61–70 of 319 posts
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.
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.
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.
computers -> petri dishes -> people
computers -> petri dishes -> animals -> people
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.
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
>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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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 auth…
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.
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
By causing the suffering of living, sentient beings. There's a clear and obvious slippery slope here.