[HN Gopher] Air France announces end to research monkey transport
___________________________________________________________________
Air France announces end to research monkey transport
Author : pseudolus
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-07-10 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.the-scientist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.the-scientist.com)
| htk wrote:
| Did Air France decide this based on animal rights lobby or for
| economic reasons?
| lpolovets wrote:
| A relevant aside: there are some companies and startups that aim
| to replace a good chunk of animal testing with in silico testing.
| Here's one that my fund is an investor in called VeriSIM:
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/venturebeat.com/2019/08/14/veri...
| lofatdairy wrote:
| VeriSIM seems to be targeting drug discovery, rather than drug
| testing. I don't think scientists regularly use animal models
| for drug discovery, if at all, because it's really not that
| efficient (animals aside, you'd have to synthesize a dose of
| everything you want to try, which is non-trivial). With drug
| discovery, what you need to do is just shotgun a bunch of
| molecules and test that they're even bioactive, let alone
| therapeutic (you don't even need to find all the bioactive
| molecules, just yield enough for further testing).
|
| For actual testing, there are also microfluidic systems and
| organ-on-a-chip systems that are a field of active research. I
| think most researchers are more confident in these systems than
| in-silico (even though organ-on-a-chip systems are a field of
| active research and have their own shortcomings) because
| biological systems are active on several different
| physiological scales, and simulating all of these is rather
| rough around the edges to say the least. C elegans and fruit
| fly simulations are still the target of research, and I think
| fruit flies aren't simulated accurately from the cellular level
| (though if anyone knows better let me know). Simulating
| anything more complicated is likely to require either enormous
| computational resources as well as actual discovery, since
| you'd need to first characterize everything before you can
| simulate it.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| And also some companies (not really a startup but a huge
| established company) working to replace human transplants with
| organs "donated" from pigs, on an industrial scale.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If in silico was an alternatives, everybody would have switched
| already. And everybody will switch as soon as it becomes one.
| Everybody wants in silico models.
|
| If you are using that to argue that alternatives exist, you are
| unknowingly lying. They will probably exist some day, and
| everybody will use them without you having to ask.
| lpolovets wrote:
| Not sure why you're accusing me of lying, I just said that
| there are companies working on this.
|
| I think the key thing here is that while eliminating 100% of
| animal testing is an ambitious -- and perhaps ultimately
| unreachable -- goal, data and computer simulations can make
| testing more effective.
|
| If you use data to prioritize animal tests, or in some cases
| conclusively predict if some test won't any have value (e.g.
| the dosing is toxically high or ineffectively low) then that
| is a win. Both in terms of reducing animal tests, and in
| terms of speeding up drug development and making it less
| costly.
| yread wrote:
| Will they also forbid their employees using latest cancer drugs?
| Without animal models they will be less safe.
| bsdz wrote:
| Actually it's probably the opposite. Using animal models can
| lead to drugs that are not safe or effective for humans and it
| can lead to drugs being rejected that might have been safe or
| effective. 92% of drugs which prove promising in animal trials
| fail in human clinical trials.
| david38 wrote:
| You're right. We should jump to human trials directly.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| It's what have been done recently, even enforced by
| governments in some cases.
| rootsudo wrote:
| In a way, why not - I agree animal testing is good, vs
| direct to human testing but I'm also surprised there isn't
| human testing arbitrage where medicine is created in a
| geographic region that allows it vs more in the west.
|
| I can see how quickly it ran run off to prison labor and
| more human testing atrocities circa 1940's world.
| bsdz wrote:
| I didn't say that. There are a many alternatives to animal
| models before "jumping to human trials directly", e.g.
| testing on human cells & tissues, human-based computer
| models (like those used for cardiotoxicity) and more
| recently organ-on-a-chip technologies.
| tsol wrote:
| None of those are capable of testing for side effects and
| negative outcomes as well as testing the drug on a real
| creature. At the end of the day those all have only
| limited use. If you want to be able to give the drug to
| people without any surprises, you have to test on a full
| organism. Organoids just don't have the complexity of
| living creatures
| bsdz wrote:
| > as well as testing the drug on a real creature
|
| Please re-read my original comment. In particular, the
| 92% bit
|
| > you have to test on a full organism
|
| Are you suggesting testing on humans? Clearly that's the
| only way to clear those "surprises".
|
| > Organoids just don't have the complexity of living
| creatures
|
| I think the gist of my argument against animal testing is
| that animal models aren't very good at predicting
| outcomes in humans.
|
| Furthermore, there have been some disasterous human
| clinical trials where drugs have passed all the animal
| model testing but left many of the human participants
| dead.
| tsol wrote:
| >Please re-read my original comment. In particular, the
| 92% bit
|
| Better than nothing.
