Gop : Animal Testing

[LadyGaladriel]

what do you think about Animal Testing? do you think its approiate in a medical Sense or do you think that because animals are sentient beings they have the right to life?


I think that as long as the testing is done in a humane way that doesn't cause the animal any unessacary way then it should be done for medical pruposes.



what do you charming people at TTF think?

[Ponte]

I think that you can test medicines on animals IF it's medicines against life-dangerous diseases, I am totally against that people makes tests with make-up on animals.

[Sam_Gamgee]

i think animal testing depends on the case.............i can't say its wrong because i eat meat. so saying "using animals for humans is wrong", would be hypocritical............but i dont agree with some of the aspects of using animals for human use.

[Legolam]

I don't agree with animal testing for cosmetic purposes. In almost all cases, there are alternatives that are just as good as animal testing and, in some cases, better.

However, scientific testing is different. Almost every single major scientific breakthrough has been made on the back of some sort of testing on animals. Take the Human Genome Project (no matter what you think of the concept). None of that would have been made possible without decades of research on animals and their genetics. Now the Human Genome Project will open up so many exciting possibilities for humans.

I think a lot of the arguments against using animals for scientific experiments are borne out of ignorance of what they involve. I know from experience that it is incredibly difficult to convince a committee made up of both scientists and members of the public that the experiments that you are going to carry out are justified. The negociations are long and arduous, and in the end a decision is made based on the balance between suffering caused to the animals, number of animals used, and potential benefits to humans.

Interestingly, depending on the method used, killing lab animals for tissue samples doesn't need to be approved by the Home Office like this, but everything else, including breeding or giving injections, does.

[DGoeij]

I support animal tests for medical reasons, but only if there are no altenatives. My dad works at a cancer research center, and I'm aware of the fact that some tests can only be done on real, living animals. But happily, like Legolam pointed out, you will have to make a strong argument in front of serious commitees, before you are allowed to test anything on animals.

[Thorin]

Originally posted by Legolam
I don't agree with animal testing for cosmetic purposes. In almost all cases, there are alternatives that are just as good as animal testing and, in some cases, better.

Yes, it's bad enough that our young teenage sisters and daughters have to be influenced by the negative social stigma of needing to wear make-up to look good. We don't need our pets to have the same inferiority complex! ;)

Seriously, though. In my opinion (especially for medical testing), they should be using HUMANS that's ultimately what they will be for right? See if it works right off the bat. How are tumors in a rat going to compare to any human? It's a waste of a rat. Test it for sure to see how well it works on who its for! Criminals and death row inmates would be great testers!

You may think I'm being tongue in cheek, but I'm not...Most tests are rarely fatal to ones health....Find a human guinea pig and make the whole testing process more accurate from the start!

[DGoeij]

Originally posted by Thorin
You may think I'm being tongue in cheek, but I'm not...Most tests are rarely fatal to ones health....Find a human guinea pig and make the whole testing process more accurate from the start!

Actually, testing on a rat, or preferably on a bacteria, makes the test more easily to understand. Humans are far too complex an animal to use in the first stages of testing. Not only the possible harm, but the actual working of a certain chemical or mix of chemicals is tested. In a full grown human, it's impossible to figure out if the chemical is doing what was expected. The testing on living tissue usually comes after computer generated testing nowadays. In later stages the testing is done on humans. The famous groups of young students who need money and volunteer. And half of them is given a fake pill anyway.
Other problems involve the fact that most really agressive tumors grow wildly in the more 'soggy' organs. To find out what new medicins have done, you sometimes have to rip those all out, and put them under the microscope. Try and find volunteers for that.

[Legolam]

Thank you DGoeij, just what I was thinking.

I did research on humans over the summer and what I was doing was the very first stages in medical research - forming a hypothesis. That will be computer simulated and published so that others can coe up with the best way to go forward with it. If it looks interesting, animal models will be used to simulate the human conditions (by genetic engineering of human traits into mice, like high blood pressure, which is what I was looking at). Possible drugs or techniques will be tested, hundreds of animals will be killed to look at the effects of these (most effects can only be seen after death by mashing up tissues and stuff). Only then will the whole process be transferred back to humans.

Of course, my research won't lead to this, but you get the idea ;) It's a complex process with many groups of scientists over many years doing experiments in different organisms in order to build up a complete picture of how the human body works and responds to treatment. You can't just go straight into humans with a hypothesis. Even with good testing, mistakes still occur, for example with thalidomide. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Criminals and death row inmates would be great testers! Please say you're kidding. Humans are all people and they should be treated with humanity, no matter who they are or what they've done. To treat them as animals makes us no better than them. Plus it probably wouldn't help, because you need to go through the process with simpler animals as DGoeij explained