of ranch, you need 5
| to 10 acres of farm to feed the ranch.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Clearing forest for ranches has been (and continues to
| be) among the most ecologically destructive activities in
| the history of the world, especially in tropical places
| where it directly replaces rainforest.
|
| In the USA (excluding Alaska), something like 1/4 of all
| land area is directly used for animal grazing land, and
| something like 2/3 agriculture production goes to
| producing animal feed. These take huge amounts of water,
| fuel, and other resources. Beef production in particular
| is one of the leading causes of global climate change via
| CO2 emissions.
|
| I love steaks and hamburgers as much as the next person,
| but we shouldn't pretend it has a low environmental cost.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| >> Only a fraction (and sometimes even tiny fraction) of
| the land is needed to supply the same amount of protein
| and calories when replacing animals sources with plant
| sources.
|
| That's a quick dodge, but still, a dodge of the OP's
| point: you can't eat all the plants that animals eat. For
| example, I eat primarily sheep and goat and their dairy
| products. The goats eat shrubs and the sheep browse
| inedible grasses. In fact, funny story, but I know a girl
| (not me) who tried to eat the grass the sheep were eating
| and her mouth filled with sores. I mean duh.
|
| Anyway ruminants have four stomachs just so they can
| digest plant matter that is impossible for omnivores to
| digest. Industrially farmed animals are fed soy and corn,
| that _can_ be digested by humans, but those are not those
| animals ' natural feed. Left to their own devices,
| outside of factory farming, browsing freely, farm animals
| would exclusively eat plants that are inedible to humans
| and so they would convert plant matter to food way, way
| more efficiently than any human stomach ever could.
|
| Four stomachs and rumination is the most efficient plant-
| to-meat production mechanism known to anyone.
| darksaints wrote:
| That's a facile understanding of efficiency. For example,
| many animals that we eat are dramatically more efficient at
| absorbing or consuming certain nutrients from plants than
| we are: Iron, Calcium, Zinc, B12, EPA, DHA.
|
| If adding a step in a supply chain always introduced more
| net inefficiency, we would never own things like cars or
| televisions. The complexity you introduce by shortening the
| supply chain makes a whole host of things completely
| infeasible.
|
| There are plenty of food sources that could work well for
| humans without an animal in the intermediate supply chain.
| But humans aren't about to start consuming their bodyweight
| in switchgrass or zooplankton just to get a handful of
| nutrients that only animal sources can easily provide us.
| sweetheart wrote:
| You can live a completely healthy and nutritionally
| complete plant based life style though, and without
| consuming your body weight in anything. So if we don't
| _need_ the animals to die for us, killing them is
| immoral. It's immoral because it's unnecessary.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| How is that immoral if I want tasty meat?
| sweetheart wrote:
| Because I believe it's immoral to cause needless
| suffering. Effectively all meat is the result of animals
| being tortured and killed for our ephemeral satisfaction
| while eating a meal, and not because we need it to
| survive. Causing that level of suffering because it taste
| good is wrong imho.
|
| I link to a couple videos in this comment section that
| show what I mean. You should watch them and decide if you
| think a sentient creature should experience those things
| because you like how it tastes.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| > How is that immoral if I want tasty meat?
|
| > Because I believe it's immoral to cause needless
| suffering.
|
| It's immoral for the OP to eat meat because you believe
| it's immmoral?
|
| Also, if you think that the need for tasty food, or any
| food, is trivial, you haven't been around animals much.
| The ones I know, and I don't mean only the humans, go
| absolutely batshit insane at the thought of food. A few
| days ago one of the cats over here gave birth and I
| realised what is that keening noise adult cats make when
| they beg for food: it's the same noise the kittens make
| when they want their mother to breastfeed them. The dogs,
| a solemn matriarch and her huge son start jumping up and
| down and cry like little puppies when it's time for food.
| The cats mob us everytime we step out of the house, just
| on the off chance we'll drop some tasty morsel. The goats
| used to not come near me and my friend, but then we fed
| them a couple of times and now they gallop to us when we
| enter their enclosure. The chickens catapult themselves
| from their perches and run like little raptor dragsters
| when we take them scraps to recycle (there's nothing I've
| seen that looks more awkward than a chicken running). A
| small, grey-speckled hen that I fed once or twice now
| runs to me whenever it sees me because it has forever now
| associated me with food.
|
| Animals are crazy for food. And so are humans, because
| we, too, are animals and there's no use trying to shame
| people with facile moralising, humans have bodies that go
| absolutely nuts for tasty food and that food includes the
| meat of other animals.
