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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.'"
especially when it's for something shallow like cosmetic testing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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?
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.)
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.
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.