Benefit of Animal Research: Diabetes Cured in Mice
Ethical regenerative medical research, coupled with animal experimentation, is leading toward the alleviation of tremendous amounts of human suffering. Israeli scientists have cured mice with type 1 diabetes. From the story:
Lewis grafted healthy islets into diabetic mice and treated them with an anti-inflammatory drug called alpha-1-antitrypsin, or AAT. Within months, they discovered three encouraging results:Without animal research, finding treatments for the most terrible diseases simply would not be possible.-- AAT enabled the newly grafted islets to survive indefinitely, successfully secreting insulin to control glucose levels like healthy pancreas cells.
-- The researchers stopped administering AAT and the islets continued to function. "We withdrew the therapy. That is something that is unique in transplant today," Lewis explained. "There is no approach today that is able to provide a limited amount of therapy. If a patient stops the current protocol therapy, any graft will be rejected: kidney, heart, lungs - including islets."
-- The third result surprised even the scientists. They found that even after transplant and halting therapies, the mice's immune systems remained intact and were able to reject additional grafts while the original transplant continued to function. Doctors call this state "tolerance," which means the immune system remains intact and able to attack foreign bodies while protecting the inserted graft.
"We were able to cure a mouse from diabetes by supplying the healthy cells and the mouse's immune system still functioned," Lewis said. "This is the closest thing that we can consider to cure diabetes."
Let us hope that human trials lead to equally encouraging results.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:33 AM
42 Comments
42 Comments:
The mice didn't have diabetes to start with.
So what? This is how treatments are developed. Stop using the animals, and you stop the medical advances.
Sorry, but that's how it is.
So What?
Really...how smug and unthoughtful of you Wesley, considering it was your point in your Headline on your blog.
So what if the points you make are not really an issue, you can just fabricate a solution to support your opinion anytime you feel like it? Typical MO here.
Without animal research, finding treatments for the most terrible diseases simply would not be possible.
Sure it would - its called Human Stem Cell research. Animals are helpful yes, but impossible without them, no. Your absolutes are what damn your assertions so very often ...
DS: As reluctant as I am to reply to anything you write:
The "so what" had to do with the method of animal research in which animals are given the diseases being researched upon. They are bred for that.
And you really demonstrate your ignorance with the "human stem cell research" line. FDA requires animal studies first. Animal studies demonstrated that, as one example, ESCs cause teratoma tumors, and at least for now, are unsafe in human subjects. Without that animal research some human subjects might have died from stem cell experimentation.
One important use of animals in research, required by the Nuremberg Code, and all sane medical research protocols, is the use of animals prior to human experimentation.
To add to your comment to DS, Wes, the human stem cell research DS cites is itself based on animal research. Stem cell researchers worked through mice, then non-human primates, and only then did they know enough to work successfully with human stem cells. James Thomson has been quoted as saying that his research will in fact continue to rely on animal research.
Wesley said...
FDA requires animal studies first...Without that animal research some human subjects might have died from stem cell experimentation.
You promote 'clinical trials' in humans as you support unproven Adult Stem Cell therapies . So obviously - it is not "impossible" to conduct scientific research for disease without animal models or FDA approval.
Your hero David Prentice said so himself in a letter to Science Mag.
"The insistence that no benefit is real until after FDA approval is misplaced. Such approval is not a medical standard to evaluate patient benefit, but an agency determination that benefits outweigh risks in a broad class of patients." - David Prentice
Further, You've highlighted the idea that(Prentice) "has identified 72 medical conditions in which ASCs and UCB stem cells have demonstrated "some benefit" to human patients in clinical practice or early medical trials." http://www.wesleyjsmith.com/blog/2006/07/question-and-answer-interview-with.html
There are doctors all over the planet experimenting with adult stem cell therapies that have no FDA type of approval and have no conclusive animal model equivalent. These experimental trials are not proven to cure anything and may very well be harmful to people. You sir have been in full support and promotion of human trials without FDA approval, but don't let that fact get in your way.
Regardless - your absolute statement is false and your headline is at best vague and misleading - but hey - so what...
DS: Your ignorance is breathtaking sometimes. I support adult stem cell research in humans AFTER animal testing, just like other forms of medical research. And indeed, that is what is done.
David can speak for himself but he was pointing out that he never claimed that ASCR had entered clinical practice via FDA approval as the crappola from Neaves had claimed. FDA approved testing were and are ongoing with ASC, and to obtain the approvals the results of animal testing would have to be shown.
The statement you quote is true. Early medical trials or clinical practice. ASCs are in clinical practice for some conditions, and in trials for others. Moreover, I have warned on this site repeatedly that people should not go overseas for stem cell trials that are not part of proper clinical trial protocols. Repeatedly.
Hello Wesley. Isn't Dark Swan the poster that used multiple names ?? Seems to me when I first started posting here she had posted under at least two names. As for "so what?" that remark alone shows how little compassion Dark Swan has for the human family that cheers breakthroughs that will make life better for their friends and families.
I have a feeling SHS is never going to get my points about why experimenting on non-human animals is both unnecessary and harmful to humans.
Not to mention, wrong.
And unethical. And immoral.
Donnie: It was Wesley who said "So what." Dark Swan was merely quoting what he'd said to which Dark Swan was responding.
Wesley: That was in the Nuremberg Code? No wonder the death culture that began as part of what we claim to have defeated -- and have not defeated -- is flourishing.
"I have a feeling SHS is never going to get my points about why experimenting on non-human animals is both unnecessary and harmful to humans."
How about your points on how the earth is flat? Or the inherent superiority of Caucasians? Or that the universe is 5,000 years old?
There's plenty of people that hold those beliefs as true, and in the face of far less evidence than there is to support animal research.
How they believe these things is beyond me, but I suspect it is because they seek reinforcement for their emotionally held beliefs, and that causes them to confuse propaganda sources with factual references.
Ianthe: The Nuremberg Code came out of the Nuremberg Trials of the Nazi war criminals, dealing with the medical aspects of the Holocaust in which doctors experimented on inmates. It is considered one of the most important human rights protections ever promulgated, and is intended to govern research using human beings.
One of the fundamentals is that before people are experimented upon, the tests must first be done in animals. This approach is part of all medical testing protocols that govern human testing, at least in the West, such as the Helsinki Accords.
Ianthe: You are right, SHS will not agree with you. That is not the same as saying I don't understand your perspective. I understand it completely. But I disagree with it.
