The 9 Most Tested Lab Animals

An anonymous reader writes "Discover Magazine has this odd photo gallery in which they explain why certain animals are used in scientific research. Why are high-tech contact lenses always tried out in rabbits? Why do we study monogamy in prairie voles? Etc. They say of the 9 animals: 'Taken (or stitched) together, they form a kind of laboratory doppelganger for humans.'"

Comments

They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

College students.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

This list is terrible. I'm a molecular biologist, and one glaring omission is C. Elegans , a tiny little worm that is heavily used in fields such as developmental biology and genetics research. Also missing is the zebrafish, which is also really popular for genetics and developmental biology. While I've seen occasional tanks of frogs around the school, I don't think anyone researches caterpillars. I imagine if I told our (quite reputable) immunology department that they should switch to moths, they'd laugh me out of the school. How can the insect immune system be so similar considering they have an open circulatory system?

Re:They forgot one

[wizardforce]

Indeed. C. Elegans is one organism that should never ever be forgotten in terms of medical research. Sea urchins also deserve some mention as they are very important to our understanding of developmental biology.

Re:They forgot one

[reverseengineer]

To be fair, I don't think that list was meant to be comprehensive. In addition to the issues the parent mentions, it's a list of model organisms that includes naked mole rats, but not plain vanilla laboratory rats (they are mentioned in passing, I guess), so contrary to the /. article title, there's no attempt at a ranking here. In terms of a broader list of what sort of organisms are used for biological research, the Wikipedia page for model organism has a lot of examples.

While not on either list, my own work depends on an assist from horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs have a very simple but effective immune system which produces clots upon contact with bacterial endotoxins; blood is extracted from horseshoe crabs (they are caught and released) and a substance called Limulus amebocyte lysate is extracted and is used extensively to test the sterility of drugs and medical devices.

Re:They forgot one

[jackchance]

mod parent up!

The gallery is terrible. And the slashdot title is totally wrong. It is not 'The 9 Most Used Animals'. It was more like 9 animals that have been used to make interesting discoveries.

I work at Princeton University in Molecular Biology. The most studied animals are fruit flies (drosophila), c. elegans, zebrafish, mice, and rats. Frog embryos are commonly used, because they are massive. Songbirds are studied quiet a bit in neuroscience.

The vole research is interesting and well known, but it is niche. There are very few vole labs.

I do not know any lab at Princeton or NYU (my alma mater) that studies naked mole rats, moths, rabbits, pigs or dogs.

I also found it offensive that Discovery, a site supposedly dedicated to science, seem to be pandering to animal rights activists. Why mention some rare case of abuse? You want to talk animal abuse? Look at the food industry. You want to talk abuse? Look at how humans treat each other.

Re:They forgot one

[icepick72]

Songbirds are studied quiet
That's irony, to study something quiet that's naturally not quiet.

Re:They forgot one

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I've never understood why people seem to freak out so much more over lab animals than they do over agricultural ones.

For anybody supported by contemporary agricultural techniques eating animals is optional. All the suffering of animals in agricultural situations is basically inflicted because they are delicious.

By contrast, until we come up with some truly amazing advances in tissue culture and computer modelling, animals are non optional for medical research. You can either stop research, and accept massive additional morbidity and mortality, or you can kill a whole lot of animals.

And yet, for whatever strange reason, medical researchers are a whole lot more likely to get a firebomb through their mail slot. Even fur farming seems to get off more lightly. I don't understand it.

Re:They forgot one

[jackchance]

Songbirds are studied quiet
That's irony, to study something quiet that's naturally not quiet.

ooops. my bad. quite.

Re:They forgot one

[jackchance]

Exactly. Thanks for articulating what I was thinking but too pissed off to explain.

I propose that every time anyone goes to the doctor/hospital, they have to sign a consent form acknowledging that their treatment was developed using animals.

I think that would wake people up to the reality of the situation.

Although, i think this is changing. People are becoming more educated about the food industry. At least were I live in the north east US, there are tons of vegetarians.

Re:They forgot one

[Wyatt Earp]

How about a form that consents to animal testing or they don't get treated with anything that was developed with animals?

In a generation the absurd notion that animal testing is bad will die out.

Re:They forgot one

[interkin3tic]

This really just seems to be "9 interesting animal models" or maybe "I spent 10 minutes reading about animal models."

Along those lines, I study development in chickens because they're easy to study live as embryos. I've seen a lab that studied owl optical lobes, if I remember correctly because owls can't turn their eyes, and I guess the other eye's region expands to compensate. Songbirds have been used to prove that neurons are produced in adult animals, females treated with testosterone gain neurons their vocal centers. I've heard of grasshoppers being used to study neuron axon guidance. And I saw an interesting discussion of platypus sperm, they seem to have a slingshot mechanism.

Re:They forgot one

[timmarhy]

excuse me, but that's bullshit. your trying to say if we stopped animal research mortality rates would somehow massively increase? back that up please.

and no one is condoning mis treatment of animals in agriculture either. the things most farmers do to pigs and chickens is disgusting. i always buy free range, for that reason, and also because they are tastier.

the whole point i'm trying to make is it's ok to use animals, but we should always strive to be humane about it.

Re:They forgot one

[clong83]

I did meet a group that did a LOT of experiments with moths, but it had nothing to do with the immune system. They were studying the moth's neurology during flight and subjecting them to all kinds of interesting flight tests.

Interesting tidbit: They chopped off the moth's antennae and it lost the ability to fly. They glued on artificial antennae to the remaining stubs, and the power of flight was restored...

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

Warning: Not totally ontopic.

I want to have people saved by doctors/hospitals to sign a form saying that they were saved by science, research and hard-work, entirely without the assistance of God.

I imagine the researchers get a bit frustrated when they spend 3 years of their life figuring out a cure to something using scientific research... The doctor spends hours applying the vast quantities of knowledge he's gained through school. In the end, GOD gets the thanks??? The doctor gets a nod, and the researchers get ZERO recognition. How the fuck does that work?

Re:They forgot one

[wall0159]

No - the GP is saying that the reduction in morbidity and mortality that we enjoy is largely due to animal research. There are still many diseases that we don't understand and can't treat, so further research will help us further improve quality of life for sick people. If we cease research, then we won't get those benefits (or they will be significantly delayed, likely by decades and possibly by centuries).

I think people _do_ condone (albeit tacitly) the mistreatment of agricultural animals, and I think it's because of the "yuck" factor of some science research. I suspect that an average dairy cow probably lives a worse life than your average lab rat (I've worked on dairy farms, and know how appallingly they're treated).

Having said all this, there are difficult philosophical issues with animal research. For example, what's our basis of saying that it's ok to do research on animals so that people can live better? Is it because we're smarter? If so, is it therefore ok for us to do similar research on stupid or mentally retarded people? (remember that there are primate research labs, some of which use chimps - I think that is ethically very dicey).
I hate animal-rights activists - as a group they're a bunch of ignorant Luddites - there have been cases where they've dynamited animal research labs that were doing population studies of wild animals! But I do think that some scientists are a bit nonchalant when it comes to animal research.

For what it's worth, I'm vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I do believe there is a place for scientific animal research/testing at this point in time.

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

"Worldwide, it is estimated that 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals are used annually, along with a great many more invertebrates." (nearly 75% being rats and mice, monkeys being ~.09%)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing

The majority of these are done in countries with ethics commissions, were the science easy to replicate without the use of animals they'd have done so. This science makes it to products/information which does save peoples lives. Therefore, by stopping animal research the number of human saving advances occurring each year would drop dramatically. This would result in greater mortality than there would be otherwise, perhaps not massive.

That you don't seem to think animals are that important for research, and that you think we should 'strive to be humane' simply tells me you've never spoken to anyone in the field about it nor been inside a research lab. The animals are respected as can be in many places, I've even heard of some schools holding annual memorial services for the critters. There are ethics boards and rules to be followed.

And the reality of it is that sometimes there are cruel things you will need to do to test things, learning about cancers means we need to keep (likely mice) with cancer. Cancer sucks... that's why they are doing research on it.

Re:They forgot one

[TheLink]

> In the end, GOD gets the thanks?

But don't some doctors think they are God? ;)

So if you said "Thank God", he/she will just grunt in acknowledgment.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

He's saying that if we didn't have animal research, our current mortality rates would be higher. If we stopped animal research now, they would pretty much stay the same and not improve.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

God trained the doctor?

yehhhhh

Re:They forgot one

[xorsyst]

Hopefully within a generation the absurd notion that animal testing is good will die out. Animals are fixed, and there's not much we can do to improve their ability to model disease in humans. On the other hand, alternative methods are improving massively and have overtaken animal experimentation in many areas.

Animal testing is barbaric and uncivilized. It may be the best thing we've had, but that is changing and we need to keep up.

For more info, see http://www.drhadwentrust.org/faqs

Re:They forgot one

[Wyatt Earp]

Animal testing isn't just for disease, but for drugs, tape, sutures, everything.

Computer models aren't going to solve everything, animal testing and human tests will continue on for decades.

Explain to me how using a rat or a cat to test something that will save 1,000 human lives is barbaric and uncivilized.

Re:They forgot one

[bjourne]

I propose that every time anyone goes to the doctor/hospital, they have to sign a consent form acknowledging that their treatment was developed using animals.

Then everytime an American swears their Pledge of Alliancee then he should also acknowledge that his homeland was created on the backs of a genocide of 12 million Indians? Should he sign a consent form each time he wants to buy a property/stolen Indian land?

Re:They forgot one

[plastbox]

Time to be a pedantic asshat!

The Indians never owned anything. They considered themselves part of nature, and no part of nature could be owned by another.

Asshattery aside, that was some horrible stuff that happened all those centuries ago! I wholeheartedly agree that it is vital that we bring this into a debate about lab animals and medicine, as it is wholly and fully related and relevant!

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

ooooooooooooguhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

My two year old typed this reply. Just wanted to share it with /.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

Humans are easier to blame than gods if something goes wrong. When everything is over (and ended good), humans can be ignored while gods "require" constant attention.

And most importantly, people actively search for confirmations of the influence coming from their chosen / ingrained in childhood deity. And only the kind of influence they would like, the "good" one.

Re:They forgot one

[maxume]

I eat delicious animals, but it is worth pointing out that plenty of animals die in the name of keeping grains and other produce clean and/or attractive.

Re:They forgot one

[daniorerio]

Well, we DO test mentally retarded people, we subject them to the horrors of I.Q. tests and whatnot, much like we subject those chimps to similar tests. I think the kind of testing done here is vitally import. Tests done on primate will mostly be of the behaviour / learning kind, not the kind where "let's inject this tumor in the brain and see of medicine X cures it", which IS done in mice.

As mentioned above this list is horribly bad and prejudiced. I would say that in medical research the most used animals are: Fruitfly, C. elegans, Zebrafish, Mouse, Rat, Rabbit, Chicken, and far fewer labs using: chimps, flatworms (increasing popularity in stem cell research), xenopus (frogs; used to be popular in developmental biology, mostly replaced by zebrafish now), dogs and pigs.

Re:They forgot one

[crmarvin42]

I also found it offensive that Discovery, a site supposedly dedicated to science, seem to be pandering to animal rights activists. Why mention some rare case of abuse? You want to talk animal abuse? Look at the food industry. You want to talk abuse? Look at how humans treat each other.

I find it offensive that you took an opportunity to make a valid critisizm of the summary (TFA does not indicate that they are the most used), and instead used it as an opportunity to attack animal agriculture. As a researcher in the field of animal agriculture I often run into this mistaken impression. I've probably contributed 100,000 words to this topic on /. alone.

Stressed animals grow slower and put on more fat when they do grow. Animal abuse causes stress. Producers are paid a premium for lean animals and penalized for fatter animals by the slaughterhouse. Slower growing animals require more food and time to reach market weight, and even in the most efficient opperations feed costs make up more than half of all production costs. In essence, anyone routinely stressing their animals will be out of business in short order.

It continues to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people on this site continue to vomit back this sort of ill-conceived FUD, when 5 min. thinking about the realities of biology and business ought to at least make you skeptical.