| darksaints wrote:
| "Completely healthy and nutritionally complete"
| debatable. Vegan diets are discouraged significantly for
| pregnant women and children because of how damaging
| calcium, zinc, and B12 deficiencies can be during that
| time. And even if you aren't a pregnant woman or child,
| you still have to deal with the various deficiencies that
| come with that, typically by eating very targeted foods
| or highly processed and manufactured supplements that
| also have problems, such as availability, allergies,
| cost, or simple difficulty incorporating into diets (e.g.
| you can't exactly use algae oil like you would olive oil,
| you can't sprinkle flaxseed on everything).
|
| And speak for yourself with regards to morality. Humans
| evolved as omnivorous creatures, just like millions of
| other species. I feel no moral obligation to eliminate
| animal food sources from my diet. The opposite, in fact.
| Because a vegan diet is effectively an abandonment of
| culture. I'm not going to stop making Pasteis De Nata or
| Caldo Verde simply because _you_ feel bad for the
| animals. Letting my culture wither away like that is a
| far bigger sin in my eyes than eating animal-derived
| foods, _which we evolved to do_.
| sweetheart wrote:
| The American Dietetic Association explicitly says a vegan
| diet is safe and appropriate for all stages of life,
| including pregnancy specifically, so you're just wrong
| about that.
|
| Also, cultures change and evolve. It was also a part of
| past cultures to do all manner of inhumane things, and we
| are all better off for deciding to stop. Simply saying
| something is a part of culture doesn't give it a free
| pass.
|
| Watch what happens to animals in slaughterhouses, and
| you'll see why I don't think preparing Caldo Verde is
| really super important in comparison:
| https://youtu.be/7Y_FHhByhBk
| darksaints wrote:
| No, they don't say that they it _is_ safe and appropriate
| for all stages of life. They say it _can_ be. That comes
| with a long list of caveats related to common nutritional
| deficiencies...some of which are far more serious for
| some people (such as pregnant women and children) than
| others. Addressing those deficiencies is hard to do for
| all people for a multitude of reasons, some of which have
| already been listed.
|
| Again, speak for yourself about morality. I feel no moral
| obligation to not be an omnivore. I _do_ feel a moral
| obligation to pass down my culture to my children.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Any diet can be unhealthy. Regardless of whether or not
| you're vegan you need to ensure you're getting your
| vitamins and minerals.
|
| And it's not very difficult to get those on a vegan diet.
| There are LOADS of resources to refer to. For example:
| https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/the-vegan-diet/
| darksaints wrote:
| Yes, actually, it is.
|
| Omnivorous diets can be unhealthy, but not due to
| nutrition deficiency. The problems with those diets are
| all solved with moderation. Vegan diets have to deal with
| nutrient deficiency. Filling gaps in nutrition deficiency
| takes targeted food intake or supplements. Those aren't
| always available or cheap. People have food allergies
| that can eliminate them as candidates. They are hard to
| incorporate into existing diets and available foods.
|
| I find it a lot more morally objectionable that your
| privileged culture-less self would pretend to know what's
| better for the rest of humanity than they are capable of
| determining for themselves. There's a reason people who
| care about food refer to vegans with names like the
| "Hezbollah of vegetarians". You're not diet advocates,
| you're religious extremists.
| sweetheart wrote:
| A diet is not implicitly nutrient complete simply because
| it contains animal products. You can still easily miss
| out on nutrients. All diets require ensuring that you
| have access to important vitamins and minerals. Like I
| said and showed, you can get all these things without
| eating animals products.
|
| You're saying that I have no culture and that I'm a
| religious extremist (which seems contradictory a bit) for
| saying that you can get all the vitamins and minerals you
| need from non-animal sources. That seems a little
| disingenuous and ad-hominem, no?
| darksaints wrote:
| No, you're a religious extremist because you're telling
| other cultures that they need to change in order to fit
| your belief system.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Calling someone a religious extremist because they think
| an act is immoral seems to me to be watering down the
| phrase "extremist" to a useless degree.
|
| Good luck with life, friend, as you're bound to encounter
| many other "religious extremists" if your POV is so
| easily challenged.
| darksaints wrote:
| I don't give a shit that you think it is immoral. I give
| a shit that you are labeling cultures as immoral and that
| they need to change to fit your belief system. And yes, I
| see that as no different than Fred Phelps' ideas.
|
| And yes, there are far too many religious extremists in
| modern society. Maybe stop joining them.
| _Microft wrote:
| Here is a useful link in case anyone wants to read up on
| this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfe
| r...
