Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.