Re:They forgot one

[crmarvin42]

I can't decide if you are playing devils advocate, or actually believe that animal suffering is routine in animal production and research. I'm a researcher in the field of production animal science (mostly pigs and chickens, with experince in Dairy production as an undergraduate)

Suffering implies Stress (intentionally capitalized). Stressed animals grow slower, and less efficiently (more food for the same unit increase in body weight, fetal growth, milk production, wool production, eggs layed, etc.). The profit margins on animal production are so narrow that increasing the days to market weight, or increasing the amount of feed required to get there (> 50% of total production costs) can spell the difference between making money on every pig and losing money on every pig. Furthermore, producers are routinely paid a premium for leaner animals and a penalty for fatter animals by the slaughterhouse. Stress makes the animals deposit more mass in the form of fat instead of protein.

In essence, if a farmer wants to make a profit it is in their best financial interest to minimize the stress animals experience over their entire lives. That should be a pretty convincing argument, even if you are unwilling to consider that people get into agriculture becuase they like animals and desire to work with them. This impression that large operations routinely mistreat their animals, but somehow still make a profit is completely disconnected from the biological and financial realities of the situation.

As I've said before. It continues to amaze me how many otherwise intelligent people on this site continue to vomit back this sort of ill-conceived FUD, when 5 min. thinking about the realities of biology and business ought to at least make you skeptical.

Re:They forgot one

[crmarvin42]

I think people _do_ condone (albeit tacitly) the mistreatment of agricultural animals, and I think it's because of the "yuck" factor of some science research. I suspect that an average dairy cow probably lives a worse life than your average lab rat (I've worked on dairy farms, and know how appallingly they're treated).

As someone who has also worked on a half dozen dairy farms in the north east I have to ask you WTF are you talking about. I'm asking becuase I've seen alot of people interpret management practices that minimize stress as being abuse based on the human tendancy toward anthropomorphizing (what would I want in that situation).

I've worked on operations that utilized rotational grazing and daily pasure access, as well as freestall barns with an 8x8 milking parlor, and one thing has been constant across all the farms I've worked on and that's the razor thin profit margins. Abused cows, or even more subtley stressed ones, produce less milk for the same amout of feed intake. Therefore, abusing or stressing your cows is a sure-fire way to end up filing for bankruptcy.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, that's Dr House's Line!

Re:They forgot one

[GameboyRMH]

That's not very fair. What if a fundamentalist, creationist Christian doctor who thought he was "doing God's work" wanted you to sign a form acknowledging his God as the creator of all life and master of the universe, the one who allowed you to be saved, and denouncing the theory of evolution as "incomplete and only partially correct" or something like that? (And yes there are creationist MDs. I can put you in contact with one if you don't believe me).

You could ask a patient to sign a contract, based totally in fact, that the care they received was developed in part thanks to evolutionary biology. 100% factual, doesn't ask anyone to denounce their faith, and I can support a denial of care to anyone who won't acknowledge that.

Re:They forgot one

[Bakkster]

To be fair, I think God gets a lot of the blame when things don't work out, too. And how many atheists do you think thank the researchers instead of just the doctor?

That said, most people I know thank God for providing a good doctor who performs their treatment effectively, as well as for putting them in the 80% (for example) of people for whom the treatment works. I don't know anyone who doesn't thank the doctor as well.

Re:They forgot one

[AlexiaDeath]

I was raised on a farm in Eastern Europe and abuse of cattle was never OK. Occasionally some became meat, but even that was handled with minimal suffering. To produce milk you need healthy cows and to manage them you cannot mistreat them. 500kg of angry cow is near impossible to stop. Getting crushed or gored is not funny. Getting accidentally stepped on during milking is bad enough. And even with the most domesticated beasts you need to watch out before doing something they are not used to. I once had to bring home a young cow, who didn't know anything about being lead on a leash and I put it on one, hoping to manage to keep her in control and out of neighbors vegetable garden better. I got yanked to the ground, dragged a few meters and stepped on a few times before I got to my senses and let go. Lucky I got away with only bruises, could have gone a lot worse. People who don't respect large animals dont stay in the trade very long.

Re:They forgot one

[Rary]

I've never understood why people seem to freak out so much more over lab animals than they do over agricultural ones.

Because people are ignorant.

Most people, when they think of animal research, think of animals being tortured. Those same people, when they think of agricultural practices, think of happy little family farms where animals live a wonderful life and then eventually die a quick and painless death for the greater good.

They think this way because they are also selfish. Being opposed to animal research is easy. Being opposed to animal food, on the other hand, means actually changing the way they eat. And, hey, meat is tasty. Eating it gives pleasure. Few people are willing to give up pleasure for a little thing like ethics.

Those same people usually can't be bothered to do a little research and boycott products that do invasive animal testing.

Morals are okay as long as I don't have to change my ways in order to have them.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think they're pandering. In fact, I bet PETA activists are outraged that this gallery presents medical research on animals as a generally good thing.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

The factors you mention don't play much role in, say, the whole last day of farm animal life. (as a matter of fact, don't traumatic experiences release, among other things, substances that make blood "redder"? Possibly meat looking better?)

As a side note, your place is quite exceptional on the grand scale if it treats farm animals good (even if for better profit). At the least I know how chicken farms look at my place. Plants are treated better.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

In a generation the absurd notion that animal testing is bad will die out.

Don't count on it. It doesn't matter if it happens after reproductive period. And such people are among those who usually reproduce, well, like rabbits.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

You simply try very hard to go to another doctor in such case, if circumstances permit it.

Re:They forgot one

[catbertscousin]

The doctor spends hours applying the vast quantities of knowledge he's gained through school. In the end, GOD gets the thanks??? The doctor gets a nod, and the researchers get ZERO recognition. How the fuck does that work?

The same way God is blamed every time a natural disaster or other huge and horrible thing happens.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

Uhm, no. There's this "Satan"/etc. safety valve that stops people from blaming gods too much. And even if gods are held responsible, it's always: "I wasn't good enough, I wasn't praying enough, gods are testing me, it is beyond our understanding" - they always have some excuse

And please, religious folks understanding medical statistics? Where on Earth have you seen that?

Consider: if they would understand statistics, there would be no miracles. But you hear about one from time to time, when the patient simply managed to be in the very small group that survives serious condition. But...why it's not a miracle when somebody dies from flu? Why? The mechanism is the same.

Re:They forgot one

[crmarvin42]

The factors you mention don't play much role in, say, the whole last day of farm animal life.

The transport and slaughter of livestock has undergone dramatic changes in the last 20 years, in large part as a result of the research and advocacy of Dr. Temple Grandin. I've attended a couple of her talks, and she is credited with redesigning almost every aspect of the US slaughterhouse with animal welfare in mind. She's been integral in the development and implementation of animal welfare audits at meat packing facilities and she's managed to base those assessments on empirical measures of welfare. IIRC, auditors can show up any time and they observe the handling of 100 animals and count the number of hot-shots, strikes, vocalizations, etc. If any number is greater than that allowed by the regulations, then the operation is forced to make changes or be shut down.

don't traumatic experiences release, among other things, substances that make blood "redder"? Possibly meat looking better?

Not that I'm aware of. Animals are killed and exsanguinated (blood removed) before the carcass is processed any further. Besides, meat undergoes a lot of radical changes in the first 24 hours after the animal dies that would negate such an effect even if it exists. Furthermore, I am not a muscle biologist (I'm a nutritionist), but I'm pretty sure that most of the red color in meat comes not from hemoglobin (oxygen carrier in blood), but from myoglobin (oxygen carrier within muscle cells). There is still blood in an uncooked steak, but far more myoglobin than hemoglobin, further decreasing the value of such an effect if it were to exist.

Re:They forgot one

[jc42]

Explain to me how using a rat or a cat to test something that will save 1,000 human lives is barbaric and uncivilized.

Actually, it's easy to argue that the opposite is true. If you look at the people that have generally been classified as "barbarians", you'll have trouble finding any evidence that any of them have ever used animals in scientific research. All such research (that we know of) has been done in societies that consider themselves "civilized".

So holding animals in labs to observe their reactions to assorted chemicals and diseases is "civilized" behavior. Barbarians generally keep animals for eating, riding, and as pets; they don't usually keep animals in cages and torture them for knowledge.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove irrefutably that God in no way guided the researcher and I'll sign that statement in its' entirety. This insistence that God does not/cannot exist is getting worse than the fundamental Christian simpletons. Have you forgotten that the father of the scientific method was a devout Christian? perhaps God guided his development of such a rigorous method to help ensure future discoveries because of his devotion. After all it wasn't an atheist intellectual contemporary of newtons who made the contribution, was it?

Knock it of, it's long since gotten tiresome. If you're going to bring this crap up, at least bring it in an appropriate place. Lest you legitimize more posts like this one.

Re:They forgot one

[alexo]

Prove irrefutably that God in no way guided the researcher and I'll sign that statement in its' entirety.

Prove irrefutably that an Invisible Pink Unicorn didn't.

Re:They forgot one

[interploy]

That's why it's terrible? And here I thought it was because they're parading lab animals around like it's one of MSN's 'fashion flub' pieces.

Re:They forgot one

[MuscaDomestica]

I also found it offensive that Discovery, a site supposedly dedicated to science, seem to be pandering to animal rights activists. Why mention some rare case of abuse? You want to talk animal abuse? Look at the food industry.

As someone who worked in an animal lab and a pet store I have to say the pet industry is much worse on the animals then labs.

Re:They forgot one

[Cytotoxic]

They were saying the same thing 30 years ago. I'll issue the same challenge to you now that I used to use back then: If you really believe that an alternative method to animal testing exists and is better - go out and market it. You'll be a very wealthy man by the end of the week. Fabulously, ridiculously wealthy. Animal testing is hideously expensive, and everyone who has to do it would gladly use an alternative given the chance. These economics are what drives innovation in the areas of new research models, as well as speed and scalability. The moralizing of a fringe group who is too far removed from agrarian society to understand the natural world has minimal impact, at best. Mostly they just force researchers to waste money on more security.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to be a pedantic asshat!

The Indians never owned anything. They considered themselves part of nature, and no part of nature could be owned by another.

Who told you that? Some tribes may have had differing views of personal ownership, but to pretend that they didn't believe in owning anything is just stupid. They had plenty of wars of territorial control, and many of those that were not nomadic certainly believed in personal property (head of household ownership anyway) in addition to tribal property.

For a lesson in this, hop in your time machine and go back to new mexico, circa 1000 a.d. Just move into one of those cool little mud brick houses and start using the tools and blankets. See if the occupants take issue with your presence. If they do - just remind them that you are part of nature and the house and blankets and tools are part of nature, so they cannot be owned. That'll go great for you, I'm sure.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

In certain research areas, pigs are commonly used.

The article mentions tissue/organ experiments, but the most common use of pigs is for testing of dermatological (skin) reactions.

Pig skin is quite similar to human skin, and they even get sunburn at a comparable rate.

So your sunblocker, soap, shampoo and deodorant probably have been tested on pigs first ;-)

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

I also found it offensive that Discovery, a site supposedly dedicated to science, seem to be pandering to animal rights activists. Why mention some rare case of abuse?

Are you talking about the same station that takes meerkats and adds reality show commentary/personalities to the animals? You were expecting science from them? They went lowest common denominator long ago.
Hey, lets tune in to The Learning Channel and see how "smart people" TV is doing there? Ewwwww!
Well at least SciFi will still have a home for nerds... Pro Wrestling WTF?!
At least TechTV still..... %$#@!!!!!!!

Re:They forgot one

[Yewbert]

I work at a large pharmaceutical research and manufacturing company, and have supported areas that do toxicology and various quality testing in late-stage development and production stages (not necessarily early, primary research). I've known first-hand of rabbits, rats (possibly also mice), monkeys (not sure what kind), beagles, cows and some kind of freshwater fish (not sure what kind) being used in those areas. I'm sure there are others I don't remember or never knew about, but I'm pretty sure none of them were bugs, birds or reptiles.

The animals we use are treated extremely carefully, for several reasons.

Partially, because the people who work directly with them respect them and have no wish to be cruel.

Partly because we have to comply fully with federal guidelines on housing laboratory animals (the mandated conditions as far as temperature, humidity and cleaning/watering schedules are part of what I had to ensure were built into some environmental control systems,...).

But even MORE because: Animals bred for laboratory use are #*&$%&^%#$ expensive. The purchase price of the monkeys we use is on the order of $50,000 (US) each, and tox studies don't use only one at a time. Add to that the fact that it's very easy to invalidate an ongoing study and have to replace the whole cohort and start over - sometimes something as seemingly innocuous as audible noise, detectable vibration from outside the animal area or the animals being exposed to light during "night" hours can trash a study on psychoactive APIs if the observed variables include stress reactions - and you realize why animal testing is just not done frivolously.

