Animal medical studies
Awhile ago, our commenters went crazy in this post on vegetarianism, and several interesting sub-themes emerged. One of these was medical studies or research on animals.
There are those who argue that studies on animals may not be indicitive of results obstained for humans, given the differences in anatomy and genetics. Other people argued that animal modesl were predictive of results obtained in humans.
Are animal tests predictive of human tests? To what degree? Can we justify torturing animals in the name of science? what constitutes torture, anyway? I'm interested in hearing what you guyes think.
There are those who argue that studies on animals may not be indicitive of results obstained for humans, given the differences in anatomy and genetics. Other people argued that animal modesl were predictive of results obtained in humans.
Are animal tests predictive of human tests? To what degree? Can we justify torturing animals in the name of science? what constitutes torture, anyway? I'm interested in hearing what you guyes think.
posted by Ziztur
at
3:00 PM
9 Comments:
The degree to which test results in animals will reflect effects in humans depends on the animal and the purpose of the test. All animals have a lot of biochemistry in common, some more than others. Naturally primates are the best indicators of effects in humans, but there are many chemical or physical conditions you can test quite adequately in other animals.
The alternative to animal testing is to go straight to testing in humans, and I don't think that's acceptable. I have no interest in subjecting animals to risks or unpleasant procedures for no purpose, but I do place a higher value on human lives than on other animals.
I trust researchers to be intelligent enough to use animal testing only on animal systems which are indicative or suggestive of human results, and I trust the scientific method enough that problems with applicability will be found out and squashed.
As far as the necessity of animal testing, it's absolutely necessary: there are far, far too many things that you can't safely test in humans to start with, and animal testing allows you to do a lot of large-scale prospecting which you just can't do with people, and some drugs you'd never find without such prospecting methods.
Additionally, animals are very useful chemical and biological factories for producing stuff that's important for doing research. Antibodies, for example, which are important not only in immunology but also in fluorescence microscopy, allowing us to see in real-time the location of something we're searching for, wouldn't be possible if we didn't inject massive amounts of that thing into rabbits, let them incubate, then drain their blood and purify the antibodies out. Without fruit flies we wouldn't have genetics, and without mice we wouldn't understand most of mammal physiology.
In fact, this month's Cell Magazine features an article, "Abnormal Behavior in a Chromosome- Engineered Mouse Model for Human 15q11-13 Duplication Seen in Autism" (Nakatani et. al., p.1235-1247), where the researchers replicated an often-seen duplication mutation in autistic patients, and created a mouse that showed behaviors characteristic of autism. So you can do behavioral studies, dissect the brain and do biochemical studies, and it's a wonderful piece to the puzzle of autism and what, exactly, the hell it is and how it's caused.
Animal research isn't torture (even though some of the methods may be unpleasant for the animals), and it isn't carried out by five year old fly wing-pullers who never grew up. It's a knowledge-enhancing and potentially life-saving category of research, and one of the most important tools in physiology.
All organisms, being descended from a common ancestor, have some things in common. The more closely related organisms have more things in common. It turns out there's plenty of convergent evolution going on, as well, plus the phenomenon of lab animals being bred to better simulate humans. To claim that animal results cannot predict human results seems to me naïve, disingenuous, and untenable. I do hope it's just a straw man, and that nobody actually believes it.
Obviously there has to be some thought put into it; testing on a jellyfish to try to predict effects on the human immune system would be ludicrous and useless. HOWEVER, a rat has a very similar immune system to a human (from what I understand). Likewise, pigs have human-like hearts, and chinchillas turn out to have very human-like inner ears. If you mix and match various animals, you can test just about anything on them with high predictive value for humans.
So that's the question of whether it's useful settled. As for whether it's morally justified: as I pointed out in the other thread, whether it's morally justified to TEST on animals is different from whether it's morally justified to TORTURE animals. The vast majority of lab animals have a cushier, more comfortable life with less suffering than they would experience in the real world (this would be true even without regulations; an unhappy animal is an animal that gives flawed results, unless the experiment has something to do with unhappiness itself), and torture rarely comes into it at all.
So animal testing is both definitely useful and (for most sane moral frameworks) definitely justifiable. The stickier and less relevant question of animal TORTURE mostly hinges on which any given individual values more: the happiness of individual animals, or the advancement of general human knowledge. For me, science is more important, especially considering how much suffering can be conquered in the long run if we can understand it better in the short term. However, I understand how that same reasoning could be used to justify atrocities, so I can see where a person holding an opposing viewpoint on the question of animal torture could be coming from.
Run tests on rats, mice, monkeys and whatever. If we breed things for slaughter, why not breed things to have stuff tested on them? Like Runolfr said, I don't want to see anything hurt or tortured unless it will benefit mankind.
I DON'T trust researchers to be intelligent enough to use animal testing only on animal systems which are indicative or suggestive of human results. NO WAY. I've read up enough on this to know that.
I'm playing guinea pig in a diabetes study next month, but I'm sure they have already tortured and killed millions of non-consenting animals already to get to the consenting human animal testing phase.
Another fact about the wastefulness of animal testing: Let's say they test something on 10,000 animals and decided it's ok to use the product in Germany. If they want the product to be available in another country, they have to do testing all over again. Makes me sick just thinking about it.
You speak so matter of factly about it, it's all in theory to you, but imagine if they tested head trauma on your cats.
Well, since you insist on bringing her into it: My cat is on methimazole and atenlol. Without the animal testing that made those drugs available to cats, I would have lost her several years ago. Bringing her into it is not likely to make me oppose animal testing.
(Incidentally, she also constitutes a evidence against the notion that results in animals can't be predictive of results in people; methimazole and atenlol work just about the same on humans as on cats.)
Moreover: Most animals in laboratory settings still have happier and often longer lives than they would in the wild. The wild is a nasty place, filled with cars and poisoned rats. Given a choice between my home and a laboratory, I'd pick my home; given a choice between a laboratory and the wild, I'd pick the laboratory.
A tangential point: The animals that are used for testing wouldn't otherwise go to loving homes, and they wouldn't even be released into the wild: they wouldn't have been born in the first place. It also the case that housepets and animals off the street are nearly useless for testing purposes. Nearly all lab animals are bred specifically for the lab, as all the animals involved need to be as uniform as possible.
I DON'T trust researchers to be intelligent enough to use animal testing only on animal systems which are indicative or suggestive of human results. NO WAY. I've read up enough on this to know that.
I just want to know the hard numbers. Why leave it to blind trust when we can actually find out how often animal testing gives results different from the results on humans? I
The stickier and less relevant question of animal TORTURE mostly hinges on which any given individual values more: the happiness of individual animals, or the advancement of general human knowledge.
It isn't happiness of animals vs the advancement of knowledge. Its whether we're willing to torture for the sake of knowledge.
There's a strong temptation to soften the issue to make it less uncomfortable---an impulse we should resist. Torture SHOULD be an uncomfortable topic.
The problem with torture is that it constitutes one individual deliberately reducing the happiness/increasing the suffering of another, which is evil according to most sane philosophies. Getting at the root of why it is evil is more useful than simply attempting to use "torture" as a scare word.
Let's rephrase it then in a way that I hope should be amenable to both of us, because it gets at the root of the problem and doesn't mince words: the question is whether we are willing to commit evil for the sake of knowledge.
And my opinion is that it is acceptable to commit a small amount of evil in the short term in order to reduce the total amount of evil in the system in the long run (yes, the ends can justify the means). Of course, whether it is even possible to achieve a net reduction in evil through committing evil... largely depends on how you measure it, but it's possible to make a coherent argument either way.
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