|
| >Are you suggesting testing on humans? Clearly that's the
| only way to clear those "surprises".
|
| No, I'm just saying a full body with multiple organ
| systems, hormones, and everything else has many more
| variables than a cell in a petri dish. So a living
| organism of some sort is a big plus. It's true that if
| you tested on humans you'd have even fewer unknowns, but
| that's obviously unethical.
|
| >I think the gist of my argument against animal testing
| is that animal models aren't very good at predicting
| outcomes in humans
|
| They aren't perfect. They're just the best thing we have
| right now
| Thorrez wrote:
| Why aren't the researchers already using those? If those
| work better than monkeys I would think researchers would
| already be using them.
| bsdz wrote:
| Many are using these alternatives. For example, a
| computer model for cardiotoxicity has higher accuracy
| than animal models.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28955244/
|
| It's an educational process. A lot of folk just go along
| with the status quo and feel there's no alternative to
| animal research.
| oaktrout wrote:
| I briefly scanned the paper. This is not a computer model
| for cardiotoxicity as a whole, it's a model for one very
| specific type of cardiotoxicity. These things may have
| their uses, bit they are a long way from replacing animal
| testing.
|
| This model checks for one side effect in one organ
| system. Animal testing can check all organ systems for
| thousands of side effects.
| jonlucc wrote:
| Short answer: we are.
|
| Clinical trials are expensive. NHP (Non-human primate)
| studies are also expensive, but orders of magnitude less
| expensive than human studies. We pharma researchers don't
| want to put stuff into humans if there's risk of failure,
| especially if that failure is a tox finding and not just
| low efficacy.
|
| So we de-risk as much as possible. We go so far as to
| prove everything on human cells, then buy mice with
| humanized portions of their genome to test the target in
| mice that are more like humans in the way we need them to
| be. Then we test in NHPs, because it's very unsafe to
| assume that a drug that works and is safe in cells is
| safe in primates.
|
| In a current project, I'm dealing with the fallout of
| this exact problem. We did a ton of testing, modeling, in
| vitro work, rodent work, then we dosed in monkeys and it
| caused a massive tox signal. We have to go back to the
| drawing board and explain what happened to the monkeys,
| how we're going to address it, maybe kill the whole
| program, and find a new path forward. It passed all of
| the rigorous pre-monkey testing. And I'm at a major
| pharma company, where we have pretty specialized teams
| doing most of this work.
|
| edited to correct an error
| rocketbop wrote:
| > We have to go back to the drawing board and explain
| what happened to the monkeys
|
| They might rather not know.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| C19 vaccine development caused the extreme shortage according to
| the article. Always a little terrifying that we dont have any
| good alternatives that animal testing. I do beleive that animals
| used for medical testing ( at least in the west ) are treated a
| whole lot better than the poor unfortunates we breed for food.
| And I dont see anyone declaring the end of transporting those.
| pvaldes wrote:
| So the message is: If you have a relative suffering cancer...
| don't use Air France?
| julienfr112 wrote:
| Or maybe use Air France, as it was the last major airline to do
| so, as stated in the very first line of the article. So it did
| so for longer than Delta, LuftHansa, British, ANA, ...
| goldenkey wrote:
| I think the message is:
|
| "Your suffering isn't worth more than mine." - Monkey or Rat in
| a lab somewhere Tzu
|
| Don't quote me though, I'm just a brainlet.
| boopmaster wrote:
| Exactly correct. Nobody can have any differing ideals of
| morality than that. Those ideals are the |abs| correct values
| and exact center of the universe, and anything divergent must
| be castigated. There is no gray area. There is no pragmatism.
| siva7 wrote:
| Less biomedical research on monkeys means putting more humans at
| danger. An animal shouldn't be put over a human!
| joecool1029 wrote:
| This should help slow the spread of monkeypox.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| There are a bunch of people here who are passionate about not
| having animal testing.
|
| There is a different thread on HN with people who are passionate
| about not releasing chemicals until they are proven safe for
| human consumption.
|
| Can we get Dang to merge these two threads and have a mosh-pit of
| passion and see what comes out?
| phphphphp wrote:
| I'm not sure of your point. The answer is pretty simple: test
| on humans. If we aren't willing to test on ourselves, why
| should we be willing to test on other beings? There's no
| contradiction.
| vczf wrote:
| Which humans?
|
| Is it more ethical to test treatments with potential long-
| term health complications on research monkeys or... poor
| people?
| melony wrote:
| OP and their family of course, since OP clearly believes
| animal lives are as valuable, if not more, than humans'.