| indymike wrote:
| Finding high protein / low carbohydrate plants to eat is
| hard. Many meatless meat products are hyper-processed. Last
| I looked a huge part of the population is diabetic. They
| can't eat grains, can eat small servings of nuts, fruits
| are mostly out, and greens alone aren't sustainable
| nutrition.
| boston_clone wrote:
| could you better define hyper-processed? seitan, tofu,
| and tempeh are very simple in my opinion. I don't imagine
| pea or soy protein being wildly difficult to create, but
| am unfamiliar with those processes.
| irtigor wrote:
| My charitable interpretation is that when someone says
| "eat plants", they don't really mean "only eat plants"
| but "don't eat animal products, eat plants + enriched
| foods + injections/pills/tablet", because we are
| omnivores and we need some nutrients that are incredibly
| hard to get naturally from plants, like vitamin b12, so
| in order to stay healthy, without eating animal products,
| there's only the enriched foods and/or
| pills/injections/tablets route.
| cheese_goddess wrote:
| So, "don't eat meat, eat supplements"? How does that make
| any sense?
| adrianN wrote:
| I think the question is not whether people are willing to kill
| large numbers of animals to save a couple of humans, but
| whether we might have alternative methods that also save the
| humans, but with fewer dead animals. I mean, if we had no
| alternatives to _eating_ animals, there would be far fewer
| vegans.
| valgor wrote:
| "I prefer to advance humanity, even minimally." - Part of
| advancing humanity is expanding our moral circle. Pointlessly
| hurting animals is not an "advanced" society.
| lettergram wrote:
| I agree with you on medical research. Particularly how many
| animals you'd be willing to sacrifice.
|
| That being said and with respect, I think you are
| misrepresenting and lack some understanding... some
| alternatives to consider.
|
| 1) humans are built to consume meat. Yes we can manage
| alternatives, but it's not really all that healthy (I know some
| people claim with a lot of work and expense it's possible to be
| healthy...)
|
| 2) farms producing beans and grain require a large amount of
| pesticides, arguably far worse for the environment and humans.
| Pesticides have been the #1 killer of living creatures
|
| 3) animals can eat a diverse set of food, so cattle farms, etc
| have more biodiversity than row crop
|
| 4) many cattle, elk, etc farms, are particularly humane. I
| recently purchased a grass fed cattle farm and everything I
| need is onsite. Cattle just roam, drink from the springs, get
| medicine, have calf's, etc they seem very very happy.
|
| 5) if you have a lot of produce in a field, it's essential to
| kill the wildlife trying to eat the field. I don't think most
| people understand this, but if you have fields of corn you need
| to ensure bugs, birds and deer aren't overly in abundance
|
| I would argue farms mass producing meat could be reduced or
| need to be changed. But generally speaking, I'd argue leaving
| chickens out and collecting eggs in the yard isn't all that
| bad. Or letting cattle roam until right before butchering.
| Retric wrote:
| 1) It's straightforward to be a healthy vegetarian, on net
| even in cultures that are largely vegetarian meat eaters are
| generally less healthy.
|
| Personally a really enjoy meat, but at one point I became
| vegetarian for a few months simply based on what I was
| eating. I accidentally ended up with a vegetarian diet with
| sufficient protein etc, which demonstrates how little effort
| it actually takes.
| miles wrote:
| > humans are built to consume meat. Yes we can manage
| alternatives, but it's not really all that healthy
|
| What Science Says About The Health Benefits Of Plant-Based
| Diets https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/what-science-
| says-ab...
|
| "A number of studies have shown that a diet low in meat is
| linked to longer lifespans. But the matter is far from
| settled, as some studies haven't found a significant
| difference in life expectancy between meat eaters and
| vegetarians.
|
| "But there is growing evidence that plant-based diets are
| associated with benefits like lower blood pressure,
| cholesterol, blood sugar and reduced body weight. These
| improved health measures often translate to less risk of
| heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other diseases. Eating
| more whole, plant-based foods could help lower the risk of
| some health conditions, and might even help people live
| longer. But researchers also suspect that vegetarians are
| more health-conscious overall -- so, they're likely to be
| drinking and smoking less and moving their bodies more than
| the general population -- which complicates some study
| results.
|
| "Still, emerging research points to a potentially helpful
| role of plant-based diets in managing some chronic health
| conditions. For instance, some studies suggest that plant-
| based diets -- veganism in particular -- may help control
| rheumatoid arthritis."
| tlarkworthy wrote:
| Neuroscience is built on animal testing. I can't see a realistic
| was of learning about the brain without animal experiments,
| unfortunately.
|
| https://speakingofresearch.com/2015/12/10/importance-of-anim...
