Self Experiments: Its mission is to make inhumane animal testing obsolete by using “open suffer” collaboration of volunteer testers from around the world. The first experiment is launching next month: http://selfexperiments.com What could be more cool than that?
Hey, this is an interesting idea. I have criticisms that are probably going to sound mean; but even though I don't like this idea, I like that you're thinking about these problems: * Human subjects research (which the selfexperiments are) is governed by IRBs; if the research did not pass IRB approval, it can't be used in academic publications. It doesn't matter that the research was done outside of academia, it still…
* Self Experiments isn't concerned with conforming to FDA specifications and obtaining IRB approval (yet). Also keep in mind this project is iterative. A lot of mistakes will be made along the way. Oh, and the experiments will be fun, or at least extremely interesting.
* Animal testing is often a proxy for testing on humans. Self Experiments will attempt to reverse this on a case by case, experiment by experiment basis. I hope Self Experiments will be preemptive and anticipate experiments that may be conducted on animals in the future - and conduct them on humans first. The trickiest part is designing the protocols for these experiments.
* One million? Try 19.5 million animals are killed each year in research in the U.S. alone. This does NOT include mice, which is probably numbered in the billions: http://www.statisticbrain.com/animal-testing-statistics/
* Factory farming is deplorable, and I've mulled over how to solve the problem for several years now. I have ideas but that's all I'll say. In the meantime, I'm vegetarian and working towards vegan-ism (although it's harder than I thought).