So, yes, I'm with you on the perspective being a bit skewed in terms of commentary on animal treatment in scientific research.

Re:They forgot one

[fataugie]

So am I supposed to feel guilty that they couldn't defend themselves better? There was horrible atrocities committed by indians and whites.....so?
How is that different than normal life in that time, previous or even present day?

We won...they lost.
Or did they....they own the casinos that vacuum dollars out of our pockets...eh?

Re:They forgot one

[Bowling Moses]

Before I jumped from a molecular biology department and into an entomology lab, I think I had a similar perspective. Nobody does research on caterpillars. Why would they? Insects are a bunch of squirmy, unpleasant, gross bugs. That's a pretty common view and goes back a while too. Lamarck's (one of the guys credited with creating the term "biology," the guy who came up with the term "invertebrates," and same guy who came up with Lamarckian evolution in the late 1700's) peers made fun of him for studying things that crawl in the dirt. But people study insects, insects are important. In comparison mammals are a minor clade, a mere curiosity, were it not for the fact that we happen to be mammals.

The number one through 995,123.8 of the top agricultural pests are insects. Some of the greatest spreaders of human disease are insects. Rats get most of the coverage about the Bubonic Plague/Black Death, but they're a couple steps removed: Bubonic Plague is caused by the bacterium Y. pestis, carried and introduced to humans by bites from fleas, which are carried on flea transporters (rats), which spread to the New World on rat transporters (ships). Malaria, Dengue Fever, Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, and several other diseases are all spread by the heat-seaking flying syringes aka mosquitoes. Ticks transmit a couple varieties of encephalitis-causing viruses, as well as the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. Sand fleas spread the protozoan parasite that causes Leishmaniasis. Bedbugs are on their way back in a big way and can spread at least 20 different diseases, including potentially Chagas (which can also be spread by assassin bugs) and Hepatitis B.

Besides being of great interest with respect to human health and agriculture insects are also useful as model organisms. Everybody here who's had Biology 101 has heard of the genetic experiments on fruit flies (which are ongoing), but there are other model organisms as well. Off the top of my head I can think of Manduca sexta (commonly called tobacco hornworm, also a moth), Tribolium castaneum (red flour beetle), and Bombyx mori (silk worm, also a moth). Manduca's used as a model organism in neuroscience as it's huge (larvae up to 4 inches long), raising is quick, easy, and cheap, and they're easy to dissect (and without all the regulatory issues that vertebrate researchers have to deal with). It, and other insects, are also used in immunology research as some of the same proteins and pathways exist in moths and humans, for instance the Toll-like receptor/Interlukin-1 receptor superfamily. Insects are probably still the most important organisms when it comes to understanding the molecular biology underlying development; Hox genes were discovered in fruit flies. Lots of people are studying insects, caterpillars even, but funding...well that's an issue. Personally I think we could cut the cancer budget by a third and still have a lot of fat left over. But then I'm not in a cancer lab.

Re:They forgot one

[ChrisMaple]

Invisible and pink are mutually exclusive. Q.E.D.

FWIW, "God" as usually defined, is also self-contradictory.

Re:They forgot one

[Roxton]

I've seen such thanklessness quite often. A relative of mine gave birth to an infant with a serious congenital heart defect. Many members of the church took several hours out of their week to hold prayerful vigils. That's a tremendous expenditure of effort. But do you think one of them bothered to write a thank you note to the surgeon who performed heroic surgery? Relatedly, do you think any one of those die-hard conservatives praised the government policies that gave my relative additional coverage for the operation?

These failings are understandable. On a very fundamental level, people need to feel a measure of control. Prayer gives that to people on the cheap. Acknowledging the relevancy of the secular actors involved takes that sense of control away; it's emotionally crippling. On the other hand, this ultimately skews public policy and turns us into graceless cretins.

Re:They forgot one

[alexo]

Invisible and pink are mutually exclusive. Q.E.D.

So are "Virgin" and "Mother".

Re:They forgot one

[Bakkster]

Uhm, no. There's this "Satan"/etc. safety valve that stops people from blaming gods too much. And even if gods are held responsible, it's always: "I wasn't good enough, I wasn't praying enough, gods are testing me, it is beyond our understanding" - they always have some excuse

I dunno, I tend to hear a lot more "Why did you let them die, God" than "Why did you let them die, Dr. Soandso".

And please, religious folks understanding medical statistics? Where on Earth have you seen that?

Consider: if they would understand statistics, there would be no miracles. But you hear about one from time to time, when the patient simply managed to be in the very small group that survives serious condition. But...why it's not a miracle when somebody dies from flu? Why? The mechanism is the same.

One can understand statistics and also believe that they can be manipulated. Are you claiming that the many religious mathematicians, scientists, and engineers do not understand statistics?

For example, statistics tells us that if we roll a standard die, our likelyhood of rolling a 6 is 1/6. However, if the die roll is obscured and only the final result is seen, it could be a reasonable assumption that a 3rd party may be modifying the result of the rolls. Whether there is evidence or not, it is possible, and would be silly to assume there is no possible way it couldn't be modified.

So, for those who believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent diety, miracles and statistics are consistent with each other. Your issue is not with misunderstandings of statistics, but rather with belief in afforementioned diety.

Re:They forgot one

[Bakkster]

But do you think one of them bothered to write a thank you note to the surgeon who performed heroic surgery?

I do expect that your relatives thanked their doctor, they're the ones who should be thanking him.

I don't generally see people thanking they had no contact with ("hey, I'm going to thank your barber for giving you a good haircut"), though they may pass their praise along through the original person ("tell your barber he did a good job"). I would expect the same in this situation ("pass along our thanks to the surgeon, please").

Re:They forgot one

[Wyatt Earp]

Barbaric societies generally didn't do research, so you lack a point.

By your standard Nazi Germany is going to be among the highest and least barbaric of modern societies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany

"...those who "still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property" will be sent to concentration camps."

Re:They forgot one

[KraftDinner]

Whenever someone is cured, they say, "Praise the Lord for healing me". A hurricane runs through town, they say, "Oh well, God works in mysterious ways".

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

Citations you provide seem to agree with what I'm saying. It's "Why did you let them die, God", implying harm from the fact, wondering about it...but not "you have brought this to us for nothing, it's all your fault!"/etc.

As for statistics - surely you must realize that being a scientist, even a statistician specifically, doesn't automatically cause one to use those methods in daily life. Or doesn't automatically cause one to dismiss things we were brought into from our earliest days - it's damn hard, much more than pursuing a career path which is a bit disconnected from the social experiences of first dozen years of life.

I still think there's a lot of dismissive (perhaps that's the better word than "not understanding") attitude towards statistics. It's how we evolved, noticing useful and unusual things more...even if they really aren't that unusual. Regrowing a limb, surviving complete decapitation - those would be miracles (yes, and the science might give them to us eventually)

Re:They forgot one

[Bakkster]

As for statistics - surely you must realize that being a scientist, even a statistician specifically, doesn't automatically cause one to use those methods in daily life. Or doesn't automatically cause one to dismiss things we were brought into from our earliest days - it's damn hard, much more than pursuing a career path which is a bit disconnected from the social experiences of first dozen years of life.

Absolutely, my issue is more with the GP's claim that the religious have less 'understanding' of statistics than others. It's absolutely human nature to dismiss statistics for psychological reasons. It has nothing to do with the implied naiivete of 'religious folks'.

Re:They forgot one

[jc42]

Barbaric societies generally didn't do research, so you lack a point.

Huh? That was my point. I was basically responding to the people who call animal research "barbaric" by pointing out that barbarians aren't known for doing any sort of scientific research, on animals or anything else. So if you're complaining about the ethics of some sort of research, you're probably talking about the self-styled "civilized" societies.

(Actually, whether this is true or not isn't really known. I've seen historians point out that until about 1900, an American would have had better luck going to an Indian "witch doctor" for help rather than the European-style doctors, because the Indian healers had better medical technology until around then. And other historians have explained that this was because the Indians' healers in fact understood basic scientific methods, and knew how to test whether their treatments worked. Their problem was being part of a closed medical "guild" tradition that kept their discoveries secret. The advances in modern medicine weren't due to knowledge of scientific methods, because people have discovered those throughout history. The advances were mostly due to the new approach of open publication, so people could read and build on each other's knowledge. Anyway, it's likely that many barbarians have known how to do controlled studies. It's just that their discoveries didn't get passed on well, due to a lack of methods to share discoveries with other like-minded people.)

Re:They forgot one

[Jyms]

I'm vegetarian for ethical and environmental reasons, but I do believe there is a place for scientific animal research/testing at this point in time.

I love this. I had a girlfriend who was a vegetarian for "environmental reasons". As we drove through the wheat fields on the way to my dad's "meat farm" I asked her to observe nature. When we got to my dad's farm I asked her to compare the environmental impact.

Wheat fields - lush and green, but no natural vegetation anywhere in sight.
"Meat fields" - dry and arid, with undisturbed nature as far as the eye can see.

I have never understood how any environmentally conscious person can eat wheat, rice, maize or soya. Just for reference, here is meat.

For the uninformed and totally ignorant. Meat is farmed in arid areas. Areas are not arid because meat is farmed there. If you have sufficient rainfall/water and a suitable climate, you bulldoze the place and produce (produce) fruit, vegetables, grain, fiber, etc. If not, you try and preserve nature as best you can so that you can use it for grazing. No flora means no income. As for fauna, while efforts are made to manage fauna in grazed areas, pretty much all fauna is considered vermin in ploughed fields.

A meat farmer may destroy the natural habitat by using poor farming methods, but this will inevitably lead to his downfall. A vegetable, wheat, maize, soy, etc. farmer must destroy the natural environment if he wishes to produce anything. And yes, if you wish to produce vegetables in your rooftop garden or basement, you have still destroyed the natural environment first.

So, if you care about nature, eat meat, be it red meat, white meat or fish.

Re:They forgot one

[dpilot]

> I've never understood why people seem to freak out so much more over lab animals than they do over agricultural ones.

Quite simple... "Somebody Else's Problem" To freak out over agricultural animals might compel them to take action - maybe even change their lifestyles or something. It's much easier to freak out over lab animals where the it appears that the only ones directly affected are the researchers and the Evil Megacorporations who employ them. Never mind that their lives have very likely been made better, if not outright saved, by some of that research done on lab animals in the past. That's a sufficiently diffuse connection that most people wouldn't realize that an outright ban on lab animals would very likely hurt their grandchildren, if not their children or themselves.

I don't have a problem with the use of lab animals, though of course I'd prefer it be done wisely, humanely, and not wastefully.

I could say the same thing about food animals, though I don't do as good a job of being consistent, there.
- I've no problem with hunting, as long as the meat is used. I don't like the idea of cutting off the rack and leaving the body to rot. (or get scavenged) At the very least, a hunted animal has a chance to get away, which a farm/stockyard animal doesn't.
- Along that line, I don't fish anymore. The fish nearby have safe consumption limits, and I'm not into the idea of catch-and-release.
- I don't eat veal - the conditions are inhumane. If I were better, I'd shop more carefully for meat and poultry in general. The "factory farm" in addition to being inhumane, externalizes a lot of cost in terms of waste - the classic farm, with the mix of crops and animals, has on-site usage for that.

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

I do look at it more as "dismissive" (luckily I did find this word in my vocabulary in previous post ;p - not a native EN speaker), yes. Yet it still does correlate, IMHO, with wide area of religiosity, especially if looking at it from the aspect of "oversensitive alertness".

Even, I guess, with more religious among people specifically - you have to ask yourself, what kind of mental characteristics allowed non-religious ones to...become non-religious (in the world around us that's still the case from what I see; most of those people were brought up traditionally); seems reasonable to suspect they would use it in daily life more, too.

Re:They forgot one

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Though, if the popularity of bear-baiting and similar blood sports was anything to go by, barbarians do keep animals in cages and torture them for fun...

Re:They forgot one

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I was largely talking about failure to realize expected future gains(large numbers of people who are sick or dead now; but could plausibly be expected to be cured with further research); but it is also the case that mortality rates will increase if research stops.