Scientifically, you are wrong: using animals in research is a necessity for the advance of science and to protect human subjects.
Factually, animal testing is not one-to-one applicable to humans, but is close enough that it has saved many human beings from harm in medical testing. I write about that extensively in my upcoming book. Moreover, alternatives such as cell lines or computer programs are not enough. You need living organisms at some point to do the testing on, and that either means, animals, or humans, or don't do the tests.
It also points the way to potentially beneficial areas of research, as this experiment did.
Now, you can say with integrity that you don't care what benefit people receive, it is wrong to use animals instrumentally in this way. I disagree but respect the opinion.
But it cannot be said that the experiments don't benefit humankind. That is erroneous and anti emperical.
lanthe on what do you base your opinion that experiments on animal are "wrong", "immoral"??
Do you equate humans with animals?
I hope not! Wesley has already pointed out why you are wrong in your think from a scientific viewpoint.
But immoral and wrong???? NO!
Wesley said: "I support adult stem cell research in humans AFTER animal testing...And indeed, that is what is done." ...
you really demonstrate your ignorance with the "human stem cell research" line. FDA requires animal studies first....
David can speak for himself but he was pointing out that he never claimed that ASCR had entered clinical practice via FDA approval....
ASCs are in clinical practice for some conditions, and in trials for others.
------------------
You claim FDA approval is required for human clinical treatment, but the ASC treatments that Prentice has claimed treat human disease don't need FDA approval?
Really Wesley? You don't recognize the contradiction you've posed about FDA approvals?
You just stated that FDA approval requires animal testing, but then acknowledge that Prentice claims FDA approval is not necessary, inferring no animal testing is needed to claim successful therapies for ASCs.
Are you claiming that ALL of the ASC "treatments" claimed by Prentice have undergone clinical animal research that proves safe for human use? That would also contradict him so Please say yes.
Otherwise your point that medical advances are impossible without animal testing are proven wrong.(which you've again contradicted yourself by acknowledging that human test are occurring around the world without animal testing)
You really should stop calling people ignorant for pointing out your fallacies, it doesn't make you look good.
Yes, it is immoral, unethical, and wrong, it can't be proven that it is moral, ethical, and right, and it is ultimately harmful to humans.
Nor is my point that the earth is flat, etc.
I know what the Nuremberg Code is, and what it came out of. The point you are missing, in a sort of circular reasoning that I've noticed in the doctrine of "human exceptionalism," is that this aspect of the Nuremberg Code, whose intentions are noble and correct, is short-sighted, ad not only allows, but requires, something that is not only unethical and immoral, but also leads back to human experimentation, and to the death culture itself. If it said merely that experimentation on humans is wrong, it would have integrity. But it permits it, with the proviso that it be done on other animals first. In requiring the commission of acts that cause suffering, it requires that those who perform those experiments to ignore the suffering it causes, and carry on; ultimately, they become inured to human suffering as well; suffering is suffering; we end up with the devaluation of sensibility, and of life, and with science that is intended to serve humanity but operates in violation of the soul, and of the value of human lives. That's why we've got now what the Nuremberg Trials were intended to prevent from ever happening again. Ethics and morality are not in essence complicated; our own innate sensibilities tell us what is right and wrong. If we have the capacity to choose one or the other, and choose wrong, we suffer the results ourselves. Through science that we allow, let alone require, to proceed divorced from sensibility, for the purpose of preventing the suffering of ourselves, our
family and friends," "the human race," etc., without consideration that the actual suffering that we see it cause before our eyes, on another sentient being, is wrong, we end up with "life support equipment," for example, but also with scientists, doctors, a utilitarian philosophy, and a society which coldly removes those who wish to continue to live from life support, for utilitarian reasons, without conscience, and those most vulnerable and deemed less worth saving than those deemed more valuable, viable, and deserving of life at risk, just as the animals used in scientific research are vulnerable and deemed less valuable and deserving of life than ourselves; and they were viable before we got our hands on them, just as human patients damaged as the result of the callous and irresponsible way medicine, doctors, and hospitals do things now were more viable before they got their hands on them; then, for example, the patient ends up on life support and, still wishing and struggling to continue to live, just as a laboratory animal or any other animal, human or otherwise, does, is coldly murdered under the rubric that science, medicine, etc. are right and entitled. I've seen it happen, and it happens often, and it's part of the death culture that SHS and others concerned with the right to life are trying to stop. If the net effect on humanity were positive, we wouldn't have the death culture to have to battle against now. Every action has an energetic effect, and when we take an action that causes pain, to any sentient creature, the effects return to haunt us. Western science and medicine are not the only or ultimate versions of knowledge and healing, but they refuse, in arrogance, to acknowledge otherwise, and we all suffer for it. If the doctrine of human exceptionalism as it involves the equal value of all humans is valid, why does western science and medicine devalue, and ignore, that which other humans, from other cultures, have developed that does not require the mechanisms and practices it prides itself on having developed? Because of the arrogance which goes hand in hand with utilitarianism. The Nuremberg requirement, like human exceptionalism, is utilitarian in itself, presuming that humans are more valuable, worthy of life and freedom from harm, and sacrosanct than other beings, just as the utilitarianism SHS decries in Singer presumes that the healthy baby is more valuable, worthy of life and freedom from harm, and sacrosanct than the less perfect one. The minute "more important, worthwhile, and deserving than" becomes an issue and a yardstick, the doors to the Nazi laboratory and death chamber can open. It's human exceptionalism that says every human life is as valuable as every other, and I don't dispute that; I agree with it. But it follows, then, that it doesn't matter who is experimented on or put in the death chamber; it's simply wrong. The problem comes when a distinction is made between the ethical wrong of causing suffering to a non-human animal causing it to a human animal, because as soon as we become callous toward one, we become callous to the other; that is why we have the ability to perceive suffering -- to prevent us from harming ourselves or others. The Hippocratic Oath, by the way, begins with "First, do no harm." It doesn't say don't harm any humans, but it's ok to do harm, as long as it's only to other sentient beings, which the Nuremberg rules do say. If we do not respect other animals, we cannot respect ourselves, and we've created a system of science and medicine divorced from ethics and morality that is an intrinsic part of the death culture because we have ignored that truth.
Ianthe: A human being is more valuable than an animal. That doesn't mean we can do whatever we want, but I think it means we can use animals instrumentally if we do so humanely, as in medical research, food, clothing, etc.