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| We are animals, we're not more valuable than animals,
| since we ARE THEM, we have always and will always be
| equally valuable to animals.
|
| There isn't one rational reason why a human should be
| worth more than any other animal.
|
| If OP and their family AGREE to, then yes, of course, it
| would be infinitely better than testing on unwilling
| sentient beings.
| tsol wrote:
| >There isn't one rational reason why a human should be
| worth more than any other animal.
|
| Simple-- because the one pondering it is a human.
| Expecting humans not to have a bias for their own species
| is like expecting a lion to choose to go vegetarian; in
| general they that's not the nature these animals are
| endowed with.
|
| If we're all animals, why is it okay for a lion to
| violently follow its nature, but humans cannot?
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| "Expecting humans not to have a bias" "There isn't one
| rational reason "
|
| Are you that bad at contradicting someone?
| phphphphp wrote:
| I think that if the animal testing is so important
| because it's fundamental to the future of the human race,
| you will absolutely find people willing to participate in
| early medical trials: after-all, we already do! I'm sure
| many people here have family who have participated in
| clinical trials.
|
| Animal testing is rarely necessary, it's just the easiest
| option, and when it is absolutely necessary to test on a
| living being, it should be possible to find someone to
| volunteer. If you can't find anyone to volunteer, it's
| clearly not necessary enough.
|
| There's already significant restrictions on what
| can/can't be done to animals in many countries: I am not
| suggesting anything radical, just following these
| restrictions to their logical conclusion -- no
| experiments on beings that haven't consented.
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >Which humans?
|
| Consenting ones.
|
| It's more ethical to pay a consenting human generously,
| than to force an animal to ingest dangerous substances for
| no compensation of any kind(besides euthanasia when they're
| deemed useless), it's also a lot more efficient and
| reliable, humans aren't 150lbs rats.
|
| People risks their lives and health daily for a salary(or
| for a greater cause, which would still apply here) , why
| should this be any different? How is it any different from
| a firefighter?a bodyguard? a miner? a doctor in an ICU?
|
| No matter how poor you are you have a choice, these animals
| never got one, there is plenty of times where I would have
| accepted to be a guinea pig for money.
| tsol wrote:
| The problem is you and I don't wanna test potentially
| dangerous drugs, even for lots of money as we have other
| choices for an income. Most of the people willing to test
| drugs will be desperate, poor people who need to feed
| their families. Say what you will about testing on
| monkeys-- but testing on poor people instead so that the
| people making the rules don't have to feed bad about
| testing on monkeys, is as dystopian as it gets.
| phphphphp wrote:
| People already volunteer to participate in clinical
| trials, and we already have restrictions on how animals
| can be treated. Loosening the rules on what can be tested
| on humans (but strengthening the consent rules -- for
| example, in my country, you cannot be paid for
| participation in a clinical trial) and banning animal
| testing would not stop progress, it would ensure that
| progress was made when it was justified enough that
| people were willing to consent to risks for the progress
| of humanity.
|
| How many people here on HN would jump aboard the first
| spaceship to mars in the name of human progress, knowing
| they'll probably die on the mission? Why can't that apply
| to science on earth? The US doesn't even have universal
| healthcare, so we can't pretend the US has some deep love
| for protecting its people.
| tsol wrote:
| >People already volunteer to participate in clinical
| trials,
|
| For medications they need. But to one is going to want to
| test the next generation of antihistamines, for example,
| when there's a safe alternative with a few side effects.
| So the only medications that people would be willing to
| test would be those for deadly diseases.
|
| >for example, in my country, you cannot be paid for
| participation in a clinical trial
|
| Why would anyone volunteer to take experimental drugs for
| nothing in return? The only reason would be in life and
| death situations
|
| >Why can't that apply to science on earth?
|
| I don't know, but asking people to test drugs isn't gonna
| convince anyone. We need a real alternative to make
| progress. Hence, monkeys.
|
| >The US doesn't even have universal healthcare, so we
| can't pretend the US has some deep love for protecting
| its people.
|
| The FDA and medical boards do in fact try to maintain a
| standard of medical ethics. >
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >I don't know, but asking people to test drugs isn't
| gonna convince anyone. We need a real alternative to make
| progress. Hence, monkeys.
|
| That's not an actual alternative.
|
| It's like nazis saying they have a good alternative for
| clinical trials: jews, romanis and gays.
|
| Just because it's affecting a different group of sentient
| beings doesn't mean it's an actual alternative, it's
| effectively the same thing: violation of consent, abuse
| and sequestration at a huge scale.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Not to mention the upcoming wave of Xenotransplantation. The
| gentleman receiving the pig heart transplant was only the
| beginning. Now we have a genetically engineered, separate line
| of swine specifically bred to provide us with spare parts on an
| industrial scale.
|
| What are the airlines view on these going to be, will they
| transport a pig heart for human transplantation? Where does
| that scenario fall?