Pathogenic entities, bacteria, viruses, prions, are evolving all the time. If we don't manage our use of the drugs we have, and introduce novel ones from time to time, the efficacy of the drugs we have will decrease against the evolved population of pathogens. morbidity and mortality from those causes will increase, quite possibly substantially.

Re:They forgot one

[jc42]

Maybe we just have to face the fact that torturing animals for fun and profit is a universal human behavior. You can especially see it in the ways that young children interact with pets. Sorta makes one ashamed for one's species.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Invisible and pink are mutually exclusive. Q.E.D.

So are "Virgin" and "Mother".

I get your point, but I'm feeling pedantic today.

First, the word "mother" can apply to a social role just as much as it can apply to a biological role. There's nothing stopping a virgin from adopting a child and becoming a mother. Conversely, a woman can give up her newborn child at birth and cease to be a mother.

Second, a virgin can be artificially inseminated.

Of course, your point that Mary is supposedly both a virgin and a biological mother at a time before artificial insemination still stands.

Re:They forgot one

[Wyatt Earp]

American Indian healers were known as Shaman or Medicine Men, not witch doctors.

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

That is incorrect.

Being a Virgin just means that you never had Sex. Therefore a women who gets an embryo implanted through IVF could become a mother without ever having sex.

Therefore she would be both a mother and a virgin.

Re:They forgot one

[Urkki]

Explain to me how using a rat or a cat to test something that will save 1,000 human lives is barbaric and uncivilized.

Same way as using a newborn completely orphan baby to test something (the same way it'd be tested on a rat or a cat) that will save 1,000 lives is barbaric and uncivilized. An adult cat or rat, and especially an ape is certainly more aware and more intelligent than a newborn baby. And let's add that the baby is disabled/handicapped in some clear way.

How do you justify drawing a line that classifies newborn disabled orphan baby testing as barbaric, but says that healthy adult ape testing is just fine?

(Note: I'm not absolutely against animal testing, and I certainly like to sink my teeth into a juicy steak even though I think both are barbaric, yet I'd be almost (meaning stuff like survival of human species not directly depending on it) absolutely against doing same tests on human babies no matter if it's barbaric or not.)

Re:They forgot one

[TempeTerra]

I don't have a source, but I've been told that stress chemicals released before slaughter will make meat taste worse. This was given as a reason why meat from small farms often tastes better; in a slaughterhouse the animal is in a stressful environment full of the smell dead relatives; from a small farm the animal was probably killed by a familiar handler in a relatively normal environment.

Re:They forgot one

[Ihmhi]

This makes me wonder somethin'. We raise animals for their byproducts (milk, cheese, wool), so why aren't there things like horseshoe crab farms?

Re:They forgot one

[alexo]

I would say that having a "natural" birth (i.e., not a C-section) pretty much destroys your chances of keeping your hymen intact.

Re:They forgot one

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Having said all this, there are difficult philosophical issues with animal research. For example, what's our basis of saying that it's ok to do research on animals so that people can live better? Is it because we're smarter? If so, is it therefore ok for us to do similar research on stupid or mentally retarded people?

At the risk of sounding like a total asshole, I think I have a possible answer to that question of why it's okay we do research on animals. Frankly, it seems to me to be Darwinian in nature. The reason we, as humans, are where we are at in the world is because we evolved the natural mechanisms to out-compete a number of other species for dominance. Think about it, social habits allowed us to prevail over larger, faster, more aggressive predators. Mental developments allowed us to abstract into the realm of pattern recognition that has helped us survive everything from the weather to migrating food sources (herds), and so on.

Having made it where we are, today, by constant exposure to Darwinian competition (even amongst ourselves via the constant waging of war for resources and so on) seems to have given us an entitlement to the top of the hill complex. Hell, maybe the feeling that we are entitled to be on top is precisely what makes us so aggressive as a species and thus so successful. That being said, I think the reason we feel entitled or feel morally just in performing our science on animals or chimps (also animals) or whatever, might stem from the fact that doing our very crude science on those same animals and, for that matter, the rest of our surroundings, is precisely one of the factors that has allowed us to set apart from the rest of nature. In other words, mankind long ago used to observe patterns in nature to gain an advantage over competing species. Maybe we observed some animals that migrated during cold periods so we emulated them to survive cold times etc. Thus, observing those things around us is a part of what allowed us to 'dominate' the rest of the species of this world. Today, we have taken that to an extreme. Now we still observe our surroundings, but we first manipulate the situation to learn something very specific. In other words, our very learning abilities have evolved because those capable of separating controlled and uncontrolled observations tended to have better ideas that were more widely adopted and those that didn't.

So what makes us feel it is okay to work on lesser species? The very fact that they are a lesser species, precisely because we worked on them in the first place. It's cyclical, sure. And I have no idea if there is any kind of research whatsoever to back up my claim. So keep in mind that it is, indeed, just an idea. Nonetheless, it's an interesting one in my opinion.

Re:They forgot one

[Ihmhi]

I recall an episode of Scrubs where the interns learn to do sutures by using oranges. 100 years from now we're going to have fruit and vegetable rights activists complaining about that.

Re:They forgot one

[SnEptUne]

Hymen means nothing.

Re:They forgot one

[SnEptUne]

Depends, the so-called Satan is a recent invention.

Just look at the old testament, it is commonly believed during those time that everything proceed according to God's will, that God harden Pharaoh's heart and kill all first born of Egypt. This I found is a better model because in real life, shit happens, and it happens because of cause and effect, which is what the notion of God is originally modeled after.

Re:They forgot one

[vikstar]

[insects] have an open circulatory system

I just read what that means, and you freaked me out. Cockroaches seem so much more disgusting to me now.

Re:They forgot one

[vikstar]

Songbirds are studied quiet a bit in neuroscience

Kandel mentioned his use of Aplysia in neuroscience, is it also used often by the rest of the neuroscience community?

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant! This is slashdot!

Re:They forgot one

[sznupi]

I don't think you should use that argument much...unless you want to be accused of much more massive selective reading of those texts then it's typical. Nvm that it's sensible to care mostly about current / recent (as in "last thousand years") state of affairs.

And gods aren't about "cause and effect". Or rather, they are a subgroup of that issue; they are about unknown cause and effect; about will of humans to grasp, fear less, and control that unknown (look carefully - all successful religions revolve around controlling reality by humans)

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hey Nebraska", I heard a voice behind me call, "I'll earmark you $45 million if you eat it."

I admit it, I LOL'd here. A couple of the other changes, like the bit about the pork, were solid gold, too.

Well-played, you magnificent (but still sick) bastard!

Re:They forgot one

[Reziac]

One of the hallmarks of the animal rights types is to claim to have worked in thus-and-such a capacity, but then to make claims that are utterly counter to the normal activities of that job. In some cases it's sheer malicious fabrication, but in others it's that a city mindset can't wrap itself around the reality of manure.

As you say -- it's the same in both farm and laboratory settings: everything possible is done to reduce or better yet eliminate stress on the animals, because stress 1) reduces productivity thus damages farm profits, and 2) invalidates laboratory test results thus increases costs. Plain old economics. The ARs count on the public's ignorance of those little facts when they claim that farms and laboratories "torture animals for fun and profit".

Re:They forgot one

[Green Salad]

How about a form that consents to animal testing or they don't get treated with anything that was developed with animals?

I'd prefer to provide a consent form that explained "to reduce medical testing on animals, you authorize us to test the procedure on you."

Re:They forgot one

[Reziac]

As you've been told, the object is to have calm, unstressed animals, because stressed meat can taste rank. But commercial livestock are used to being handled via chutes -- and they don't know that the chute at the slaughterhouse that ends with the captive-bolt pistol is any different from the chute that sorts 'em at the feed bunk and ends with a nice tasty grain mash. Steer A has no idea that Steer B just got it between the eyeballs. (And trust me, several thousand freaked-out steers wouldn't wind up slaughtered; they'd tear the building apart.)

Anyway, stressed meat is pretty durn rare -- it's not like a gutshot deer that you had to trail half a mile before it died and is gamey because of that. In fact I've never tasted commercial meat that had any gameyness whatever. -- Beyond that, flavour is largely dependent on finishing (grain makes for a richer taste than grass, but grass is cheaper) and aging the carcass.

The problem with grocery-store meat over the past couple decades isn't anything to do with the slaughterhouse. Rather, it's the distribution process -- it's become more centralized, leading to longer times in the pipeline. My friend who worked 30 years as a meatcutter for a major grocery chain told me they usually threw out a third of every carton because it had been pre-butchered (boned and cut up), then was in transit too long and had gone slimey. If your farm-fresh carcass was passed down the same chain, it would be just as bad. -- Conversely, Sam's Club still does their own butchering (no pre-boned cuts spending 3 days in a warehoused carton enroute) so their meat is fresh.

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

"Many members of the church took several hours out of their week to hold prayerful vigils. That's a tremendous expenditure of effort."

Not helpful though, studies show that prayer does not actually help. :/ That'd be awesome if it did. :D

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

I'm sure atheists don't go an mail the researchers no. BUT atheists don't threaten them with bodily harm. They don't leave bombs on the front step. They vote to increase funding into research. They understand the value of the research and are thankful for it if not directly.

(Yes this is all generally speaking, there will be overlap both ways)

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

Parent's post is a good example of why we need this. The level of delusion is worrying.

"Have you forgotten that the father of the scientific method was a devout Christian?"
Who? ... The greeks Aristotle/Socrates? ... Obviously not christian.
The muslims, Alhazen? Seriosuly NOT christian.
Descartes?? The guy lived during the time of Galileo and feared the church would kill him... his books banned by the church.
Francis Bacon was Anglican in name only. And never made any shows of support for the church.
John Stuart Mill? Not remotely religious neither were his parents. He refused to go to oxford/cambrige because they were christian/anglican...

So I really don't know who you could mean. Newton had nothing to do with the scientific method, he made calculus, worked on physics, and yes he was quite religious. BTW he was regarded as an occultist heretic by the catholic church.

Anyways I'm sure today the vast majority of scientific researchers are non-religious, >95% probably >98%.

Re:They forgot one

[crmarvin42]

Thank you for your input. I'm getting a little tired of repeating myself and it's nice to see someone who has a modicum of knowledge contributing other than myself.

Re:They forgot one

[chessbase]

testuinbh

Re:They forgot one

[Reziac]

Welcome.... I grew up in Montana ranch country so clues came with the territory :) What with most people being totally disconnected from farm reality (now that we have a 3rd generation raised away from the farm and not even grandma has memories to pass along) it's become too easy for the ARs to generate "animal theatre" (the AR equivalent of security theatre) -- and be believed by the great unwashed.

Much to the glee of foreign meat producers....

Re:They forgot one

[Anonymous Coward]

Test this

Re:They forgot one

[Bakkster]

I'm sure atheists don't go an mail the researchers no. BUT atheists don't threaten them with bodily harm. They don't leave bombs on the front step.

Extremists and radicals of any color do ridiculous shit, they don't really belong to the group they are radicals from (hence the name). Some pro-choice guy from near my hometown shot two anti-abortion activists because they were holding signs, that doesn't mean pro-choice activists are violent and shoot those who disagree with them.

It's better to just focus on the mainline and ignore the radicals, because otherwise everyone becomes a whacko.

Re:They forgot one

[Idiomatick]

"Extremists and radicals of any color do ridiculous shit, they don't really belong to the group they are radicals from (hence the name)."

Only sort of... excessive philanthropists aren't dangerous, nor are excessive programmers or excessive plenty of things. Because they aren't dangerous they are excessive not extremist. The things you hear about extremists in are generally doing excessive BAD things... because a lot of a bad thing is really shitty.

This is because radicalism/extremism is seen from our point of view. Radicals are people so obsessed with something that we decide it is bad. For example, to be a radical a Buddhist would have to be REALLY REALLY extreme to start doing crazy shit. But to be a radical muslim or christian it takes a lot less. Hell, just following the bible word for word would likely get you put in jail fairly quickly.

As an atheist you'd have to be pretty damn crazy and pretty damn excessive to get the radical or extremist title. That is because unlike religions it doesn't lend its self as directly to crazies or what we'd call undesirable behavior. Atheist tenants are like... try to better understand the workings of the universe... don't believe demonstrably false shit or stuff that is unprovable... Excess of these things aren't as dangerous as... believing there is a magical man that will forgive you and bring you joy if you worship him and ask for apologies. That demons are real, magic is cause of the devil... so on and so on.

