Owing one’s life, or extension of life, to animal testing certainly lends a different perspective. Which makes me wonder if any of these fine folks shipping razor blades and threats through the mail would decisively refuse treatment for a life-threatening illness were it developed through animal experimentation.

I’m a student of Biology so I recognize the vast importance of animal testing.
But I also come from the far left of the political spectrum, so I know emotions about animal testing run deep. It’s hard to find a median. The best we can do now is have civility on both sides. Scientists and activists have much in common, and we’d make better allies than enemies.

As of now, animal testing is necessary for human advancement. But I’ll be the first to accept a better model when we think of one.

Harming sentient beings–animal OR human–is wrong. Humans and non-humans both feel pain and we shouldn’t inflict harm on them intentionally. I am so tired of hearing about cruel and hypocritical AR activists. They are coming from a place of irrational emotions, but instead of helping, they are actually harming the cause.

I want to help animals and people. We can save a lot of lives by providing clean water to 3rd world nations and also by providing medical care to everyone in our nation. We could save even more lives by teaching healthy habits to our youth.

I realize that many medical advances have come from animal testing. But nowadays, I believe we should strive for alternatives while making the animals used rarer and rarer [and also by making their existances less miserable while they are in labs].

As progress continues, I believe testing on animals will become a thing of the past. Harming people is not the way to get there.

I think most everyone agrees on these simple points; perhaps we should come together, provide medical care and clean water to people, fund the search for animal testing alternatives, and move toward the day that animal research is obsolete.

Ever had a sick family member or friend?

I realize this subject is probably upsetting for you and part of your reaction is coming from that emotional standpoint and more is probably coming from your worldview that we need to live in better balance with nature – which I can appreciate to a degree, as a species we’ve pushed against nature too hard and we need to better respect that.

We aren’t talking about good & evil here though, nor are we talking about torture. Torture is the willing infliction of pain & suffering for the sake of doing so. Casting animal researchers as deranged tortures of animals is a wild distortion of the truth. Great care is taken to minimize animal suffering and death as well as to use as few animals as possible.

No one delights in these things, researchers are real people too – no matter how much animal rights groups might want to dehumanize them.

I wonder if you might take the time to go into a cancer ward, and tell the children there that their lives are futile, worthless and that they need to die so we can live in harmony with our animal brothers. That the people working to save their lives are evil and that they don’t deserve to make it.

Of course, some of these kids won’t really grasp the larger scope of your argument, so you might want to take it up with their parents.

You see, it’s not just my futile existence or yours that stands to benefit from the advances of medicine, largely due to animal research, but the needless lives of our children as well.

I guess you could always take a stand and refuse any future medical attention for any condition that befalls you in the future. You could be a martyr to the cause, leading us by noble example…and that is your right and your choice, however, that’s where your rights end.

Because to not explore the avenues presented to us by responsible animal research is to condemn those who suffer now and in the future to horrible deaths and preventable suffering.

*That* is evil. *That* is torture.

Hey, if you’re allowed to make bold statements out of emotion, then why not me?

Which says everything about the evil of the research. Animal torture is never justified.

“No one likes needless animal testing but some is absolutely necessary.”

So we can extend our futile existence with a few extra years ? Perhaps a shorter life in harmony with our animal brothers has more value than an extended one made possible through the endless torture of countless creatures who feel every bit as much pain and misery as us when we are sick.

Unless you can provide solid examples that make animal research obsolete *in it’s entirety* then animal research must continue in some way.

To add insult to injury, PETA doesn’t exactly have a great reputation for honesty and (ironically) ethical conduct – I’d like to see the content of the article scrutinized before I just accept it as reality – but it certainly sounds promising, and perhaps one day we’ll get to a point where animal research isn’t necessary.

I don’t think anyone here is espousing the idea that animal research results have a 1 to 1 relationship to what the results would be in a human – to imply otherwise is a false argument. However, they are a necessary stepping stone. They give us a window as to what’s possible on a biological level, from there we investigate if the results can be replicated in humans.

Do you believe insulin works? It was developed through research on dogs and yet it works in humans as well, to many diabetics out there, I’m pretty sure they’d call that useful. I’m quite certain you could fill volumes with similar examples of the successes of animal research – that’s just the first one that comes to mind.

Testing the effects on cultures of cells or skin samples sounds like a great way to reduce unnecessary animal research and, believe it or not, I am in favour of that – however such tests can only go so far.

A treatment, procedure or medicine that works great on skin cells for example may have disastrous effects on lung or liver function – you can’t fully know until you see the whole thing in action, and sometimes over a long term and through many different variations. Cultures, simulation and volunteers will only go so far – sooner or later someone has to take the plunge and we’re going to want to know if it can at least work in animals first.

There’s work being done right now to make organs transplants rejection free using a recipients stem cells to regrow the organ around the scaffolding from a donor, work on rats has proved that the technique can work. Actually, Ed Yong wrote an article about it back in late June, it’s a fascinating read:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/24/lungs-rebuilt-in-lab-and-transplanted-into-rats/

No amount of simulation or stand-alone tissue samples could produce those results and you’ll be damned if you’ll find any volunteers for that kind of research. The rats in these studies aren’t “disposable”, they’re precious – if they live, it gives hope that, in the future, transplant recipients can live their lives without need for anti-rejection drugs.

That’s one example among many, and that is the kind of benefits and capability you need to demonstrate through alternative methods that will make animal research obsolete. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it’s unlikely that we, as a world, can do that just yet.

They want to end all use of animals for anything, we wouldn’t be able to farm and modern society would not be possible. I suppose if PETA achieves their goals you crazies will have to form PETP people for the ethical treatment of PLANTS we’ll just have to engineer all our food from sand?