| iasay wrote:
| If it's anything like the in-person discussions I've seen on
| the matter it's not productive. I'm firmly polarised on one
| side and was happy to sit in the sidelines and not say anything
| on the matter in case I also got punched :(
| bayindirh wrote:
| Maybe this move would accelerate the computational biology a
| little further, no?
|
| BTW, I really welcome putting brakes on whole this animal testing
| stuff. I'm not really comfortable that it's still going on.
| Scandiravian wrote:
| I have a background in drug development and computational
| models
|
| Computational models are decades, at the very least, away from
| being a replacement for animal models
|
| There is no replacement for animal models, except trials in
| humans, so if the alternative is that we do more, riskier
| trials on humans, then I'd much prefer animal testing
| mlyle wrote:
| > There is no replacement for animal models, except trials in
| humans, so if the alternative is that we do more, riskier
| trials on humans, then I'd much prefer animal testing
|
| Totally true, but, at the same time---
|
| Computational models have prevented all kinds of unnecessary
| animal testing of things that can be shown computationally to
| be unlikely to work. So, computational models avoid us doing
| more, riskier trials on animals.
|
| Of course, we've not reduced animal testing-- instead we've
| just pursued more compounds and ideas. I'd argue it's worth
| it for speeding up the pace of medicine. But these things are
| not completely orthogonal.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| There is the chance the computational model is wrong.
| iasay wrote:
| The animal and human trials don't always go well either.
|
| You only hear about the human trials that go wrong.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yes, and there is the chance the animal model doesn't
| represent human responses well, too.
|
| We still use both to weed out treatments, for both
| ethical and cost reasons. Better to errantly eliminate a
| working drug occasionally than to let a lot of unhelpful
| stuff through.
| jonlucc wrote:
| Just to add to this, the last thing that will be taken over
| by computers is tox testing. This is the last step that says
| "this drug is safe enough in primates to test in humans".
| It's the most complicated type of animal testing, because it
| is necessarily the interaction of every system in the body
| that could cause a tox issue.
|
| So sure, we use modeling, and it's getting better, but it's
| not going to replace toxicology studies any time soon, unless
| every other human system is replicated in silico first.
| duckmysick wrote:
| A comment by bsdz links a research paper and says that a
| computer model for cardiotoxicity has higher accuracy than
| animal models. The paper title mentions in silico as well.
|
| Are those the same things you're talking about or is there
| something I'm missing. I'm not that familiar with drug
| development.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32048391
| oaktrout wrote:
| The paper linked by bsdz checks for one specific cardiac
| side effect, it is not anywhere close to being a model
| for cardiotoxicity as a whole, a very important
| distinction.
| duckmysick wrote:
| Ok, that makes sense.
|
| Is there a meta analysis of such models?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Maybe this move would accelerate the computational biology a
| little further, no?
|
| As soon as your code passes unit tests, do you immediately push
| to production?
|
| And that is with computing where we have a really good
| understanding of the fundamental principles.
|
| Our understanding of biology is primitive by comparison.
|
| Therefore we have multiple stages with trade offs of cost vs
| fidelity to production (release to the general public in
| humans) going from computation to cell cultures to tissue
| samples to mice to non-human primates to phase 1/2/3 human
| trials, etc.
| rdl wrote:
| Presumably there will be transport of monkeys for reasons other
| than "research" to establish populations within Europe/US, then
| use of monkeys from those populations (shipped overland) for
| testing. Adds delay, and creates physical facilities vulnerable
| to activist attack, but possibly better for monkeys.
|
| Would be great if animal testing could continue to be minimized,
| but I'd like to continue having the benefits of safe and
| effective drugs. For somewhat irrational reasons I only really am
| personally bothered by testing on cats; dogs, monkeys, etc. don't
| particularly bother me, but I recognize this is irrational.
| tsol wrote:
| That, or its tested on humans instead. Neither seem like they'd
| actually be more ethical in the end.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Animal testing is expensive, especially with primates, so it's
| already minimised.
| peyton wrote:
| The priciest part I believe is the people taking care of the
| monkeys. I'd wager it's easier to send them in unmarked crates.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| Personally, I find it morally questionable every time one of
| these activist groups puts non-human life above human life,
| whether it is a dog or a monkey, I don't care. Just feels wrong.
| I guess I would not want to be neighbours with some weirdo who
| would value my life equally to that of a monkey.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Saving the life of an animal over a human is murder.
| ginko wrote:
| There's close to 8 billion humans while there somewhere between
| 172000 to 300000 wild chimpanzees. Surely the life of a
| chimpanzee is _more_ valuable.