Ok, new plan...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I say that we cease research on whatever animals in that gallery are cutest, and start testing on web developers who use Flash to do things that could easily have been done without.

Lest I be accused of being inhumane, any such web developer who can show that his boss forced him to do so may personally perform the experiments on his boss.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

If he forced me to do it with 64-bit Flash, can I repeat the experiment 64 times?

Re:Ok, new plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear, hear!

You know, HTML5 was/is supposed to remove some of the egregious Flash usage, but man, I think this one was probably covered in HTML0.1.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[dgatwood]

Nah. You'd need at least JavaScript and CSS3 (which in practice probably means an HTML-4-compliant browser) to do the transitions and stuff.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[CoolGopher]

Amen. I was actually going to RTFA, but my NoScript just showed a big blocked element on that page, with nothing to read.
Why did that abomination even get to the /. frontpage?

Re:Ok, new plan...

[Mr_Plattz]

Or anyone who created a Geocities website with Hit Counter in 1995.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[supernova_hq]

No, you can repeat it 2^64 times :D

Re:Ok, new plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

I was 11 cut me some slack.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[jbengt]

I agree.
I refuse to read thru something as "pretty" and content-sparse as that. Much worse than a regular text article with a couple of page clicks.

Re:Ok, new plan...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you see, the article has pictures in it. You can't do pictures without Flash, right?

>.>

humane testing

[timmarhy]

I'm all for testing as long as it doesn't cause apprechiable suffering for the animal. limited tempary discomformt i can live with, but making another living thing which feels pain live or die in agony is as evil an act as i can imagine.

especially when it's for something shallow like cosmetic testing.

Re:humane testing

[novafluxx]

I'm all for testing as long as it doesn't cause apprechiable suffering for the animal. limited tempary discomformt i can live with, but making another living thing which feels pain live or die in agony is as evil an act as i can imagine.

especially when it's for something shallow like cosmetic testing.

I agree 100% with that.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

abortion?

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

what about it, do you need one?

Re:humane testing

[Darkness404]

The thing is though, I'd much rather a dog, mouse, or even a monkey suffer compared to a human. Plus, how the hell does cosmetic testing make something feel pain? Unless you are putting acid in your mascara or something in which case I'd rather something live in agony then that make it to store shelves!

Re:humane testing

[kestasjk]

What about if it may save many human lives? Cosmetic testing is probably not as bad as drug/vaccine/antibiotic testing or general research, which can be pretty horrific and is pretty much guaranteed to cause great sufferring, but all those things are fundamental to our ability to save many people.

The world would be much worse for us without medical research, but it does create what might as well be factories of suffering for lab animals. They even breed lab animals specifically with the worst genetic diseases, which would be the ultimate cruelty if it didn't bring the possibility of future cures.
Hard not to be conflicted about it I think.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither a fetus nor a rabbit is a sentient creature, and we can kill them at our whim.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

abortion?

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

it's no common now, but in the past they tested chemicals on animals that would burn their skin or give them ulcers. i put it to you that no animal should suffer a single day so that some teenage emo can wear a new eye liner.

Re:humane testing

[Tigersmind]

What about if it may save many human lives? Cosmetic testing is probably not as bad as drug/vaccine/antibiotic testing or general research, which can be pretty horrific and is pretty much guaranteed to cause great sufferring, but all those things are fundamental to our ability to save many people.

The world would be much worse for us without medical research, but it does create what might as well be factories of suffering for lab animals. They even breed lab animals specifically with the worst genetic diseases, which would be the ultimate cruelty if it didn't bring the possibility of future cures.

Hard not to be conflicted about it I think.

Better them than me.

See how easy that was :)

Re:humane testing

[Darkness404]

If making eyeliner burns skin or gives ulcers, I'd say the cosmetic company is doing something seriously, terribly wrong.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither are many layers of the US Government (Including CEOs),

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

I'm not naive about it, i do understand many treatments that keep people alive to do were born out of some pretty horrific animal testing. But what i do think is that we SHOULD feel bad about it, and it should motovate us to find alternatives that get the same result with less cruelty. too often in labs this is glossed over and researchers don't stop to think about it.

I will qualify this with the fact i don't think all animals are equal. an ant for example doesn't feel the same pain as an animal with a more complex nervous system.

And you see here's the thing about animal cruelty. it invariably leads to cruelty to humans, because such a low value is placed on life and it desensitises people to suffering. you'll find a direct correlation between people that are cruel to animals and how they treat other people.

Re:humane testing

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'd be curious to see that researched(or, if it already has been, the numbers).

It is definitely the case that people who take up animal cruelty, for its own sake, are Seriously Bad News. It also wouldn't surprise me if 40 hours/week of slaughterhouse or animal tech work lends one a certain detachment.

However, it is also the case that people are really good at compartmentalizing what they do. It isn't obvious that people whose motive is research, rather than animal cruelty for its own sake, are especially disposed to be cruel in other areas. Indeed, it isn't even necessarily the case that they are placing a low value on life. Medical research does tend to imply minimum ratios between the values of various lives(how many test animals used vs. how many lives saved) which can be uncomfortable; but assigning ratios is not necessarily the same as devaluing.

Re:humane testing

[Toonol]

So you don't care about kids that might drink shampoo, or the effects if they get some in their eye?

Re:humane testing

[Americium]

How do you think they test drugs for the heart? Either test them on a human, then dissect the human, and then kill the human.... or use dogs and then kill the dog. There is always a price to pay for progress, sometimes with money (labor), sometimes by other means... personally I want to live forever, and if takes a couple dogs for immortality, so be it.

Perhaps you don't want cures for diseases or drugs that make you live longer. Unless you only want A.I. to live forever, this is the only way.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

what about it, did your mother need one?

Re:humane testing

[atamido]

Either test them on a human, then dissect the human, and then kill the human....

I really hope the order of that is wrong.

Re:humane testing

[panthroman]

especially when it's for something shallow like cosmetic testing.

...or like cheaper hamburgers?

Sorry. As a vegetarian biologist, this is just an inconsistency that I see constantly. "How can you be vegetarian and use antibodies that came from lab rabbits in your research?!" Easy: the cost/benefit ratio is wildly different. I don't understand how McDonald's-eating folks complain about animal testing.

Re:humane testing

[Darkness404]

They don't test (for example) shampoo by giving the test animal a nicer shower. You force the animal to ingest (to test what would happen if a child drank the bottle). Or dripping the shampoo into the test animal's eye. I'm sure you can imagine other scenarios.

...So they make sure that the shampoo won't kill a living being if it is ingested? I think that is a rather sane thing to do. Similarly with putting things in their eyes, I don't want shampoo that will blind me if I get a bit of it in my eye.

These tests are often unnecessary & you can't really be sure that the test animal & a human subject would react in the same way in any case.

Sure, but its a lot better for a dog to lose an eye than for a human being to. Or to kill a few mice rather than someone's toddler. And sure, you can't be 100% sure that they will react the same, but you can sure weed out any disastrous effects.

Seriously, if you thought about this for a fraction of a minute before posting, you would've figured this out. Are you some sort of retard who types without thinking?

Are you some kind of bleeding-heart idiot who thinks that a mouse's life is worth more than a human's life? Guess what? I think -all- of us have gotten shampoo in our eyes and probably managed to get some of it in our mouths at one point or another. I think you would have a quite different opinion of this issue if you were blinded/killed by your shampoo.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

abortion?!

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

cosmetic testing or religion...

Re:humane testing

[Seraphim_72]

And as a Botanist I don't see how you gain any moral high ground by killing plants. Stating a "cost/benefit ratio" tells me that you are veg that isn't internally comfortable with being a veg. I am a veg also, yet I have problems with plant testing - namely Monsanto (and you should too). Substitute 'meat' 'omnivore' and 'McDs' at your leisure. I gues the point I am after is that you can consume a product and still protest it. And FWIW I have zero issues with animal testing. I have known many good dogs in my life. But I have never met one that I wouldn't sacrifice for the life of a friend.

Sera

Re:humane testing

[panthroman]

And as a Botanist I don't see how you gain any moral high ground by killing plants.

Because plants can't suffer. It's not the killing that bothers me, it's the suffering.

I'd say capacity for suffering goes something like:
humans > cows > fish > bivalves > tomato plants > sand

Re:humane testing

[supernova_hq]

Yeah, but when we start shooting, they throw the rabbits at us and use the fetus's as meat-shields.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've gone from:

how the hell does cosmetic testing make something feel pain?

to:

...So they make sure that the shampoo won't kill a living being if it is ingested? I think that is a rather sane thing to do. Similarly with putting things in their eyes, I don't want shampoo that will blind me if I get a bit of it in my eye.

You really are a fucking idiot aren't you?

Re:humane testing

[Seraphim_72]

And you say you are a biologist?? Go do a bit of research. Plants know when other local plants die. Sure - it works at plant speed - but it does work. And though I understand your scale, You have decided that you draw a line at tomatoes. Why not bivalves or fish? Because plants cant move when you kill them? Don't get me wrong here, I said before I am a veg also and I meant it. But you have to give me more than a level of suffering.

Sera

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

here's the thing, if you are putting a chemical into a shampoo you think might blind someone, wtf are you doing?!?! burning out some poor animals eye while it squeals in pain isn't worth it imho. buy dead animals (there's a whole market out there of animals that died from natural causes or are humanely put down for various reasons) or test it out on a synthetic analog.

we have a good enough grasp on chemistry that such experiements on animals shouldn't be done.

and there is no absolute value on life either, i'm sure the dog thinks it's life is worth more then yours and would run for it's life if it could, leaving you with your own eyes burning. to condone such frivilous animal testing makes you a callous fucker.

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

plants can't feel pain, they have no nervous system buddy. like we said, it's not the killing, it's the suffering. i'm pro right to die as well btw, i don't think you should let humans suffer either.

Re:humane testing

[Seraphim_72]

They react to being hurt. Pain as you know it? No. They bleed, they will hurry and scatter their young when they are hurt. Many give their entire lives so that their young may live. And I would be careful about saying they have no nervous system. Certainly not as we know one I agree, but you can trauma a plant and it's neighbors will respond.

Re:humane testing

[timmarhy]

http://vetmed.illinois.edu/petcolumns/showarticle.cfm?id=413 if you google around you'll see the links are very clear, especially with young children. once they become comfortable abusing animals, when they grow up abusing people become 2nd nature to them. Obviously people performing research aren't going to suddenly become killers, but i think as a society the attitude that it's ok to hurt animals needs to be fought, since it rubs off on the next generation. you don't want people to be detached from the suffering they inflict on other living things.

Re:humane testing

[afabbro]

The thing is though, I'd much rather a dog, mouse, or even a monkey suffer compared to a human.

I feel just the opposite. Beagles are wholely innocent creatures. Prisoners are not.

I would prefer we outlaw testing on animals and legalize testing on prisoners. And yes, thank you, I have thought that through.

If that is not acceptable, then I'd prefer we simply outlaw testing on animals completely and live with the reduced science. And before you ask, yes, I do have a disease that would likely benefit from further research. Happy to suffer with it and eventually die from it if it'd stop animal testing.

Re:humane testing

[afabbro]

The world would be much worse for us without medical research,

Ah, no, actually it would be the same as of 2009.

Re:humane testing

[tagno25]

There is a difference between splashing some shampoo in an animals eye and dropping it in and not letting the animal in any way wash, clean or blink its eye for an extended period. Of course the smart alek response is going to be 'haw haw but what if a child gets shampoo in their eyes and are restrained and have their eyes forced open for an extended period, wouldn't you want to know what happens?' which is just as stupid a comment as it looks.

Well I actually want to know how good of a torture method that is (just replace child with "subject")

Re:humane testing

[tagno25]

I think he means do a vivisection on a human, that or he meant test, wait for death, then dissect.

Re:humane testing

[Americium]

I wasn't aware of the terminology, but yes vivisection. My point being that animals are better suited to this.

Re:humane testing

[psnyder]

if you are putting a chemical into a shampoo you think might blind someone, wtf are you doing?!?!

This is a common misconception.

The truth is, every scientist in industry (ie: making products to sell) wants all of the animals in their experiments to come out completely safe and healthy.

Why? Because the company has already spent a LOT of money in development by the time it gets to animal testing. Animal testing is expensive (but required by law) and it only comes after everything else has been tried. At this point, the company believes the product to be safe. It then becomes the toxicologist's job to make sure it's absolutely safe on actual living beings.