What are the odds that such folks complaining about using animals to cure humans are not using the discovered medical procedures tested on other animals to cure their animals??? I view animal experimentation as an ongoing boon to the human family. In fact it is one of the reasons mom & dads get to share a life with their parents or grand children that was not possible 100 years to 50 years ago. It would me immoral to not put the cures for moral animals (humans) above the amoral animals, who have no sense of ethics and morals.
For the sake of absolute clarity, I meant, above, that the intentions of the Nuremberg Code itself, not of the aspect of it to which I referred, are noble and correct. But the code erred in the aspect in question when it required what it was trying to repeat from happening again, which the Nazis justified by claiming that the subjects of experimentation and murder were of lesser value, e.g. "animals," "subhuman," "unwholesome," "vermin," "non-Aryan," etc. than those it claimed were "superior" and "entitled" to the fruits of their experimentation and murder. Human exceptionalism does the same thing in claiming that we are "distinct" from other life forms, which logically relies on the assumption that it is even possible for one life form to be "distinct" from another; that gets justified by the "values" "unique" and "necessary to the survival of" the human race, based on the Judaeo-Christian ethic, just as the Nazis claimed that "the Aryan race" was "exceptional." In fact, the human race created the foundations of the "science" that human exceptionalism values before the Judaeo-Christian ethic, which did not create them, came along; in fact, that "ethic" is what has mucked things up and led to the creation of the "death culture" that did not exist, in the western civilization upon which foisted itself, before it, and science took the turn toward the death culture under its influence. It may "mean well," but it is circular, and swallows its own tail. The philosophical system that preceded it endowed all of life, including humans, with connection to the deities which it itself acknowledged were man-made, and involved a self-respect, and reverence for life, that was the basis of the scientific achievements it passed on to us, in the course of and as the result of exercising moral and ethical values that were automatic and intrinsic to itself. That was real human exceptionalism, and those civilizations did not devalue even slaves, whose status it regarded as the mere result of fate. Those civilizations understood ethics, morality, and humanity, or would not have created the foundations of western civilization from which we have departed with the result that the death culture is now overtaking us, and, faced with attack by death culture from without, were constituted so as to fight it, not to debate it. That science did not rely on experiments on human or any other animals, but rather on the ability of the human mind, with paramount regard to logic, reason, humility, and moderation. The science we have now is, by contrast, lazy, sloppy, immoral, unethical, dishonest, and self-serving, and the Nazi experimenters may have claimed to have been working "for the benefit of our kind" ("but this is not to be done on our kind") but in fact were primarily concerned with their own self-serving obsession for experimentation, with concommitant self-glorification, which is exactly how "Western science" operates today, given permission by the Nuremberg rules that were supposed to stop the madness, and by the rhetoric of fear-based gratitude "for making our lives better." Western science continues, in fact, on the tyrannical, utilitarian, and self-serving course, divorced from, yet still claiming to have, ethics and morality, of what the Nuremberg rules, under the rubric of "never again," purported to bring to an end, and the symptoms by which we can recognize this, as well as its fuel, are animal experimentation and the fear-based, self-centered deliberate disregard for the suffering it caused to the subjects of animal experimentation as well as to our own souls, bodies, and lives. Just as dangerous as, and more dangerous than, the "terrible diseases" which we want "eradicated" so that we and our "family and friends" (what? not humanity as a whole? ok, SHS already carries that banner) can "live better lives" is the scientific-medical system that has grown callous to the value of the individual life, and the death culture it has created, with the permission of the moral lacuna of the Nuremberg rules. Seeking to make things "nicer," in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, has, as that quest often does, succeeded not succeeding. Now we "create life" in fertility laboratories, and "improve" and "extend" it via the "miracles of modern science and medicine," and, with the arrogance born of the ability to manipulate it, devalue it by regarding embryos -- of every species, including our own -- as "material," e.g. fodder for further experimentation "that will make life better," and end up aborting it at one end of the life span, debating when at what point it is "really life," dehumanizing it as a result of the callousness that becomes engrained as the result of animal experimentation and, for example, crushing the skull of a viable, sentient child in "late-term pregnancy interruption" and arguing on the Senate floor that that is perfectly all right, giving Singer, who proposes infanticide "theoritically," a chair at Princeton, murdering the disabled, the elderly, and the helpless and vulnerable -- and then we turn around and say "Gee, the death culture is a real danger, but we must carry on with science." It's the banner of "improving life" itself under which the death culture is marching. "Better living through science" has led to "better death by assisted suicide." Wanting the benefits of science "to reduce human suffering" while both ignoring and justifying the suffering of the animals used to "produce" them is selfish, and selfish just doesn't work -- which, by the way, is one of the basic tenets of Christianity, is it not? Not that Christianity was needed for the human mind to be able to figure that out, as it had long before Christianity came along. Rationalizing it by saying that we are entitled to do it because we are "unique" doesn't work because rationalizing doesn't work, and it's just a way of justifying to ourselves abandoning our innate decency and ability to perceive suffering, and when we abandon our innate sensibility, we abandon life, and end up with the death culture, complete with its euphemisms that mirror our own refusal, out of fear and selfishness, to acknowledge what our own sensibility tells us. It's irrational and self-destructive, and denigrates, rather than honors, the best that is in us, which is what we really need to honor for the sake of our own survival, and if we follow an irrational course in which we have abandoned the most important part of ourselves, including ethics, morality, and the ability to choose right over wrong, claiming that we are instead being "rational," where do we expect to end up? We have more to fear from doctors who have convinced themselves in the course of their training, in pursuit of their own goals and self-concepts, that it is justified to proceed with vivisection despite the offense it does to their own sensibilities, and graduate to treat humans with the same "detached," "clinical," approach, than we do from ones who, as medical students, refused to participate in it, and were not willing to advance their careers by fearing and refusing to protest. Which ones do you think will as doctors be more willing to crush the skull of a baby in a late-term abortion, or pull the plug on an elderly person who only wants to leave the hospital alive so that they can die at home, lest the world discover the errors they made that can damage their careers, on orders by a hospital administration? This is just common sense, and that is what is lacking from the point of view that considers animal experimentation necessary, claiming that that is common sense. We take whatever pharmaceutical companies devise, at the cost of the suffering of millions of non-human animals, and pour onto the market for profit to lower cholesterol, for example, and then suffer from side-effects, without considering that those who created them didn't mind harming non-human animals in the course of creating what would "help" their "fellow humans" while advancing their own careers and profits, and then figure out, similarly patting ourselves on the backs for our genius, that gee, we could have just consumed olive oil, which in order to keep in business when enough people figure out that they don't have to take their poison, the "scientific establishment" then "endorses" and starts including in the products it produces and touts for profit -- and, like idiots, we buy that, and appreciate having it pointed out to us that it is "now available." It is our having abandoned our own innate wisdom that has led to the creation and flourishing of the death culture and our need to fight it now for our own survival, and realizing that one can't cause pain and not expect to receive it in turn is an innate part of the wisdom the capacity for which we were born with and which we have abandoned with predictable result.