| maxbond wrote:
| This is a bad faith reading of what these activists want. It
| amounts to a strawman. If you were their neighbor - you
| probably wouldn't know it. Why should we be systematically
| cruel to animals? Why shouldn't we develop technology that
| replaces these techniques? Has it not even occurred to you that
| we don't necessarily have to have a giant industry of animal
| testing, that that is a local minima we don't have to accept?
|
| Does that not seem morally questionable to you?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > This is a bad faith reading of what these activists want.
| It amounts to a strawman.
|
| Not it is not a straw man argument. Non-human primate trials
| are the last stage before human testing. Eliminating non-
| human primate trials will increase the risk for human
| participants(unless they actually stop developing).
|
| Our understanding of biology is nowhere near comprehensive
| enough to be able to simulate all these interactions and
| isn't likely to be for maybe a century.
|
| So if you eliminate non-primate human testing, your options
| are either to develop therapies at greater risk to humans, or
| to stop developing them.
|
| Either of those options hurts humans. Thus, you are placing
| the well-being of non-human animals above the well-being of
| humans.
| maxbond wrote:
| If people do not make it known that this behavior is
| unacceptable, the alternative technology will not be
| developed.
|
| Industry would be happy to abuse animals until the end of
| time.
|
| Framing this as a _preference_ for one kind of life or
| another is, in fact, a straw man. No such preference is
| necessary to accept this line of reasoning.
| oaktrout wrote:
| I agree. I see this sort of misunderstanding commonly here.
| Hacker news is filled with individuals who think computers
| can solve all our problems, and at the same time they lack
| the most basic understanding of the complexities of
| biology.
| colordrops wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted - the GP is definitely
| putting forth a heavy strawman. Wanting to stop animal
| cruelty does not equate to believing that animal lives should
| be put above human lives. There are more than the two options
| of killing monkeys for testing or killing humans for testing.
| maxbond wrote:
| Downvotes come fast and upvotes come slow. I wasn't
| surprised to see it hit zero immediately after I clicked
| submit, or to see it climb back up to 1.
| mertd wrote:
| I don't want to take sides in this argument but just would
| like to point out that our animal cruelty standards are
| comically inconsistent. The animals that we use for food
| supply are generally treated horribly and they outnumber the
| scientific use cases by several orders of magnitude.
| kube-system wrote:
| Our standards for humans are pretty inconsistent too. There
| are scenarios in which it is still legal to subject some
| humans to slavery and death even in the US.
| maxbond wrote:
| This is true and if your argument was that we should be
| spending more effort there then addressing scientific use
| than that'd make sense to me.
|
| But if what you're suggesting is that we should expend our
| effort exclusively on the larger of the two until it is
| fully addressed, then I can see how that has a certain
| logical appeal, but it isn't really how social movements
| work. Social movements are necessarily massively parallel,
| everyone pursues the causes they care about most, and
| adjacent causes support and are supported by one another.
|
| Not only would it not be feasible to convince all the
| activists to pick one particular cause, it also would be
| less effective. It's sort of like the "packing" tactic in
| gerrymandering.
| mertd wrote:
| People are free to take up whatever cause they deem is
| worthy. I just hope some will take a pause and appreciate
| the absurdity of drinking milk and consuming meat AND
| opposing use of animals in medical research.
|
| I have flown with Air France recently. They certainly do
| serve a lot of meat and cheese.
| maxbond wrote:
| Okay. Why? What are you hoping they'll realize? What is
| it you are trying to say?
|
| Pardon me, but it feels like you're engaging in a certain
| rhetorical tactic where you all-but make a conclusion -
| you say, I'm not taking any sides, I just want you to
| consider X, Y, and Z that would naturally lead you to a
| certain conclusion which I definitely haven't made
| myself. This serves to launder your conclusion through
| your audience, as if it were their idea all along. It
| shields your ideas from criticism and the hazard of
| taking a position that may be argued against.
|
| And whether or not that is intentional, I'd ask you to
| stop. I have made specific claims which can be argued
| against - it's pretty unfair for you to respond in a way
| that, should I try to argue against it, just shifts
| around without really responding to what I am saying.
|
| Speaking for myself, while I do eat some cheese, I
| haven't eaten meat in almost a decade, and I've found I
| genuinely prefer almond milk. I'm fully aware of the
| hazards and contradictions in my life. I don't really
| need you to point these things out to me for me to
| consider them. We live in a society where each of us is
| unable to fully live out their values. I'm positive that,
| if you applied the same scrutiny to your own life, you'd
| find similar problems. But of course that doesn't mean
| you don't believe in your values, only that you are a
| human being who is not omnipotent. It's pretty odd to try
| and turn that around on another person, right? Almost
| like criticizing them for breathing.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > Why shouldn't we develop technology that replaces these
| techniques?
|
| We absolutely should.
|
| What do we do until such technology is developed?
| j-pb wrote:
| Use worse/more expensive versions of the technology.