They start with the lower order species such as mice and if the mice are okay, they move up the ladder of complexity (with the top being primates), and finally they test humans. Yes, humans. Human volunteers are the final stage of testing. If there are any problems along the way, the project is stopped there. The company loses their investment, but it is less than what they would pay in lawsuits should their product start hurting people.

If all the animals and humans are safe, then the company gets to make money on whatever they developed.

If you don't believe these companies are ethical, at least believe that they want to make money. Animal testing is the last step, and every company wants the animals to remain healthy.

Re:humane testing

[Ginger Unicorn]

it invariably leads to cruelty to humans

i think you need to back up that claim. Invariably is quite a strong word.

Re:humane testing

[crmarvin42]

here's the thing, if you are putting a chemical into a shampoo you think might blind someone, wtf are you doing?!?!

This kind of research is all about the uninteded consequences. A good example of where this kind of work was not done is DES. It was a drug intended to, among other things, treat morning sickness in pregnant women. It was believed to be safe, without testing, and my grandmother took it while pregnant with my mother. Turns out that a couple of rounds of testing in pregnant mice would have clearly shown it to be teratogen that primarily affected the developing reproductive tissues of the fetus. My mother has had to deal with complications due to DES her entire life. Furthermore, the effects span generations. My sister is a second generation daughter of DES (Grand daughter of the original patient prescribed the drug), and she's actually had more complications than my mother. Even more horrifying is that their is early evidence that 3rd generation daughters of DES are also affected. By now that has got to include hundreds of thousands of Women in the US alone that are dealing with the fall out of incomplete drug testing in animals.

Maybe I'm biased based on my family experiences, but I'm of the opinion that a couple hundred preganant mice are a small price to pay to have prevented this.

Re:humane testing

[crmarvin42]

This answer "use inmates" is so flippant and unhelpful that you should be banned from contributing furthe to this debate. There are lots of biological and logistical reasons that humans would make poor research models, that you don't even need to bring morality into it.

The variability from human-to-human, even within insular ethnic groups is orders of magnitude greater than that in most species used for research. The genetic and phenotypic diversity in humans would cause us to find a higher proportion of false positives and false negatives, thus wasting time, energy, resources, etc. There is also the issue of generation interval. You can run dozens of studies in a short period of time using mice and rats due to their accelerated (by comparison to humans) life cycle. Or, you can run multigenerational longitudinal studies in several months instead of over 60 to 100 years. Another advantage is the litter size. You can get 6 to 12 pups per litter (depending on the line), which allows for rapid population expansion when you discover or create a new genotype of interest. All of these are advantages over working with humans that ignore both the genetic and moral arguments.

No one believes that data from mice or rats is directly applicable to humans. However, you are far more likely to detect subtle effects if the differences between the individuals in your sample group are minimal. Lower vertebrates such as mice and rats are more uniform in genotype and phenotype and are used in the early stages of scientific discovery for this reason. Once an effect has been reliably observed, characterized, and understood, then we can proceed to other, more human like animal models. Ultimately though, all new treatments and procedures do need to be evaluated in humans before final approval, so we do experiment with humans. We just don't do discovery type work with humans.

Re:humane testing

[Bakkster]

Does a fetus instantaneously become sentient while passing through a vagina, but no earlier? Or does it happen afterward, meaning some infants are not sentient and can also be killed at will?

I'm not saying abortion is immoral in all circumstances (rape, extreme deformity, unfit parents, etc), but I don't think the argument that embryos or fetuses aren't human or living doesn't hold much water, scientifically or philosophically.

Re:humane testing

[crmarvin42]

I feel confident, based on my own 1st had research experience and the collection of FUD that is your post, that you have no idea WTF you are talking about. Any research institution in the US that recieves federal funding (ie all of them) requires approval of all research protocols by the Institutions Animal Care & Use Committee (IACUC). These committees are required by law to contain both experienced animal researchers and members of the local community with no connection to the institution (laymen).

The whole function of an IACUC is to ensure that
1. The research is needful (not needlessy replicating a trial or using animals when another model would be more appropriate),
2. Animal use is large enough for statisticall validity, but not wasteful (if you can get by with 100 mice they won't let you use 200 just because you have them handy), and
3. Animal suffering is avoided whenever possible (suffering is allowed only if unavoidable, but then you need to justify why the suffering is necessary, and these protocols get a lot more scrutiny).
4. Animals will have access to Veterinary care as needed.

So I ask you, were you aware of this and have personal experience that you've used to come to your conclusions, or are you simply vomiting back FUD you read on PETA's website. If the former, please elaborate. Otherwise, I ask you to refrain from posting again. This is a very complicated issue and involves a lot of emotional judgment making. It is best if only those who know what they are talking about contribute so as to minimze confusion in the future.

Re:humane testing

[phorm]

I think you would have a quite different opinion of this issue if you were blinded/killed by your shampoo.

Actually, if I were killed by my shampoo, I doubt I'd have much opinion at all. That is, unless you expect me to come back and haunt the makers of "Head and Shoulders" or some other corp.

Re:humane testing

[crmarvin42]

As someone with 8 years animal research experience, preceeded by 4 years of animal husbandry experience, I have to disagree with the entire premis upon which your post is based. While it is true that there was no oversight on early research with animals, that has not been the case for a long time.

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) are required by federal law in any research institution that gets any federal funding. Their role is in the approval of any research protocol that involves the use of live animal models. They have absolute VETO power over any pending research. They are required to consist of experienced researchers as well as laymen from the community with no connection to the institution. The whole function of an IACUC is to ensure that
1. The research is needful (not needlessy replicating a trial or using animals when another model would be more appropriate),
2. Animal use is large enough for statisticall validity, but not wasteful (if you can get by with 100 mice they won't let you use 200 just because you have them handy),
3. Animal suffering is avoided whenever possible (suffering is allowed only if unavoidable, but then you need to justify why the suffering is necessary, and these protocols get a lot more scrutiny), and
4. Animals will have access to Veterinary care as needed.

Furthermore, every researcher I've ever met go into animal research because they like animals and enjoy working with them. Most have multiple pets whom they treat better than some people treat their own children. You are correct that there is a certain amount of desensitization that occurs, but it is not to the unnecessary suffering of animals. We all minimize the amount of pain and suffering that our animals will experience based on our best understanding of what exactly causes them to suffer. We are not these insensitive, unfeeling, monsters who abuse animals and don't give it a second though.

Besides, the current focus on PAIN as the primary causitive agent of suffering is misplaced. Animals find chronic FEAR to be far more stressful than chronic pain according to behavioral studies I've seen presented by the Animal Behavior group at my university.

Also, you are correct that there is evidence that animal abuse is correlated with human abuse (correlation != causation), but it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand because abuse (unnecessary pain or suffering) is not the rampant problem you believe it to be.

Re:humane testing

[crmarvin42]

Vivisection is a dirty word invented by activist groups to make it seem as though routine surger is animal abuse.

The dictionary included with my compter defines Vivisection as

the practice of performing operations on live animals for the purpose of experimentation or scientific research (used only by people who are opposed to such work).

Therefore, it could be said that my step-father (who was in a car accident) has had over 100 vivisections on his legs in the last 30 years, my mother has had at least one vivisection for all 3 of her children and several for her torn rotator cuff, and my biological father recently underwent a vivisection to treat bone spurs on his left shoulder.

Furthermore, in the course of my animal research I've conducted vivisection on almost 100 pigs. I would argue that the pigs being under optimal veterinary care for the duration of the opperation (anesthesia were used during as well as prophylactic and post-operative analgesics and antibiotics), living for another 4 months, growing from 15kg to over 100kg (market weight), living a pampered life where they were fed by hand 2x/d and their pens cleaned every day by me should also be accounted for when assessing the overall quality of the animals life. By the end of each study I had learned the personalities of each individual pigs. I won't say I thought of them as pets, but I was far more familiar with them than I am with most of the students in the classes I've taught.

Re:humane testing

[panthroman]

Plants react to death and damage, but so does a water balloon. Neither has a nervous system, so I don't worry too much about it. Yes, there is an element of "if it's not like me, then it can't suffer like me," but what else can you do? Assume, despite no evidence to the contrary, that grass can suffer? Then soccer is a monstrous sport!

Why draw the line at tomatoes? First, I don't really. I eat fish on occasion. There is no magical line. Second, it's easy for me to avoid eating cows, and I'm very confident that cattle can suffer. It's damn hard to avoid eating plants, and I'm not at all confident that plants can suffer. So not eating cattle is a better ethical bang for my buck.

Re:humane testing

[Cytotoxic]

I'll echo Seraphim's point. Do some more reading on non-animal kingdom organisms. They certainly respond in ways that are exactly similar to what you would term "pain." Many of them can communicate attacks to nearby relatives - who receive the message and prepare their defenses. What is this if not screams of pain? Just because they use chemical signaling rather than audible sounds for their communication medium doesn't mean they aren't exhibiting the same responses. Just because they don't use nerves to transmit signals internally doesn't mean those signals aren't sent.

There are multitudes of examples, but because large organisms are more impressive, I'll recommend that you start with Acacia trees. They can actually warn other trees in the area when antelope herds begin grazing on them. The other trees will then produce toxins that stop the animals from eating them.

Re:humane testing

[The Wild Norseman]

Prisoners are not [wholly innocent].

And you know this, how?

I would prefer we outlaw testing on animals and legalize testing on prisoners. And yes, thank you, I have thought that through.

I just thought of a new possible sigline: "When animal testing is outlawed, only outlaws will be tested upon." (or something like that)

If that is not acceptable, then I'd prefer we simply outlaw testing on animals completely and live with the reduced science. And before you ask, yes, I do have a disease that would likely benefit from further research. Happy to suffer with it and eventually die from it if it'd stop animal testing.

Well, you are certainly free to not partake of the wonders of medical science in protest; I'm confident no one will stand in your way. However, I find it rather arrogant that you wish to elevate animals above everyone else who is suffering from your disease or other diseases and conditions that are equally, if not more so, painful and debilitating, just to soothe your conscience.

Just reminds me of all of those Americans out there who are willing to toss aside their hard-won freedoms and lobby and vote and cajole the government into tossing away my freedoms along with theirs.

Disgusting attitude.
[/rant]

Re:humane testing

[sznupi]

The latter half of your post brings another interesting issue.

Yes, on one hand farming practices/etc. have great potential to bring what we call suffering. But on the other - domesticated species are, largely thanks to conditions we created for them, one of the most successful representatives of their branch of "Tree of Life". Surely there's some value in the success of their DNA - it seems that, in world of humans, one of the best ways to prosper is to be tasty. Or be very useful as laboratory animal.

Re:humane testing

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt they would have any opinion if they were killed by shampoo... though her family may

Re:humane testing

[sznupi]

The world would be much worse for us without medical research, but it does create what might as well be factories of suffering for lab animals. They even breed lab animals specifically with the worst genetic diseases, which would be the ultimate cruelty if it didn't bring the possibility of future cures.
Hard not to be conflicted about it I think.

OTOH the DNA of animals useful for our purposes becomes much more successful than it otherwise would be. With all the "cruelty" that's going on in the wild, one can wonder if such success isn't what ultimately matters?

Re:humane testing

[sznupi]

They definitely aren't sentient before the formation of neural system. Which can be approximated to, useful in practice, "only first trimester"

BTW, however I do have my reservations towards abortion on the moral grounds, I do accept it as necessary (only limited to, say, first trimester mentioned above, pharmacological methods, etc.) Limited one is the least of evils. On one hand you have practically unlimited one throughout whole pregnancy, which is inexcusable.

On the other hand...you must know that I live in a place where abortion is not allowed (apart from crime or medical reasons that you mentioned). I can see what harm such state of affairs can do. Not only we force woman to go through pregnancy without being bothered to provide adequate social security (some go into abortion underground or "abortion trips", with high risk for them). We had much worse cases. Even when abortion was theoretically allowed, there were "problems" because of prevailing attitudes towards it. Bringing great harm.

14 year old girl, whose pregnancy was an effect of illegal act (hence abortion in first trimester without any problems, hypothetically) who almost didn't manage to get one; shipped from one hospital to the next. Her parents were, in practice, blocked from seeing her...while priest from her place had almost free access to her hospital bed and hospital administration/doctors to exert illegal influence. Made her into a dehumanized media debate during a very hard time, when she tried to use her legal rights.