It is not necessary to claim that humans are more valuable than animals. You are beginning with a premise posed as absolute and justifying the rest of the argument. That is not logical; it's circular reasoning, and that's why the doctrine of human exceptionalism has not been able to defeat the death culture. Fighting the fight is necessary, and honorable, but winning the fight requires the weapon, the analysis, the approach, and the tactic that can win it, and the doctrine of human exceptionalism can't do it, and isn't doing it, because it's partly on the same side as the enemy, which is the problem with circular reasoning when it is used to try to win a battle, let alone one as crucial as this one. You see the enemy coming over the ramparts, but without realizing it, apparently, you don't see that you belong to its army. I do pose an absolute, that experimentation on non-human animals is wrong, and I can base it on the principle that to do what makes humans capable of conscience and sensibility queasy is to send ourselves down the wrong road, with inevitable harmful consequences to ourselves, and that it is unethical to do to creatures like ourselves enough so that the fruits of research upon them can be "useful" to ourselves, which they would not do to us (regardless of for whatever reason they would not do it to us). Saying that it is permissible to do it is in fact utilitarian, with predictable negative consequences to ourselves, which is what we've got in the death culture you oppose. Beginning with the absolute premise that we are exceptional and uniquely different than any other species and that therefore we are entitled to do it because we are what we are and deserve the benefits because we are capable of taking them and that's what humans can do by virtue of being humans is no different than a lion going after an impala because it's king of the jungle, and just as utilitarian; saying that no, we have the capacity to decide to do it rather than only to capacity to act on instinct and it's all right to make the choice to do it because being able to make the choice makes us special raises the question of why, then, have we chosen to do what has negative consequences to ourselves, and why do those who ignore that those consequences exist and what their cause is then claim to oppose what grew out of the same thing, to ignore which is be irrational. If irrationality is the best we can do, the death culture, which is part and parcel of that irrationality, is our inevitable reward. I say, as you do, that it is not our inevitable reward, but the difference is that I see that if we have the capacity to make moral choices, and make immoral ones, and don't even acknowledge that they are immoral on the grounds that we are simply entitled to make them and therefore they must be moral, we're thinking in circles for selfish purposes and have brought the death culture on ourselves as a result of our own actions, which we do not see clearly enough. If we're as deserving as, for example, the lion, and more, we have to be as clear-sighted as the lion, and more. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, and I didn't reach my conclusion by circular reasoning, but by logic, which is the only thing that can keep humans alive.
I just noticed "use animals humanely, as in food, clothing, and scientific research." At the level of food, we are at the same level of other animals, eating other animals, and while we share that ground with them, at the same time have abilities as humans, including humanity, we are obligated to do it as humanely as possible. At the level of clothing, again, we cannot aurvive without it, and in my view not using those parts of those animals we eat for clothing would be wasteful, and therefore immoral, and again, just as we must be as humane as possible when killing the animal for food, we must be when shearing the sheep. Some humans are healthier as vegetarians, some as carnivores, and to survive we must do what is necessary to survive, like any other animal, and the pleasure we enjoy from a fine steak or leather shoes, is natural for those of us who are not physically suited to being vegans, who are able to choose to be vegans and be healthier as a result as well. I know -- the argument now will arise that it would not be moral not to use animals in research because some of us can survive without that research, but the difference is that no one can survive without food, and we are at the same level as the other animals when we eat them. We must also do these things with a sense of utmost reverence. The non-Christian Native American and Jewish cultures figured this out just fine. But when we don't need their pelts, but just want them, as a luxury and for the sake of our own ego, and take their skins and throw the rest of them away, that's another matter. I appreciate the pleasure of fur as used in fashion as much as anyone else, but I'm also capable of surviving without it and realizing from what suffering it results, and it is more exceptionally human, and character-building, to be able to resist the desire to enjoy it than to choose to enjoy it despite conscience and rationalize to oneself that while one wouldn't want to suffer what the animal it came from has, it's all right that the animal did because, after all, it's not a human animal. If any religious doctrine supported what I've just said, Christianity and human exceptionalism would, if they did not conveniently and arbitrarily differentiate the rights of one sentient species from another, which opens the door to the death culture. The moral connotations of "good Republican cloth coat" are not accidental. But when it comes to animal experimentation, humans have been able to survive throughout the millenia without it, whereas we have not been able to survive without food and clothing. With clothing, we're a step away from what animals do to each other, in the direction o "human exceptionalism," but we can still act with morality about it. (Animals used for labor, transportation, protection, hunting (if we eat what we hunt, it's one thing; destroying an animal for the sake of ego is another; if we're superior, we don't need to prove it that way), and companionship are, again, to be treated humanely and with gratitude. Horses used in warfare got injured and killed; there is no possibility of being humane in that situation and we had no business dragging them into our own, literally, battles. I'm not a pacifist by any means, but if we're going to fight within our own species, we shouldn't make other ones do it with us.) There is no such thing as "humane" scientific experimentation, which cannot be justified for the sake of gaining "the scientific and medical advances that make our lives better" on the grounds that it is done, and as long as it is done, "humanely," because it isn't. Go take a look -- if you can get in. Laboratories would not be sequestered from public view in the way that they are if it was. It's not simply that it's private property, or that it would intrude on the work of the scientists, product testers, etc. It's that if people who "benefitted" from it actually saw it, enough of them would raise a ruckus so that business, profits, careers, and "progress" would be at the very least disrupted. School field trips take children all sorts of places -- but that's not one of them. Manufacturers give tours to show off how their products are made -- laboratories don't. Dangerous manufacturing, construction, etc. venues don't, for safety reasons, and to avoid liability if a visitor is injured. In research laboratories that use animals, the danger is a foregone conclusion, but not to visitors, to the research subjects -- and to humans who will be harmed by the callousness of those who are "laboring to help humanity. Student researchers don't quit, vomit, faint, have nightmares, yell "It hurts him!," and refuse to participate for no reason. Medical students don't "learn" to be detached when dealing with dogs and cats that are "different" from their own pets and not become doctors who -- well, we've seen, haven't we? Euphemism begins in the laboratory, where death is constant, e.g., "sacrifice" replaces "torture, kill, and discard" -- is it any wonder that "pregnancy interruption" is rampant, including when the foetus or infant is discovered to be imperfect and the chosen solution is to throw it out and start all over again with another one, and that medical murder is called merely "disconnection from life support"? Singer may be utilitarian, but he is right that we are all animals, and watching die, and causing to die, those of one species to die as if it were not significant inevitably leads to the same "detached" attitude toward human death, and when the rationalization is "to prevent human suffering," we're surprised that now we've got euthanasia, medical murder, and "assisted (including by physicians) suicide" of humans who are vulnerable, just as laboratory animals are, coming down the pike at us? There is no way to be "humane" and pursue animal experimentation, and if "it's all right as long as it's humane," then it's not all right. Taking it a step further, if it's all right even if it's not humane, because it benefits us, then we're saying we're not humane, and at least we're being honest, but we're also not being humane, which means we fail on "human exceptionalism" and on entitlement to the "benefits." I disagree, as well, about its being necessary. What it is is a bad habit, reflective of bad character, and it is perpetuated to advance careers. If we're so smart, and what humans are capable of being and doing, we don't need to use animals in this way. But that would require more work, and more intelligence, and disrupt "careers." The Nazis weren't experimenting as they were because they wanted to help the human race; they were doing it because they liked to experiment. "Research" does not require use of animals. Of course those whose frame of reference it is, and whose minds are not sufficiently independent, and are not sufficiently morally committed, say that it is, but that doesn't make it true.