|
| The stuff is already here, it's just inertia that's keeping
| us from fully adopting it.
| tsol wrote:
| But it literally isn't here. We need live organisms to
| test drugs, we can't do it all on computer chips and
| disconnected cells
| duckmysick wrote:
| If it was just inertia, it means the options have similar
| outcomes and the only factor is the cost of switching. As
| you pointed out, there are other trade-offs.
| oaktrout wrote:
| I have to think that computational models will be
| infinitely cheaper than animal testing. If they worked as
| well as animal testing surely some for profit
| pharmaceutical company would leverage them to reap
| enormous profits. Because this is not happening I
| conclude the the models aren't as affective.
| maxbond wrote:
| We'll have to do animal testing until the technology is
| developed and replace it incrementally. The technology will
| not be developed unless it is made explicit that not doing
| so is unacceptable.
| timeon wrote:
| > puts non-human life above human life
|
| Well my pet has EU passport unlike my friend from Macedonia.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Care to expand on why you feel this way about different
| species?
|
| > some weirdo who would value my life equally to that of a
| monkey
|
| Do you feel this over-values the monkey's life or devalues
| yours? Or is it something else?
| varajelle wrote:
| What about activist who put non-"your-country"-citizen live
| above "your-country"-citizen life? Why don't that feels wrong?
| pflenker wrote:
| Not saying that I share these arguments, but the thinking is
| usually not to put non-human life over , but on the same level
| as human life.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I personally don't place one side over the other, and decided
| to admit that we sometimes kill lives for our own ego.
|
| The only true alternative to that is an act of self harm, and
| that is not free from egoism either, so I just don't think too
| much and enjoy my life, only following my own inner voice as to
| what choices would be ethical to make.
| maxbond wrote:
| We are not compelled to either kill or do self harm, no. That
| is a really concerning dichotomy to suggest.
|
| Do you feel this is a choice you are compelled to make? I
| don't mean to presume, but I'm going to proceed as if it were
| affirmative, because I don't anticipate a response, and this
| seems concerning.
|
| That sounds perhaps like intrusive thoughts? I personally
| struggle with intrusive thoughts that are occasionally
| violent. They do not need to be acted upon though, and they
| don't reflect on who you are much more than a compression
| artifact in a video reflects on the cinematographer - it's
| line noise in your brain, it's incredibly complex and
| sometimes throws out signals that aren't useful.
|
| If you feel this way and that it isn't within your control,
| I'd encourage you to speak with a professional.
| numpad0 wrote:
| My thinking is that we are in fact constantly compelled to
| take _some_ lives(thankfully not of our own kinds) by very
| our own existence. We only exist by consuming energy and
| energy only comes as some form of exploitation of other
| lives, even if one had been exclusively consuming fruit on
| trees that exist to be eaten, unless such hypothetical man
| is a thinking solar panel in vacuum of space that can
| convert light into its own energy.
|
| That dark part is not serious - at least not in this
| context. That's just an extreme example, but the point is
| we do not exist without the karma of our body.
| goldenkey wrote:
| That's right, the chance of saving a human life is not equal to
| horrid abuse of other lives, in all but the most twisted
| utilitarianist, sapien-centric models.
|
| Animal testing is a moral quandary. Rats, even if they weren't
| intelligent (which they are), don't deserve the tortures we put
| them through.
|
| Gender identity and sentient AI equality have become fenceposts
| for our populist cross-dressing Musk-rat technocratic movement -
| but somehow, for many among us, animal rights still doesn't fit
| in...
|
| The ends do not justify the means. Feminism and equality means
| giving a voice to those who cannot be heard - women, minorities,
| LGBTQ, and yes, primates and other animals. You must follow your
| precepts to their logical conclusions. Otherwise, you are not for
| true equality, and instead are for convenient equality, shackled
| to time and place, not forward thinking.
| cphoover wrote:
| So you volunteer to replace the monkeys in experimental drug
| research?
| goldenkey wrote:
| No, I'd prefer to remain free. But at least you are asking
| for consent - that's a start in the right direction!
|
| Consent - something which the monkeys have not given.
| Something which their world-splitting cries of agony,
| anguish, and tortured existence, clearly indicate. It appears
| their disposition to being used as biological pin cushions is
| quite oppositional, one could say their entire life is
| dedicated to saying "No."
|
| Imagine a life dedicated to saying "No." Your mind is
| disoriented, deteriorating. The world is spinning, and your
| insides are churning, throbbing, and burning with the pain of
| a thousand suns. Your skin is peeling, your muscles ache,
| your bones dull with a hollow pain, and your body feels like
| it isn't even yours. Implants and incisions, scars and scabs,
| your body riddled with pockmarks.