A woman with health conditions preventing her from using effective contraception (sterilization for the sake of it is also illegal), with few children already, and with high risk of loosing sight as the result of next pregnancy. She wasn't able to get an abortion, even though she tried. She's now almost blind, unable to work, unable to care for her children. The first question of ophthalmologist when she went to him after giving birth (and loosing much of her sight) was "who allowed you to remain pregnant?!"

Re:humane testing

[Lugae]

Animal testing is expensive (but required by law)

I'm pretty sure that this is false in the case of things like shampoos and cosmetics. How else does the leaping bunny logo get into products? Tom's of Maine has a very interesting video on their web site where they talk about the work that they went through to get one of their toothpastes ADA approved without animal testing. While the ADA is not a government agency, the product is legally on store shelves. Requirements for drugs may be different, but for cosmetics and most personal care, I think it is not a requirement if the science is there.

Re:humane testing

[Bakkster]

They definitely aren't sentient before the formation of neural system. Which can be approximated to, useful in practice, "only first trimester"

First trimester is an embryo. Afterward (when it has a nervous system) it is a fetus. I believe you and I are in agreement. The only difference between a 3rd trimester fetus and a newborn (from a sentience/humanity view) are which side of the vagina it is on.

BTW, however I do have my reservations towards abortion on the moral grounds, I do accept it as necessary (only limited to, say, first trimester mentioned above, pharmacological methods, etc.) Limited one is the least of evils. On one hand you have practically unlimited one throughout whole pregnancy, which is inexcusable.

Agreed, abortions are awful, but so are a lot of the alternatives (abandoned or abused children, unnecessary death of mothers, reminders of sexual abuse, etc). Whichever choice we make, we still lose...

Re:humane testing

[jc42]

... but I don't think the argument that embryos or fetuses aren't human or living doesn't hold much water, scientifically or philosophically.

For that matter, it's fairly clear that our ova and sperm cells are both human and living. Nobody would suggest that they're not living cells, and if not human, what species are they? So if we are morally obligated to preserve all human life, we must preserve all ova and sperm.

Everyone sing along with me: "Every sperm is sacred ...". ;-)

Re:humane testing

[Canberra Bob]

This is a common misconception.

The truth is, every scientist in industry (ie: making products to sell) wants all of the animals in their experiments to come out completely safe and healthy.

Why? Because the company has already spent a LOT of money in development by the time it gets to animal testing. Animal testing is expensive (but required by law) and it only comes after everything else has been tried. At this point, the company believes the product to be safe. It then becomes the toxicologist's job to make sure it's absolutely safe on actual living beings.

There is a difference between your first and second paragraph. Let me expand. Many scientists (I have known a couple involved in animal testing) in the actual testing want as many animals to come out safely as they can. They are human after all and unless they have a mental problem get no joy out of inflicting suffering on other beings. The company however has no such issues. The bean counters at the top both never have contact with the experiments and are only interested in the money and have no human interest in suffering minimisation. If anything they do not want to have personal contact with the experiments because then they can go on TV and say their company inflicts no suffering on animals etc and claim plausible deniability. Anybody representing a testing lab who makes a statement that their test animals go through little to no suffering is either ignorant of what happens or lying.

The truth of the matter is that a lot of these experiments are truly shocking in the pain they inflict. The one I know who worked in a commercial lab ended up leaving the industry and turning vegetarian it had that much of an impact on him. Some pet store owners who couldn't sell their animals would sell them to the lab for testing to make a few $. These animals were subjected to things ranging from having deadly diseases injected into them to having commercial products tested on their skin and eyes. There is no happy ending - if the animal survives they are killed anyway. In some instances an animal with a lot of "character" would come along and one of the scientists would take them home rather than test on them. In many cases the medical experiments are justified and the only way to do something. That doesn't explain why thousands of animals need their eyes burnt out so a slightly differently scented shampoo can go on the shelves.

Re:humane testing

[Reziac]

About 20 years ago a well-known company proudly announced that their new contact lens solution was "never tested on animals". Turned out that their new formula did irreverseable corneal damage, and blinded a number of its users. (I found out about it because a friend was part of the resulting class-action lawsuit.)

BTW when chemicals are tested in sensitive organs like rabbits' eyes, regulations require that the animal first be anaesthetized so that it will NOT feel any pain, in the event that damage does occur.

Re:humane testing

[psnyder]

The FDA has a list of substances they consider safe because they're inert (won't cause chemical reactions) or they have already been tested on animals. If you use these substances, you can legally sell your product without doing additional testing.

If there is a substance that already has a significant amount of scientific evidence for safety (in other words, prior animal testing), you can petition the FDA to label this substance as safe, and use it. This sounds like what Tom's of Maine did although they give very little actual information in their video that you mentioned (it is a commercial after all). If this is what they did it is actually fairly common practice, but I give them credit for showing that there has already been enough testing in the case of fluoride (if that's what they did. We can't tell from the video.).

You can't get around testing on living things. With advancements in creating various living tissues without the organism, hopefully we can use that more in the initial stages of testing, but eventually you're going to have to see how it reacts with the whole organism.

So what the leaping bunny logo actually shows, in almost all cases, is that the substances have already been tested on animals, but not by that company. It also means that the company did not make any innovation in regards to chemical reactions. It's not a new drug. It's not a new cosmetic. It's just repackaged. If it's a new chemical substance, it is required by law to be tested.



On a related note, this is why the frauds of "Natural Male Enhancements" and the like are allowed to operate. If you use substances that are safe for ingestion, you can say it does whatever you want until someone proves you wrong (which is expensive and difficult to do).

Re:humane testing

[The Archon V2.0]

BTW when chemicals are tested in sensitive organs like rabbits' eyes, regulations require that the animal first be anaesthetized so that it will NOT feel any pain, in the event that damage does occur.

But that's not what Captain Planet taught me! From Captain Planet I learned that nuclear reactors are ticking time bombs of death and scientists who perform animal testing are evil and cruel and often women who wear tight pink jumpsuits! So I became a scientist and now I'm surrounded by a bunch of men! WHERE'S MY CRUEL WOMEN IN TIGHT PINK JUMPSUITS!?

Re:humane testing

[Reziac]

That'll teach you to believe everything Captain Planet advertises... didn't you realise he's just hard up for recruits? There's only one woman in a tight pink jumpsuit, and she works for the headhunter agency that hired you!

Re:humane testing

[Lugae]

I wanted to give you some counter points, but the more that I think about it, I don't see either of us getting anywhere there.

However, I want to give you two big thumbs up for all of the research and analysis that you did on this post. It's very well thought out and respectful. Thanks so much for that. :)

Rabbits and contacts....

[dgatwood]

I would think it would be obvious why they put contacts on rabbits. They tried it on cats, but they gave up after they had to amputate a scientist's arm from the claw damage.

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28049

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Shadow of Eternity]

I hear they're good with the right sauce too.

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[ThrowAwaySociety]

I would think it would be obvious why they put contacts on rabbits. They tried it on cats, but they gave up after they had to amputate a scientist's arm from the claw damage.

Spoken like someone who has never had to deal with a threatened rabbit. (Hint: they have claws, too.)

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[MichaelSmith]

Thats very true. One summer my parents cat got into the habit if sleeping on their pot belly stove. First time we used it that year this horrible scream was heard around the house. The cat charged across the living room, bounced off the far corner ricocheted into the kitchen and huddled under the kitchen table.

So then I applied the standard treatment for burns, to immerse the affected area in cold water.....

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Anonymous Coward]

and nasty, big, pointy teeth

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[GameboyRMH]

Also relevant:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39105

I also ran across this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/underfunded_scientists_force

And this hilariously ironic blog post about it, from a vegan who doesn't realize that The Onion makes far more fun of his ilk than of animal testing:

http://www.happyvegetable.com/blog/the-onion-and-animal-testing/

LOL VEGAN XD

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Anonymous Coward]

... or one with Big Pointy Teeth!

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Hatta]

I would think it would be obvious why they put contacts on rabbits.

I don't get it. With all the carrots, you'd think rabbits wouldn't need contacts.

Re:Rabbits and contacts....

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who has never had to deal with a threatened rabbit. (Hint: they have claws, too.)

Seconded! Once you've had the misfortune of dealing with one, you'll not risk another frontal assault:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg

Rabbits , rats and mice

[Anonymous Coward]

Rabbits are great antibody producers. Mice and rats are very easy to quickly bread to some level of genetic similarity. Also, they are small and east to house.

Back to rabbits - they are easily one of the most stupid animals on the planet. If you took a rat and and rabbit and asked them if they wanted to be killed, the rat would take off running and the rabbit would just sit there with a dumb look in its eyes.

Re:Rabbits , rats and mice

[jameskojiro]

Rodents are like the "Insects of the Mammalian Order" they breed like insects, eat a lot of the same crap, and are usually on level 1 of the food chain, just like insects.

You could kill off everyone of the "southern California high desert jumping mouse" and it wouldn't be too long before another rodent moved in to fill the same niche.

Rodents breed fast and die young and this makes them very expendable. I don't think we would ever have to worry about rodents becoming extinct.

they forgot

[naz404]

They forgot to add humans. Humans are animals too :P

Robert Rodriguez (director of Desperado) was one and got most of his money to fund El Mariachi as an experimental drug testing volunteer.

Re:they forgot

[mjwx]

Robert Rodriguez (director of Desperado) was one and got most of his money to fund El Mariachi as an experimental drug testing volunteer.

A lot of my good ideas also come from drug experimentation.

Misleading title?

[Jkasd]

If you read tfa, you'll find they never claim that these are the 9 most tested animals. They could for all I know though.

Re:Misleading title?

[Jkasd]

*could be the most tested animals for all I know. I didn't mean that they could have mentioned it in the article.

Re:Misleading title?

[reverseengineer]

In fact the list makes a conscious effort to avoid some of the most recognizable lab animals- mice and rats in particular- and focus on some lesser-known organisms like voles. The organisms they point out also each have at least one intrinsic characteristic- easily manipulated genes, similar anatomy/physiology to humans, inexpensive, etc. which gives them a particular role in medical research. But laboratory mice stand apart as a jack-of-all-trades.

Pigs

[humphrm]

It's interesting that they don't mention pig skin grafts for burn victims. I guess today, those are considered sub-par to human grafts.

I owe a lot to a pig - 25 years ago or so, I suffered a major burn on my head. I was rushed to UW/Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, which besides being a welfare hospital, is one of the premier burn units in the U.S. So, I was lucky that I was only a few miles away from it. After the "scrubbing" (which you do not want me to describe here) they had to come up with a graft that would act like human skin, but not be rejected by my immune system. Pig skin grafts were the hot (if you'll excuse the pun) medicine at the time, because pig skin actually has a lower rejection rate than donor human skin (the only other alternative being, removing and grafting skin from another part of the victim's body, which I'm told is very unpleasant, albeit less than "scrubbing".)

So after a third degree burn, and a successful pig skin graft, I was released after about a week or so. Without the pig skin graft, I'm told I would have spent months in the hospital dealing with the effects of anti-rejection drugs.

P'raps the pre-graft typing of human skin tissue has improved, reducing rejection. That's great. But I still owe a lot to a pig.

Re:Pigs

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, owe a lot to pigs.

Bacon is delicious.

Re:Pigs

[dlanod]

And when you get sunburnt, the smell of sizzling bacon is just a delicious bonus!

Re:Pigs

[Agripa]

Having had minor surgery under local anesthesia, I can positively say that pig is NOT the only thing that smells like sizzling bacon. There is a reason cannibals refer to "long pig".

For all that testing

[hoytak]

I'm surprised they didn't choose smarter animals. Like sharks. The results would have probably been better.

But when the sharks in EE can build their own lasers after passing the quals, oh boy.

So, back to mice.

Title is wrong

[Bueller_007]

These are not the nine most tested lab animals, as they admit on the first page. It's a list of "some of the animals that stand in for humans in medical research", and it excludes mice for god's sake. How could anyone who read this list think that it represents "the most tested lab animals" if it doesn't include mice or rats? There aren't even any fish on the list.

The list is:
1) Fruit flies
2) Moths
3) Frogs
4) Naked mole rats
5) Prairie voles
6) Rabbits
7) Beagles
8) Pigs
9) Monkeys

Re:Title is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the /. editors, particularly certain editors, are aware that an accurate title would have far less chance of provoking the PETA types and bumping up the page view stats.

