461–470 of 731 posts
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I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston S. Churchill
I am be responsible for purposefully creating a famine in India killing 3 million people and still be quoted as a badass in the future - Winston S. Churchill
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I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.
It's all cognitive dissonance in the end. People are quite happy to have illogical and inconsistent beliefs because it lets them remain entirely ethical in their heads. They will even become hostile when you challenge this because you are threatening the foundation of their ethics and mental health.
You might be asking, why a pig? I don't know, but forever ago I wrote software for a cardiovascular imaging lab and pigs were their primary test subjects. I was like, "why pigs?" and the PI was like, "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that."
I don't get it that dogs/cats/horses/etc are sentient but pigs/cows/chicken and other animals are not.
The issue for many of them is the personal connection and memories individuals have developed with one species or the other. Then it does matter more if it is a pig or a dog that you are doing harm to. For that matter I have known researchers who are excessively fond of pigs, chicken or cows ...
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I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.
I think dog meat anger is mostly the result of Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China. [1] It's completely unregulated and the animals (dogs, cats etc) would often be tortured and killed by amateurs because properly killing an animal is harder than it looks. Dogs are also not eaten for meat or taste and mostly done for superstition. 1 - https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/china...
And then the northerners say it is only done in the south and vice versa. And I've personally seen a veterinary student from china get very angry every time someone mentioned Chinese eating dogs...
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I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.
We owe dogs a great debt for helping humanity for many thousands of years.
Pigs caring, saving and dying to support human lives and well being on so many levels. We should definitely worship them much more.
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From what I heard, the pig lived a relativity good life. It was well cared for by the large animal veterinary school on campus. Had more space and better food than any factory raised pig. All experiments passed an ethics review. The pig was anesthetized before any procedure. The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. Modern medicine wou…
Weird that these statements are made (and I don't mean by you, it's a trope to make them by people in general in discussions like this, I'm not picking you out) that it somehow justifies, or ameliorates, the awfulness of experimenting then dissecting (as someone said) a helpless intelligent creature. I think these statements justify animal trials and using it to benefit humans definitely. But it doesn't justify or ma…
Utilitarian vs deontology ethics.
Most people believe that it's better for one pig to suffer than for thousands of people to die.
Even the strictest of vegans I know do not oppose animal testing in medicine if it is done to save human suffering.
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It does make me wonder how the transplanted pig heart or any transplanted heart connects so seamlessly. The issue simply heals and grows together with the foreign tissue?
It's not quite all that seamless - since we can't hook up the nerves, your new heart won't adjust its rate the way your original did.
Edit: looks like it's just some nerves, not all.
> Your transplanted heart will respond to activity a little differently. Your heart rate will not increase like it used to. And you will have a higher resting heart rate. This is because some of the nerves that control your heart were cut during your surgery.
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Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature. Weirder how it can be said without a sympathetic or concerned response. I hope we can someday move beyond seeing animals as a mere resource.
It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. Our bodies produce all of the enzymes, such as protease and lipase, necessary for the breakdown and absorption of meat. The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things. Human civilizations' current abundance of resources allows us the luxury to develop moral "philosophies" and become "vegetarians" effectively masking o…
I'm no biologist but the empathy / sympathy part also seems to be an evolved trait. It should bring stability to a social group and reduce injuries due to needless in-fighting which effectively ensures better survival as a group.
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What is it about primates that make them expensive?
Supply? Pigs are both abundant and easily found in the United States. There aren't primate breeding lots. You need to go into a jungle to find them.
The issue is that they have very complex social and behavioral demands, and yes, more so than pigs or dogs. It is easy to make a colony of dogs in a laboratory live a very happy life. I've seen it, and I can't see a big difference between a companion dog and a lab dog much of the time. They are just as friendly and outgoing and play all the time. With monkeys that's a lot more difficult...
Which is why research in primates is a lot more restricted and more heavily regulated. You need (more) specialized facilities. You also can't handle them as easily because they will bite, poop or hit (the bigger ones) you.