In what way is it exploitative? Animals are not people, there is no way to exploit them!
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Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
171–180 of 319 posts
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ha…
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,…
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/
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#173Lets 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 s…
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).
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 b…
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…
> 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.
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#175Earlier 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?
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?
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
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/
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.
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
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 woul…
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.
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
An able-bodied person with decent income should have no trouble being at least mostly vegetarian, if not most vegan, in North America.
I don't want to be.
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 i…
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
Re: Animal testing is exploitative and largely ineffective
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but maybe this is an argument for treating the food animals, rather than ridiculousness of standards for science animals.
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.
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.