|
| Do we want to give up learning the brain? (And other organs but
| brain is extra special)
| metta2uall wrote:
| If animal experiments were banned in neuroscience I think it's
| likely that would force the development of new technologies for
| studying the brain that would actually accelerate progress in
| neuroscience - "necessity is the mother of invention".
| ghodith wrote:
| That seems unlikely. Look into techniques like ICSS which
| have no non-invasive substitutions. Banning animal
| experiments in neuroscience would just eliminate large swaths
| of research pursuits, leaving only observational techniques
| like FMRI, which would slow down the science greatly.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > If animal experiments were banned in neuroscience... would
| actually accelerate progress.
|
| And if planes would be banned humans will develop wings, or
| maybe not.
|
| The other option, advances in neuroscience stagnating for
| decades until we would be able to develop this miraculous
| Kosher substitutes, is also possible. Young researchers
| quitting the field in mass upset by the new barriers would be
| also a probable outcome.
|
| I want ALS and Alzheimer solved as fast as possible and the
| new solutions supported by proven solid facts so, thanks, but
| not thanks.
| rob_c wrote:
| Given the small sample sizes it wouldn't surprise me if this was
| contributing to the reproducibility problems in biology.
| bambax wrote:
| Specism is based on several flawed assumptions.
|
| We decide humans are superior to other animals because we are
| humans, and us>them.
|
| We also decide that because we are superior, we have all rights
| to do anything to members of "inferior" groups.
|
| But:
|
| - Superiority is at least debatable and strongly depends on the
| criteria used fot comparison;
|
| - There is absolutely no discernable logical link between being
| "superior" and having a right to do anything to the "inferior"
| beings. (For example, a human adult is "superior" to a human
| infant; but it doesn't give them the right to torture it.)
|
| We torture animals because we can, and because we don't think
| about it. But it won't last, because the more we think about it,
| the less acceptable it becomes.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > _We decide humans are superior to other animals because we
| are humans, and us >them._
|
| That's painting things with a pretty broad brush, not everyone
| thinks this way. From conversing with people about the issue,
| those that do, do so mostly because they haven't actually put
| any conscious thought into it, even a few minutes is enough to
| knock down that straw man.
|
| Personally, I think humans are superior to other animals
| because we are more capable of feeling and thinking than they
| are. A bacterium or plant cannot feel joy, it cannot
| communicate pride in it's accomplishments to other members of
| its species, it cannot feel pain, it cannot suffer, it cannot
| develop into an adult which can do those things, it just is. A
| pig, dog, or dolphin can do many of those things, a chicken or
| fish can a little but much less so.
|
| Empirically, to me, this capability criteria sets a 'value'
| roughly proportional to their number of cortical neurons on a
| logarithmic scale.
| sweetheart wrote:
| So, a thought experiment:
|
| If an alien species came to Earth, and they were FAR more
| emotionally sensitive than we were, and could suffer MUCH
| more as a result, would that make your suffering when they
| start to enslave you any less meaningful? Would you
| understand, and allow yourself to be enslaved, or would you
| believe that it was still wrong for them to do that to you,
| even if they had the capacity to suffer more?
|
| I personally don't think so. Can I feel a wider range of
| emotions than a chicken? Probably. Can I be upset or elated
| by more things than a chicken? Probably. Can the chicken
| still suffer? Yes. Can it be anxious? Can it be terrified?
| Can it be in pain? Can it be lonely? All yes.
|
| Whether or not it feels any if those things more or less than
| anything else is irrelevant when it doesn't need to happen at
| all.
| amelius wrote:
| > If an alien species came to Earth, and they were FAR more
| emotionally sensitive than we were, and could suffer MUCH
| more as a result, would that make your suffering when they
| start to enslave you any less meaningful?
|
| But perhaps they would do so in a way that is appropriate
| for our level of consciousness. Perhaps we'd not even be
| aware that someone was experimenting on us, just like
| animals have no idea that this is what is happening to
| them. Etc.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Oh boy, let me tell you, animals absolutely know what we
| are doing to them. They suffer immensely. Check this out,
| it offers just a glimpse into what that suffering
| includes: https://youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko
| amelius wrote:
| The video seems blocked. Is this about monkeys? I was
| talking about mice (since it is the animal which is used
| by far the most in experiments).
| sweetheart wrote:
| No it's about factory farming. If you were specifically
| talking about animal testing, the video I linked is
| irrelevant. I was talking about what we do to animals in
| general, not just testing.
|
| But to that point, the first chapter of Peter Singer's
| "Animal Liberation" covers what animal testing is, and
| how horrific it can be, if you'd like to learn more about
| just how aware these animals are about what we are doing
| to them.
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