|
| It sounds laborious and awful, more than nightmarish.
|
| Would you volunteer for it?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > . But at least you are asking for consent
|
| trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but
| about the best model available.
|
| monkeys are not asked for consent, true, but they're not
| picked at random either, because it would be useless.
|
| There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to
| participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or
| poorer people?
|
| An finally, how would you ask for consent to monkeys?
|
| Do you ask mosquitos to leave before killing them?
|
| Last but not least, do animals reciprocate those feelings?
|
| Do they ask for consent before exploiting other animals?
| cute_boi wrote:
| As long as we can avoid mosquito we should. That's why I
| still prefer nets and repellent creams. However, I am not
| going to judge if some people kills mosquito that sucks
| their blood or spread dangerous diseases like malaria.
|
| Comparing monkeys with mosquitos is kind of disingenuous.
| How many monkeys have killed people in 2022 compared to
| mosquito?
|
| Lastly, many research takes place for beauty creams,
| shampoo etc.. that are total useless. There are also many
| research were animal are disregarded as useless. Maybe
| sustainable research is needed instead of dumping them
| uselessly?
|
| Thanks!
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Lastly, many research takes place for beauty creams,
| shampoo etc.. that are total useless.
|
| That's a popular argument, but it's a false premise.
|
| If the objective is saving animals, why don't we ban
| flight transport altogether ?
|
| It kills, directly and indirectly, a lot more ( _a LOT
| more!_ ) animals than medical trials will ever do.
|
| In the end it's mostly people going on holidays, it's
| useless.
| goldenkey wrote:
| We're for reducing suffering, not reducing death - the
| latter befalls everyone and everything.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I'm good with it.
| goldenkey wrote:
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
|
| Do you always debate in a dishonest fashion?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Do you always debate in a dishonest fashion?
|
| I'm simply not an English native speaker.
|
| So the question goes right back at you, I guess.
|
| Would you prefer to argue in Italian?
|
| I can be much more precise in my native tongue.
|
| p.s. please remind me what false arguments I provided. It
| would be much appreciated. thanks.
| will5421 wrote:
| > There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to
| participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or
| poorer people?
|
| Probably those who want the benefit of the medication
| badly enough.
| tsol wrote:
| So not poor people, but desperate people? That's just a
| different sort of problematic
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Probably those who want the benefit of the medication
| badly enough.
|
| it doesn't make them good models anyway.
|
| not better than peaking up a random animal from the zoo
| or a random. human from the population.
|
| in fact access to experimental trials is not on a consent
| only basis, patients need to adhere to some parameter.
|
| for example: my mother in law was rendered almost blind
| by a degenerative disease.
|
| She volunteered for an experimental trial on a new
| treatment but she was too old and her condition too
| advanced to be a suitable candidate. She was fully
| willing to be part of it, but consent alone wasn't
| enough.
| will5421 wrote:
| Sometimes, people will be suitable candidates, and
| sometimes they won't. In the cases they aren't, we'd just
| have to accept that this will slow down the development
| of the medication.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| and that's exactly how it works now.
|
| I'm not happy we have to rely on animals, believe me, but
| suitable patients are already hard to find, if we don't
| test drugs for at least a reasonable definition of safe,
| we risk to kill the research, not simply slowing it down.
|
| and that's much more probable for those diseases that are
| rare on humans, that are already underfunded and under
| researched.
| tsol wrote:
| The problem with consent is it can easily be pressured. The
| only people that will consent to being tested on are people
| that are really desperate. I mean by that logic instead of
| testing on monkeys, we should test on hungry third world
| children. They'd surely consent to keep for starving to
| death. And because it's consensual, we're much more moral
| than if we tested them on monkeys. What a moral paradise!
| goldenkey wrote:
| By consent I meant, without duress, which I thought was
| pretty clear. We can quibble about what represents "true"
| consent but that's aside the point since it is clear that
| imprisoning and torturing animals is nonconsensual, not
| in any grey area. In the theory of socialism, consenting
| to working is illegitimate since the alternative is
| homelessness.
|
| Do you have any actual arguments or just hypothetical
| slippery slopes?
|
| https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appe
| al-...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_definition
| nikanj wrote:
| The way we do consent is "find the poor and the destitute,
| the ones who have no other options left". Consent given
| under duress is not real consent.
| ominous wrote:
| > Imagine a life dedicated to saying "No." Your mind is
| disoriented, deteriorating. The world is spinning, and your
| insides are churning, throbbing, and burning with the pain
| of a thousand suns. Your skin is peeling, your muscles
| ache, your bones dull with a hollow pain, and your body
| feels like it isn't even yours. Implants and incisions,
| scars and scabs, your body riddled with pockmarks.
|
| > It sounds laborious and awful, more than nightmarish.