Ianthe: You are a very intelligent person, and have clearly thought about this a lot. But I don't think you can see past your emotions.
How would you test whether a drug actually works or a stem cell therapy, or indeed, a new surgical technique without trying it on a living organism? You just can't. And since so often these early efforts are dangerous, would you rather risk a mouse or a monkey, or a human being?
I have posted how we have learned that implants can be surgically placed into the brain allowing the brain to literally move robotic limbs. Proof that the theory could owrk was done with monkeys first to prove the concept. I have no doubt that monkey died in that process. I say that research should proceed becuase the potential to help paralyzed people is profound. But you needed proof of principle first. Otherwise it would be people who died. Or the research could never be tried. It would be unethical and wrong to use disabled people in the basic research because their lives would be put at risk. It is not unethical to put the monkeys lives at risk since the potential good is so great.
It isn't pretty. But it is necessary to medical advances. I don't think that is controversial. I am sorry, but it isn't.
If you have had surgery, taken medication, been inoculated, or had any meaningful medical procedure or test, it was done first with animals to test principle, perfect technique, and guage efficacy and safety.
I have met with and spoken to researchers. They are not sadists. They are trying to improve the human condition.
Above I noted that whereas we all need food and clothing to survive, we don't all need the "benefits" of animal experimentation. I can hear the objection now -- according to the doctrine of human exceptionalism, if one vulnerable human needs it, animal experimentation is justified. I disagree. Animal experimentation isn't justified, period, for the reasons I've mentioned, among others, one of which is that it damages our humanity and our souls, which are the same things that make us concerned about that one weak vulnerable human who is "exceptional" because s/he is human. Not only has the damage it has caused to our souls and humanity brought about the very same utilitarian disregard for that vulnerable human about whom this objection would express concern, courtesy of the same utilitarian death culture SHS is trying to fight, and not only does the "benefit" it may bring that one vulnerable human carry with it harm to others as a by-product of the same utilitarian, callous, and "beneficial" scientific research that has been allowed to proceed unfettered by the constraints of ethics and morality (it can't be justified as ethical and moral because it wouldn't be ethical and moral to forego the result if the process is not also ethical and moral), but also, the product available to us from the work of science and medicine, and all it entails, would be safer, more humane, more responsible, sophisticated, more efficient, and more effective if it were developed with more brainpower and humanity, rather than relying lazily on animal research, as it has -- and scientific and medical professionals who were forced to use their heads more, and not given a free pass for animal experimentation because they are, after all, "scientists" with a special status entitled to do with impunity things that anyone else would get arrested for, would "benefit us" with more skilled, more responsible, and more caring, intelligent, and humane medical treatment that what we have to try to survive now from arrogant punks fulfilling their parents' ambitions of having their kid become a doctor, and whose objective is to make money and have a certain status, and who on top of everything else had their sense of entitlement and superiority fed further by being trained in the world of animal experimentation, and will do anything to cover an error they made via malpractice rather than have their reputation, income, career dented, or, God forbid, their insurance rates go up. If you want your hypothetical vulnerable human's survival to be in the hands of Dr. "I'm board certified and you're not," in between his or her court deposition and call to the stockbroker (both the fruit of arrogance nurtured by feeling entitled to experiment on animals as a "scientist" with a special status and thus morally and ethically unaccountable because, after all, s/he is "helping humanity"), who got that way by being trained that it's ok to ignore the suffering of animal research subjects because his chosen career is "more important," rather than in those of a smarter, more capable doctor with more backbone who refused to participate in vivisection and, not coincidentally, is a better healer, that's your choice -- but it's the hypothetical vulnerable exceptional human's life, which has a better chance of making it, as do those of all the other vulnerable humans, in a world where the doctors are the latter rather than the former type.