I think that all women should not be allowed to be educated and should be forced to stay inside and wear had scarves because Al-Qeada says that’s what is right and morale!…..

come on mike you can do better than that….

2) @ Mike, you speak of other ways to test these products that does not involve animals but would be more expensive, and i’m curious what methods you mean, if someone could point me in the direction of research on that subject. I personally can’t think of a way to guarantee with any sort of accuracy or repeatability the unexpected consequences of a new medication without a live test of some sort.

3) The line between advocating HUMANE animal testing and enjoyment/passive acceptance of animal pain is not (to myself) as plane as supposedly it appears.

As i type this i realize crazy joe made all the points i wanted to and in a better format. So Ditto to that.

“…risk their own lives and freedom to help these enslaved and tormented animals.”

Then they should step up and take the place of a mouse. Sign away your life and freedom to take the place of the animal you supposedly cherish so much – somehow, I doubt there’d be many takers.

I just figure they should be held to such bold statements – put your money where your mouth is and all that. It’d win them more sympathy (or at least a Darwin award) than, literally, behaving like terrorists.

mike mentioned that animal testing is only done because it’s cheaper – that there are other methods that would yield the same results or maybe even better…really. Well mike I’d love to hear what those are, care to share? Some supporting documentation that hasn’t been thoroughly discredited would be nice as well. If it’s out there I’d, sincerely, love to see it.

Animal testing is far from perfect (all human endevours are), but it provides a good model for finding possible solutions, narrowing down what could work from what absolutely won’t. Programs like World Community Grid, Rosetta and many others do alot to help simulate what we can, but there are limits to what can be accomplished in a virtual world – at some point along the way medicine and procedures need to be tested on a living thing to see what the actual results are, it’s as simple as that.

I take no joy in that knowledge but you know what? Given the choice of being the guinea pig or letting the mouse take one for the team…send in the mice. I want a solid body of evidence built up before you start testing things on people – how monstrous.

Testing on primates is always a hot button issue and I feel it should be reserved unless it’s absolutely necessary and their population isn’t endangered. I guess that’s where I draw the line, human/non-human – primates come close, and as a result they get special consideration, but at the end of the day they’re not human, no matter how much we might want them to be.

Second, even if so-called animal right activists get the hold on live HIV culture at all, HIV virus is so fragile that is lives only a few minutes outside the host body. The razors would be safe by the time of packaging (if stupidity isn’t transmitted via bodily fluids, that is).

I think the guys should donate themselves for the biomedical research, they’re not very much different from the animals, intellectually at least and it’s the only thing they can do any good, given their apparent amount of forethought and intelligence.

You cannot imbue animals with more than they have cognitively, first off. They ain’t toddlers. Some of them may have the intelligence of toddlers, perhaps.

A jellyfish? Does not have a brain.

Many others are quite capable of feeling a conscious sense of pain, of course.

Almost all of the time these days, there are no incidents where an animal is operated on unanesthetized. Those incidents that do happen are accidents, and it takes a special sort of sociopath to operate on an aware, pain-feeling animal. There’s a reason they take animals into another room to operate on them, unconsciously, or to euthanize them with an overdose of barbiturate or other substance (which is the method used for euthanasia of pets, too): it spreads to the animals. We respect our subjects.

And if idiots such as Burgess think we DELIGHT in killing an experimental animal when the study calls for it, they have absolutely no understanding of the situation in general.

Get back on the meds, crazy manchild, and your whole AIDS-ridden bunch too. I wouldn’t wish depression on anyone, having had it myself, but if you advocate outright VIOLENCE against another human being for animal testing that takes place under the most stringent of constraints and oversight with the utmost consideration for the subjects and has benefited both humans and animals so much that it more than makes up for the undeniable pang of sorrow that usually occurs when killing an experimental animal (I look at it like the Indians probably looked at the critters they killed for food: I regard these animals with complete and utter respect, and odds are I will have to do it many times in my career; I hope I can afford to make my animal subjects’ days as nice as possible while they are alive because that is the smallest price I can pay for being the bringer of their death by painless means, if I must kill them at all – and I will do my best to minimize the need to, and I could not kill an animal if its death were in vain – only kill it if it’s got a purpose that serves adequate benefit for humanity) then I hope your unmedicated depression takes you down a road of immeasurable pain.

F*ck off. You have no clue about what actually goes on in a research lab.

What are you, some numbnuts hipster-y idiot?

On another note.. how can any of you possibly bring God into this. The bible can’t make it any clearer that ‘animals do not have souls’ and ‘the beasts of the earth belong to man’ … so… they don’t have souls so god doesn’t care about them and they were given to man for whatever reason man wants to use them for. ^_^ nyah nyah

That’s because blowing up someone’s car and sending them razor blades doesn’t prove them wrong. Actions speak louder than, but not as clearly as, words. That’s why terrorists don’t get what they want.

P.S. What’s the html code to indent?

It really is disturbing that people can be so vehemently against animal testing, when we owe so much to the fact we can take lesser life form, and learn so much about what will save what really matters, us, and our children, and our children’s children.

Sticking electrodes in trusting animals brains or cutting them up sometimes without anaesthesia,feeding them pesticides etc just goes against every grain in my being.

I was taking anti-depressants due to acute depression but now I know the truth I have ceased, so from one of this grogans end consumers -YOU DON’T SPEAK FOR ME

While I do not personally agree with what they sent to him I do agree he is a perverted criminal and must be treated as such.

Peadophiles, rapists protected in jail, whats wrong with this world

They will tell you activists lie, well check this out: http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/JentschHarmsPeople.htm

The truth Hurts