- T

I'm reminded of a poster

[ihuntrocks]

I'm reminded of a poster that I saw hanging in a fellow teacher's room. It shows young people protesting animal testing. The caption under it reads (I forget the exact number used) "That's to animal testing, they will have 28.5 more years to protest" and then gives brief commentary about how animal testing has increased the average human life span. Next to it, there is another poster showing adorable little animals and their names, along with which diseases they were cured of, which makes the statement "animal testing saves animal lives too". I've never met anyone else with pro animal testing posters before, and I really need to ask her where she got them from.

Re:I'm reminded of a poster

[oudzeeman]

those posters came from fbresearch.org, but I'm not sure if they are still available.

We have one hanging in one of the hallways here at work (I work at the laboratory founded by C.C. Little, who was mentioned in this article...)

Re:I'm reminded of a poster

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw a pro-animal testing billboard here in Baltimore (though it's no longer up). It said something to the effect of:

"Have you ever had leprosy? You won't, thanks to animal testing."

The funniest part about it was that it was across the street from a dog groomer's shop.

not-a-list-you-want-to-be-on

[MrBrainport]

They forgot to add humans, right? http://listverse.com/2008/03/14/top-10-evil-human-experiments/

E. Coli?

[nyri]

E. Coli. Ok, it's not an animal but still. It ushered in the age of biotechnology and have not left since and take part in most of the research.

sentient definition

[astar]

I have seen the word sentient used before, for instance by Buddhists, but never really knew the definition of the word. So this time I googled a bit and now I really really do not know the definition. So what is your meaning?

I might note that IMO that you can talk about animals with language, culture, tools, creativity, self-consciousness and love fairly emperically. Does not mean they are human but this tends to crap out a lot of simple minded definitions of human.

Re:sentient definition

[Rary]

The problem with discussing sentience on Slashdot is that everyone here fails to understand that the word has different definitions in different fields, and they all use the science fiction/Artificial Intelligence definition of sentience, which is really sapience.

When using the definition of sentience that is appropriate to a philosophical discussion of living creatures, hardly anyone argues that animals are not sentient.

Re:sentient definition

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen the word sentient used before, for instance by Buddhists, but never really knew the definition of the word. So this time I googled a bit and now I really really do not know the definition. So what is your meaning?

I might note that IMO that you can talk about animals with language, culture, tools, creativity, self-consciousness and love fairly emperically. Does not mean they are human but this tends to crap out a lot of simple minded definitions of human.

Technically, by the true definition of human being, there are a vast number of homo sapiens that would not fit the grouping of being human. Seeing as this is /., I doubt many people posting here would have much personal experience with this situation, but working where I do, I can tell you I've come across at least 30 homo sapiens that couldn't be classified as human under some of the more formal definitions, with sentience being included. Let's face it, the vast majority of people are little more than robots moving about their daily lives, staying stuck in a rut day to day without bothering to question a thing. They're simply reacting to stimuli all day, and not actually thinking. Most go home at the end of the day, flip on their favorite "American Idol"-esque show, react to the stimulus from it, eat, then sleep, with maybe a bathroom break in there somewhere.

Maybe this makes me a monster, but I am perfectly okay with those non-thinking homo sapiens being used for testing as well. Sorry, but I'm of the "survival of the fittest" mentality. Do you think a lion gives a flying hoot about how the gazelle will feel as it's ripping the trachea free from its throat? Do you think the Polar Bear cares how the baby seal feels as he's ripping it to shreds alive while he tries to gain access to the most nutritional and tastiest parts of his prey? What about the pack of wolves? Do they care how the 4 year old child and her family will feel when they're feeding on the rough equivalent of human veal?

Didn't think so.

They forgot "scientists"

[Anonymous Coward]

Many lab researchers, once they are about 80% sure it won't kill them, start injecting it themselves long before human trials... And then sometimes all the cool kids start.... Like melanotan II.... Who here hasn't tried, or thought about trying a drug that makes you tan, lose weight, increased sex drive, a bit more energetic and athletic.... Sure, stabbing yourself with a needle has it's drawbacks, and you have to watch moles in case they start growing quickly.... But less risk I say then not cheating to get this tan on my formerly pasty skin...

cosmetics

[astar]

I am kind of an old guy, so I sort of remember when animal cosmetic testing was something of an issue. Here is what I sort of remember. First of all, it is not quite about testing cosmetics, but testing the components of cosmetics. So if you have just a little of something in a cosmetic, the test animal gets a lot of the pure thing on them. Also, suppose a cosmetic was to be applied to the skin. Well it needs to be tested ingested and in the eyes and its pure components too. I hope this is helpful.

Far more efficient solution from 1983

[bobdotorg]

Appears to be a case of lost technology or grant padding.

Have they not heard of Manimal?

Trading off animal life and comfort vs. human?

[jonaskoelker]

making another living thing which feels pain live or die in agony is as evil an act as i can imagine.

We kill animals and plants to eat them. Is this evil? Should we stop? Then we die...

If we can test new medicine, making n animals suffer but allowing us to make m fewer humans suffer, for what values of m and n is that a good trade in your mind? 1 and any? m equals n? any and 0?

See, absolutist statements have a tendency to blow up when you have to trade off things as you often have to in the real world constrained by the finiteness of resources.

And I expected...

[Just!nVix]

Mr Snuffles, Cleo, Koko, Tester Number 9...

Leukemia Chemotherapy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had Leukemia twice, so I had alot of chemo for it, four years total to be exact. The first chemo for Leukemia was developed because of poison gas exposures in World War Two. Dozens of humans died and hundreds were injured in an accident that led directly to WBC reducing treatments for lymphoma and leukemia. Do I feel guilty over this? Nope not for a second, so I'll be darned if I feel guilty over animal testing for medicine and treatments that will save lives.

pictures or it didn't happen

[Anonymous Coward]

pictures or it didn't happen

Shocking

[Frankie70]

4) Naked mole rats

They first violate the rats dignity before doing testing on it!!

What are they testing here anyway - Viagra & stuff like that?

Two words.

[FiloEleven]

The thing is though, I'd much rather a dog, mouse, or even a monkey suffer compared to a human.

Violent Criminals.

FLAME ON!!

Re:Two words.

[maxume]

I'd be a lot more comfortable with that if the justice system were perfect.

Animal testing is disgusting and only for perverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Animal testing is disgusting and only for perverts.

Bad presentation format

[tirnacopu]

While the information and images were interesting, why the annoying tiny Flash scrollbar that doesn't follow the mouse wheel? And also, why constrain the text in that smallish box that doesn't allow copy/paste?
Something like JCarousel would have served their purposes much better and looked nicer.

Monkey is utterly unethical

[jotaeleemeese]

It is now demonstrated that all monkeys develop cultures and technology.

It is utterly immoral to do any testing on them.

Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[assertation]

Animal Testing doesn't work. These quotes are from a very *SHORT* article that describes the issue well:

More than 90 percent of all new drugs which proved effective in animals end up not working for humans. It's because animals -- however similar they are to us -- have different physiological systems. What works in a mouse usually doesn't work in a human.

History is filled with stories of drugs that didn't work in animals -- Aspirin, for example -- that ended up working in humans. And the obituary pages are filled with stories of people who died from drugs that looked safe in animals. The painkiller Vioxx, for example, tested safe in mice and five other species but ended up killing many thousands of Americans.

snip ....

If the chemo drugs I'm trying now don't work, I do have one last option. I could try a Phase One trial. That's when a drug looks promising in animals and is first tested in humans. My doctor started to tell me why so many participants die in Phase One trials -- but it turned out I already knew the answer. Drugs that work in animals, he explained, usually don't work in humans.

Full Article

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[oudzeeman]

trust me, we're far better off with animal testing... without the genetics work done with Mice we would know far less about genetics than we do now. Almost every human gene identified was discovered after a homolog was found in a model animal first. There is no way to perform the conrolled breeding experiments we can do with model organisms in humans...

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[jameskojiro]

No, save the animals and use Humans in research like they did in germany in the 1930's and early 1940's. I don't know why they stopped, but think of the animal suffering...

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[JustNiz]

>> trust me, we're far better off with animal testing..

Tell that to the animals.

The whole thing is about making money while explicitly not finding cures, so animals continue to live and die in acute pain just so the drug companies can introduce supposedly new products that are just the same old crap rebranded so they can get another 10 year patent without doing anything truly innovative. The world already has more than enough different versions of drugs to suppress practically every symptom, we don't actaully need yet more of the same.

Haven't you noticed how all the drugs out there aren't actual cures for things, they just suppress symptoms? The drug companies don't want to actually cure anything because they want repeat customers.

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[ChrisMaple]

One of the symptoms that many drugs suppress is death. The causes of heart disease are pretty well known (at least in an approximate way), and the way to avoid some types of heart disease by eating properly and exercising is well established. That's not a good reason not to develop emergency drugs to suppress fibrillation, restart stopped hearts, dissolve a clot, etc..

The argument against new analogs of existing drugs has some validity, but varieties can have fewer side effects or avoid some individual allergies. And there are drugs that are the ONLY accepted treatment for some conditions, and better treatments would be beneficial.

I can think of at least a half dozen OTC drug families for pain (aspirin-like, acetaminophen, -caines, etc.) and each has disadvantages, and some are synergistic. Try telling someone in severe, continuing pain that they have no need for better pain-killers.

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[Wyatt Earp]

The Huffington Post is not a very good source for scientific articles.

For example, its a prime supporter of the Anti-Vax crowd.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/autism-vaccine-mercury

Re:Animal Testing Doesn't Work

[JustNiz]

Sorry I don't agree that we should try to eliminate all forms of natural selection of humans, least of all at the cost of unnecessary and often inconclusive testing based on massive animal suffering.
Apart from anything else, its already been proved over and over that animal experimentation is not a foolproof or even good analog for human biology. Plenty of drugs have passed animal testing yet caused massive damage in humans.
Also to your example, if someone is stupid enough to repeatedly overeat and avoid exercise to the point that they have a potentially fatal heart condition then I personally don't think any animals should suffer and die to help morons like them survive and potentially corrupt the gene pool any further.

Right, moths.

[glwtta]

Not, say, rats, zebrafish, yeast, or C. freakin elegans. Labs are just full of moths.

Re:Right, moths.

[jameskojiro]

What about Monarch Butterflies?

Popularity contest

[sznupi]

In far too many cases it's not really about animals. Which is...perfectly natural. Practically all the things we do is either to accommodate internal urges or in relation to other people

Large parts of society can get easily suspicious about what those damned scientists are doing to lab animals. Especially if they are the cute ones. But if some group will actively fight farming in the same way, they will be much quicker to be branded as nutjobs by the same society, who won't like the much more direct connection between "bad things happening to animals" and them.

What about ordinary medicine?

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"I propose that every time anyone goes to the doctor/hospital, they have to sign a consent form acknowledging that their treatment was developed using animals." I'm all in favor of that.

And I'm going to pimp my article on how many common medical lab procedures absolutely require animal products. There are some critical tests that can't be done without them.

They must be tired!

[Bryan Bytehead]

Only nine animals get experimented on? I wonder how they get passed around all those testing facilities.

Oh, you mean animal species!

Re:They must be tired!

[ChrisMaple]

There's dasher and dancer and prancer and vixen, comet and cupid and donder and blitzen. But do you recall the most tested reindeer of all? Rudolf, the red-nosed reindeer...

Re:sentient or human

[HarryatRock]

Do you contend that some "alleged" homo sapiens are not sentient, or that "sentient" is part of the "true" definition of "human". I think the usual definition of "human" amounts to something like "born of a woman", unless you equate "human" with "member of species homo sap.". In the latter case this would imply that a human is a creature that can breed with another "human". Since this obviously eliminates all /.s and the quality of /. comments casts doubt on sentience, then assuming some basic biological similarity would mean that we have discovered the perfect creature for lab testing, and perhaps solved the carnivore's ethical dilemma.

animals don't photosynthesize

[K10W]

A fair comment except somewhere along the line vegetables are farmed for animal consuption too and nature is still interfered with as it is with nearly everything humans do so really your point whilst being true has no relevance. Obviously I'm not against the point you raise though or I'd be bordering on advocating not growing foodstuffs of any kind and living on food found solely through foraging foods found growing naturally which means wwe wouldn't last long.