My other point is that as we are making these wonderful advances, there has also been more and more objection to the use of animals in research -- and yet somehow, the advances are becoming more and more "miraculous." That's not because of using animals; it's because the researchers know that society is beginning to look over their shoulders, and they have to produce, and justify using the animals. That's how much "harm" the "animal rights movement" has done. The more pressure is on them, the more scrutiny they are under, and the harder it is for them to get their hands on animals for experimentation, the more careful, efficient, responsible, innovative, and productive they'll have to be. If they can be forced to use their brains enough, they might even get to the point of doing things the way they should have been doing them up to now, which does not require animal experimentation, but did not have to. Animal experimentation is part of a rigid, self-inhibiting, self-perpetuating system. It is habit changing which can lead to more beneficial results for humans, scientifically as well as morally than continuing it can. Ending it does not inhibit progress, but rather forces it. It relies too much on empirical and not enough on deductive reasoning, and those two approaches need to be brought more into balance with one another in its work. Finally, doctors and teaching hospitals do experiment on humans, with terrible consequences and a sense of complete impunity and lack of accountability, and that is part of the death culture, and those are the places where medical murder is carried out with the same detachment and disregard for suffering and for patients' rights they learned while experimenting on animals, and the Nuremberg code hasn't prevented it because it's not only allowed, but required, them to be in the habit of experimenting on and doing anything they please to those who are helpless, at their mercy, and can't talk back or defend themselves. You can't condone the latter and term it necessary and beneficial and not end up with the former. At least, that's what's been proven empirically -- on vulnerable human victims, in hospitals that have forgotten the obligation to be, and habit of being, "places of care" since animal experimentation became "required" by the Nuremberg code. That in itself cancels out the benefits of the "wonderful advances" the same system has "given us" -- given us with one hand while taking away with the other. Unless you don't mind taking the chance, when you go to a doctor or into a hospital, and playing the lottery, or knowing that while you're "benefitting," down the hall, another "exceptional human" who has an equal right and ability to be treated successfully isn't. If you don't mind the latter possibility, you're in tune with the "logic" that "justifies" experimentation on non-human animals ("better you than me"), and if you do, and still think animal experimentation is justified, you're missing the point that you can't have one without the other.
One other thing: The answer to the answer of "So what?" to my initial statement here about the mice not having diabetes in the first place is not only that it's wrong to make any healthy creature unhealthy, but also, on a more "utilitarian" level, the result could turn out to be useless because things may not work the same way when what was "cured" was artificially induced in the first place.
Singer does seem to make some odd leaps, and it's a wrong assumption that his thinking represents the best logic of the animal rights movement, but how he, and other intellectuals, including the "bioethics" community, the "end-of-life" culture, the involuted "right to die" movement, etc., and Princeton, along with other places, got to be the way they are, with free rein to influence the rest of society, is that we've given science, whose home is the academy, free rein to proceed in an amoral fashion, and nobody dares point out that the emperor has no clothes, or question their authority, because, after all, they are "smarter" and "more entitled" than anyone else, and society "needs" their services. Just as no one dares walk into laboratory and say stop that you son of a bitch you're hurting that cat who do you think you are. Try that and see what happens. You'd get the benign smile and patronizing pat on the shoulder and attempt to convince you that really, the researcher is a nice guy who loves humanity and you should get to know and understand and have sympathy for him, he works so hard, torturing cats, to save humanity, and cares about people so much, while he's torturing cats. And it's very important to science to know whether if a kitten's paws are cut off it will still attempt to groom itself, it might help humans one day. In case one ever wants to develop prostheses for cats. Much more scientific than observing that human amputees still move their limbs, which can be accomplished by a visit to a veterans' hospital, which would require leaving the laboratory in which one has made it one's life work to hide. Now, of whom and of what does that remind you? Singer? No kidding. Or they might just call the police because you're bothering the great humanitarian who tortures cats. There's the tyranny of the death culture again. If you call the police, they'll say oh no that's a great scientist we can't arrest him and he is legally entitled to torture those cats. Because every one has to "do their job," whether they are outraged by what's going on or not. Next thing you know a doctor is legally entitled to disconnect you from life support when you don't want to die and anyone who tries to save you gets carried off by security guards who have tears in their own eyes but the great scientists's word goes. Singer, Princeton, utilitarianism, tyranny, animal experimentation -- they're all part of the death culture, and they all got to where they are today because they've gotten "authority" as the result of the deference given to "science" we let run amok because we want its "benefits" which we deserve because we're "exceptional." Baloney.
As for Nuremberg, it never seemed right to me that it took place where it did. Maybe it was geographically and logistically practical, and maybe it made a statement "never here never again," etc. that was more dramatic because of the location, but that was a bit too involuted, just like the liberal thinking that's shills for the death culture; if they really wanted to change the rules, it should have been elsewhere. What had begun before the war had not been a long-term and universal tradition; it was something that arose in a certain place and required outside intervention to stop. You don't go to someone's house and tell them don't commit a crime again, you haul them out and put them on trial away from their own environment. It should have been done at a geographical distance. Experimentation on humans, and eugenics, continues, in "fertility treatment," for example. The death culture merely continued under different rules. If you want to change things, you don't have the inmates make "new, improved" rules in the asylum. "Ok, we won't do it anymore, we'll do better from now on." That means we'll give the appearance of keeping our nose clean until it blows over and we've convinced everyone we've learned our lesson and reformed and then we can start up again, and meanwhile, we'll use a substitute method. The way to deal with it wasn't to say can't experiment on humans without first on animals, it was to say can't experiment on any living creature but yourself. That was the way to straighten things out, and we wouldn't have the mess we've got on our hands now plus the whole thing starting up all over again. Even if it had "interfered" with the "progress" of scientific research (which it wouldn't; it would have improved it), we'd still have fewer health problems, and have done less damage to the environment, too, not to mention all these issues that are under discussion now. But nobody had the guts to say and do what was really necessary, and here we are. Because it wouldn't have been "Christian" and "nice" and kowtowed to the absolutely unnecessary delusion of "human exceptionalism."I knew my instinct about Nuremberg was right. Just couldn't put my finger on it until now. Nuremberg FED the death culture, it didn't end it. No wonder Ike said what he did about the military-industrial complex. (And consider how many animals that has consumed, and its ties with the same scientific/academic world that has given a chair to Singer. I don't mind war, and regret not having pursued a career in the military, but an army is supposed to travel on its stomach, not on the backs of laboratory animals, and end up being run by MBAs and with its troops on antidepressants. I don't know if everyone reading this sees the connection, but it's there.
