Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective • Hacker News Board

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#41

Post by mjburgess » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:34 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #38

faebi wrote: post #21

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 ab…

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?

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.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#42

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:35 PM UTC

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.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#43

Post by technocratius » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:36 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #38

faebi wrote: post #21

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 ab…

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?

It does so, but via an inefficient route (plant -> animal -> human instead of plant -> human), which causes huge sustainability and animal ethical issues.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#44

Post by amelius » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

Would you rather have your drugs tested on potatoes?

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#45

Post by erwald » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #10

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.

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.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#46

Post by ekianjo » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

fabian2k wrote: post #10

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.

> 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.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#47

Post by metta2uall » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

tlarkworthy wrote: post #24

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)

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".

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#48

Post by _Microft » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

technocratius wrote: post #43

endisneigh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It does so, but via an inefficient route ( plant -> animal -> human instead of plant -> human ), which causes huge sustainability and animal ethical issues.

Here is a useful link in case anyone wants to read up on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer...

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#49

Post by eigenket » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:38 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #41

endisneigh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective

#50

Post by Ensorceled » Sun, Jun 13, 2021, 12:38 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #18

fabian2k wrote: post #10

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.

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.

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.