|
| Powerful stuff. I agree this suffering should be reduced.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200203215527/http://www.xenos
| y...
| mlyle wrote:
| > Imagine a life dedicated to saying "No." Your mind is
| disoriented, deteriorating. The world is spinning, and your
| insides are churning, throbbing, and burning with the pain
| of a thousand suns. Your skin is peeling, your muscles
| ache, your bones dull with a hollow pain, and your body
| feels like it isn't even yours. Implants and incisions,
| scars and scabs, your body riddled with pockmarks.
|
| Representing this as typical of the research animal
| experience is disingenuous. You should be able to make your
| argument without resorting to hyperbole.
|
| We're talking about monkeys, whose biggest use in recent
| research was in vaccine development. So e.g. Rhesus
| macaques were given injections of vaccine candidates (and
| convalescent plasma, etc), and then immune responses were
| measured. Some were then exposed to SARS-COV-2 to determine
| if the vaccines were effective. SARS-COV-2 produces much
| less severe illness in macaques than humans.
| goldenkey wrote:
| I've experienced an allergic reaction to medication
| before. It was the worst hour of my entire life until I
| had an injection of Benadryl. Every moment, I felt like
| I'd rather be dead than experience another moment of the
| agony.
|
| So sure, experimentation effects may vary but the upper
| limit is fucking brutal and definitely depends on what
| stage the drug is in. Early on in development, the
| effects could be worse than death.
| mlyle wrote:
| > So sure, experimentation effects may vary but the upper
| limit is fucking brutal and definitely depends on what
| stage the drug is in. Early on in development, the
| effects could be worse than death.
|
| So could the effects of e.g. life in the wild. Anything
| can go very badly.
|
| IMO: You can't be completely blind to the utilitarian
| angle. The average and distribution of outcomes matters.
|
| So, we go through an escalating series of tests--
| designed to both weed-out drugs cheaply and to avoid
| suffering; from conceptual models to computation to
| tissue cultures to organ models to small animals to
| larger animals to small numbers of humans to large
| numbers of humans.
|
| If you weed out the last couple of steps before humans,
| you're going to either try a lot fewer drugs on humans,
| or increase human suffering a whole lot to protect
| smaller animals.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > . But at least you are asking for consent
|
| trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but
| about the best model available.
|
| monkeys are not asked for consent, true, but they're not
| picked at random either, because it would be useless.
|
| There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to
| participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or
| poorer people?
|
| An finally, how would you ask for consent to monkeys?
|
| Do you ask mosquitos to leave before killing them?
|
| edit: what really baffles me about this discussions is how
| much the mood of the population swings.
|
| We have seen literally revolts on the streets against COVID
| vaccines being a _way to force untested drugs onto the
| people_ but at the same time people complain that there is
| too much testing on _non people_
| karpierz wrote:
| > trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but
| about the best model available.
|
| Wait, then why aren't we using humans? Humans are the
| best model available for human biology, no?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Wait, then why aren't we using humans?
|
| because we can't and do not want to artificially breed
| and engineer humans for that purpose.
|
| we don't grow kids with rare diseases or tumors just to
| make them suitable models, not counting how long it would
| take.
|
| but if you prefer it...
| karpierz wrote:
| You're assuming your conclusion in your premise.
|
| The question is "should monkeys be available for
| research?"
|
| You state that "we should use the best models available",
| therefore we should use monkeys for research. But this
| assumes that monkeys are available in the first place! It
| doesn't show that we should experiment on monkeys, just
| that we currently do.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > You state that "we should use the best models
| available", therefore we should use monkeys for research.
|
| unless you want to test drugs' safety on the actual best
| model available, they are the second best model
| available.
|
| > that monkeys are available in the first place!
|
| they are not available as in nature, they are bred to be
| available.
|
| we're not going to some rain forest to capture them in
| the wild.
|
| we could do the same with humans, in fact Nazis did it
| and it worked remarkably well, ethics issues aside.
|
| Anyway, only a few thousands monkeys are used in trials
| and most of them in non lethal (they do not risk to die)
| trials, for a short period of time.
|
| Most of the animals used are not primates.
|
| Even assuming researches and pharmaceutical companies are
| evil and have the worst intentions, monkeys are the most
| expensive option and it takes a lot of times to breed
| them, a true evil entity wouldn't waste all that money
| and time, when a rat gestation time is 21 days and they
| mature in a few weeks.
| tsol wrote:
| >Feminism and equality means giving a voice to those who cannot
| be heard - women, minorities, LGBTQ, and yes, primates and
| other animals.
|
| Just want to point out something I've noticed. Everyone has a
| different idea of what exactly feminism is, and everyone thinks
| their idea of feminism is obviously the real one.
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