Wesley: You're not telling me anything I don't already know about the role of animal experimentation in modern science and medicine. I'm not basing my argument on emotion, but on logic. I've met researchers, too. I know some (aside from the ones that are sadists, particularly re the use of animals in psychological experiments)are trying to improve the human condition and don't know any other way than what they have been trained to work in. I also know that some are doing it for the sake of greed, career advancement, etc. and aren't fit to be around humans, who can at least defend themselves, and don't care about anything as much as they do their own interests. I don't take medications, or get inoculations, what health problems and injuries I've had have been the result of disruption of my life as the result of medical arrogance, and in having to recover from each I've done it on my own with common sense. I've had "high-tech" surgery, with terrible consequnces because the doctor, who was eager to have me be the patient for it, did an unethical experiment without my consent; if I told you his provenance you would not be surprised, and my point would be further proven. I had the problem half-solved on my own by use of a holistic technique before the surgery and the doctor later went to prison for something else. The other surgery was for a fractured leg from an accident that never would have happened if it hadn't been for the disruption of my life by the previous one. My great- grandfather and my uncle on one side, and great-uncle and his son on the other, were doctors, three, two of whom were considered famous, in Europe, and one here, who was trained at Johns Hopkins, and had a habit of walking around saying "Do no harm" like a parrot. I'm familiar with how much more sophisticated and advanced medicine is in Europe than here, and in other cultures as well. In the course of having to recover from the result of medical mayhem, I've been to more doctors, and explored more holistic treatments, than Carter's has pills. Not to mention myriad emergency room visits for life-threatening allergic reactions I have to be very careful about. What helped with those was a treatment common in Europe but "not approved" in the United States, by a doctor from Italy; I might be dead now otherwise, and I've been very close to losing life and limb several times. I've seen enough of doctors, both as a patient and in my personal life, and of hospitals, not to mention a total of two years of my life with parents in hospitals that had to be watched like a hawk, and learned enough in the course of doing animal rights work on the laboratory issue, to know the territory I'm talking about. Not to mention that, as you said, I'm no fool. If I'd trusted and left things to doctors and their "superior scientific knowledge" on a number of occasions, I wouldn't have been as well off; in fact I wouldn't have one of my legs now. To answer your question, I'd prefer the experimentation was done on a human than on a non-human animal, and not just any human -- the experimenter him- or herself; if they wouldn't risk it, they shouldn't be doing it. Better than that, a non-living model of some kind, not necessarily sophisticated. One problem with scientific and medical experimentation is that its TOO empirically oriented, with not enough purely logical, deductive reasoning, which is much harder work (and the researchers aren't that smart, plus their hidebound by protocols, supervisors, egos, etc.), balancing it. Plus the way they are trained limits them intellectually as well as morally. Don't patronize and insult me by telling me my position is based on emotion. Especially when your own reasoning is circular.
(That should be "they're.")
As for the monkey, no, it's not all right to use the monkey, for the monkey to die for the "greater good," etc. I never said anything about experimenting on disabled humans. My point is in fact that the reason not to experiment on another creature is because the other creature is vulnerable and cannot defend itself. I don't suppose that before they started experimenting on humans, the Nazis, who compared their subjects to "animals," hadn't already been experimenting on non-human animals. It's because the subjects are helpless and at a disadvantage that it's wrong, and that principle applies the same to non-human animals as it does to vulnerable humans.
There is something else you did not know, before starting your line of questions; as the result of a surgery, by a doctor who purported to "want to help people" but was concerned with eugenics, as well as ego, but was experimenting, acting against my consent, rather than what I was paying for (I don't believe in medical insurance), my life was more profoundly devastated than you could imagine, it's a good thing I'm still alive, and I have spent years praying for a repair procedure which does not exist. I fully understood Christopher Reeve's fighting spirit, and have had the same attitude, insisting that it must be possible to repair. But the difference is that I did not want a repair if I were offered one that was developed via animal research. None, developed with or without it, has been made available to me. But the one I would want would be developed without it. As no procedure to repair it existed of which I have yet become aware, I also begged to be allowed to be the subject of an experimental procedure -- one that I would not risk unless I fully understood it and it made logical sense to me, as well as to the doctor attempting it, and one that had not been developed via experimentation on non-human animals. I guess it's thanks to the Nuremberg code that I could not have that opportunity.
If the Nuremberg code prevents me, who is perfectly willing, from that opportunity, don't tell me that a monkey should die so that they can figure out how to put electrodes in someone's brain in order to move a limb robotically. And don't think the electrode/robotic idea isn't one of the many brainstorms I had in the course of desperately trying to figure out how to be made whole to the greatest extent possible again. You have no idea what I've been through. But I knew I would not want it if meant killing, for example, a monkey . And I don't even like monkeys. If it doesn't make enough sense logically for me to be the subject of the experiment, I don't want it. I'm not obligated to have a different attitude and accept your circular point of view which is never going to succeed at ending the death culture the way you are going for the sake of someone else who has a problem that needs fixing, just because they are human, as I am. I know, more than you can, what it is to be in the position of the person who would benefit from the "medical advancement," and why it is wrong to do what you say is "necessary," As for it not being pretty, that's reason enough; aesthetics are a good guiding moral principle.
So what? So there.
The death culture you are trying to fight is the result of vivisection, not its opponent, and Christian (you are the one who says the Judeo-Christian way is the way) humility would preclude humans saying that they have "more value" than animals. In view of your self-deprecatory tendency, I think it's also a case of "protesteth too much."
Jan: Humans ARE animals. It's arrogant of you to "hope" that someone else would think as you do. You're pretty limited, aren't you.
Dark Swan: YOU, I like. Good for you.
Dark Swan: p.s. -- You're way ahead of him. As you already know.
Wesley: I am leaving your site because I am absolutely disgusted. When you say it's ok that the helpless monkey dies (after having suffering inflicted on it, yet) because the benefit to the human who needs the result of the research is great and humans have more value than animals, you are opening the door to a helpless elderly or disabled person being disconnected from a ventilator because the value of the life of a younger or less disabled person is greater, and taking the life of the helpless one is "not pretty," but of great benefit. It's utilitarian, either way. You can't get around it by claiming "uniqueness" of humans. I know you don't get it, but it's obvious to others, and I do understand your reasoning; it just doesn't hold up. And while on the one hand you're helping the anti-death movement, on the other hand you're standing in its way.
Dark Swan: Good job!
Farewell.
I am sorry to see you go, Ianthe. But I will not be sorry when people with quadriplegia are able to have a more independent life due to the monkey research that helped lead to that breakthrough.
Here's another example: There is a wonderful therapy for paralyzed stroke victims now spreding around the globe called Constrained Induced Movement Therapy, in which people are taught to use their numb arms to do things for themselves such as open doors, drink coffee, etc. It has made the lives of tens of thousands of people disabled by strokes better. It is now being tried experimentally on children with cerebral palsy, with great promise.
Dr. Taub was the victim of the Silver Spring Monkey case, an early PETA direct action that almost shut down the research and had Taub charged with crimes. He was able to clear himself, but it took time. He told me in interviews that none of what he has achieved, which should be celebrated, would have been possible without the experiments he performed on monkeys because they proved his hypothesis about the plasticity of the brain. Before that, physiological theories would have held that what he believe could be achieved, could not be. The monkeys were crucial in the work.
So, the benefit is clear and indisputable. You can say we shouldn't use the animals instrumentally. That is a moral position. But it would prevent the alleviation of tremendous suffering if your views prevailed.
You will be missed and my best to you.
I am a moralistic pragmatist Ianthe. I eat meat. I keep pets & I have raised animals for our family to live on over the lean winter months. I look at dogs as special to humanity. I also look upon the dogs used to find new life for children disappearing slowly as more important to the human family. Death from Diabetes deserves a more pragmatic & special consideration.Parents wringing their hands in sorrow know a pain that Fido's family would never be AWARE of.
Once again from a pragmatist who understands we use animals for food & thus survival & we use animals for cures and thus survival. I view animal experimentation as an ongoing boon to the human family. In fact it is one of the reasons mom & dads get to share a life with their parents or grand children that was not possible 100 years to 50 years ago.
It would me immoral to not put the cures for moral animals (humans) above the amoral animals, who have no sense of ethics and morals.
Lanthe,
I see a significant amount of arrogance in all you say. To say nothing of the fact that you state many things as fact...without any proof....other than your own emotional circular logic.
If you leave because others do not agree with your ideas that is the heighth of arrogance.
A good discussion...never hurt anyone....and leaving because you did not sway others to your side....is sad...and limited.
Come on back...and give your thoughts....I don't have to agree...but I will listen.
Pretty much how I feel to Jan. I don't mind debating folks with an absolute mind set at all. I would hope they would weigh their point of view with regards to the views of others.
you state many things as fact...without any proof....
Pretty much how I feel to Jan.
Such As????
You two have several pages of text to choose from and you don't raise any specific point to argue?
Actually I am quite specific. Animal research does offer cures and retardation of diseases that cripple the human family. Those are the facts. Using emotional based rhetoric against animal research might involve a book but it does not change those facts. Thus I the pragmatist will continue to recognize the facts and avoid the emotionally charged compassion that actually is compassionless with regards to the folks I feel to be the more important them lab rats.
Using emotional based rhetoric against animal research might involve a book but it does not change those facts.
It is inevitable that you must cling to your own similar "emotional" rhetoric that causes you to believe that animals are worth killing to serve human medical interests.
I will not be sorry when people with quadriplegia are able to have a more independent life due to the monkey research that helped lead to that breakthrough.
I'll take a step out and predict that stem cells, the ones you refer to as Hype, will lead to successful therapies for spines and aid paras and quads before artificial neural monkey networks will. But thats just my expert opinion.
I stated Using emotional based rhetoric against animal research might involve a book but it does not change those facts."""
Dark Swan ducked
"It is inevitable that you must cling to your own similar "emotional" rhetoric that causes you to believe that animals are worth killing to serve human medical interests.""
Except that lives of humans are actually being enhanced through animal research. Even the lives of their pets are better operated because of animal research. Thus the deaths of a few serve the lives of many & will continue to do so a long time after the biolab animals are tested. Nothing emotional in the pragmatism of that factor but it is blind emotionalism that would deny the medical professions the ability to use a few to cure the many. Thus many are served by my compassion for many years while your protection offers no compassion in the long term or the short term of many to protect a few..
Donnie said it is blind emotionalism that would deny the medical professions the ability to use a few to cure the many.
Sure - no one is disagreeing on that point - no need for you to build a strawman.
You agree that basic research needs to be done, but you say only on animals.
lanthe feels that human volunteers are capable of being research subjects for the conditions he described.
And you both cling to your personal beliefs to justify it. So what is your point again? That your reasons are justified and lanthe's aren't??
It appears your point is lame.
Except that lives of humans are actually being enhanced through animal research. - donnie
The fact is, all animals including humans are capable of providing data to enhance research studies.
To reiterate, if Wesleys assertion that every human trial must undergo animal study first then Prentice's list of ASCr therapies that did not seek FDA approval and were not all tested on animals are not treatments available to the public, and all the HYPE proposing ASC treatments from sites like Do No Harm and stemcellresearch are a fraud. Otherwise everything Wesley asserts about the absolute necessity of animal research is wrong.
You can't have it both ways.
The first step in any testing should be on animals. Then upgraded with gradual checks leading to eventual testing on human subjects. That is only common sense if it is humans you are interested in curing and not causing more harm to human subjects then good.
In Lay person terms here is a working methodology of such testing.
PROGRESSIVE MONITORING:::Regarding the link between animal testing, progressing forward to human testing.
Would you summit to venom tests without animal tests first?
(1) Anybody who thinks that animal tests are misleading, can buy the rights to drugs which failed animal tests. They can then test such drugs/medical procedures them on themselves and their like-minded friends (if any wish to play case test A.) No one has ever done so,because no one really believes that animal tests have no predictive value.
Consider rattle snake venom. As a project,science wants to find a cure for quick stable life saving reasons. How many animals in North America are born with a natural antidote to the venom? One that is assured, would be the California ground squirrel. We know of few animals immune to the poison other then this ground squirrel. Bitten, most animals succumb as the rattler strikes and the poisoning begins. The venom invades the veins and travel towards the heart.
Thus the best method to provide a antidote would be {1) Injecting venom into humans and other animals to see what defensive mechanisms crash. That would show where the life support systems break down. However knowing the breakdown which has occurred, would it not make sense to check the ground squirrel and see what DEFENSIVE methods the squirrel has within its makeup which defeat the snakes venom. The answer should be a combination of both the imune 7 the venom threatened animals in the above equation, minus humans for the initial tests.
Not many ARA would like to subject themselves to this trial, so the squirrel is a good choice.I have not seen many human guinea pigs in this field, but maybe that can change.
Just to keep things simple, lets suppose that a antidote is found which is a proven success in saving everything over a period of years, but Rhenis monkeys and humans. The test is then narrowed to what does man and RH monkey have in common which other animals do not?? Is there a protein or coagulant missing or in place, which all other animals don't have? The tests continue and the results are monitored. Finally they find out that all subjects tested with antidotes are surviving in the primate category.
It could be found that every primate will survive on original antidote plus B & A additives, but man. Man might need an ABC additive as a common antidote. However maybe Some men might need a additive E. People with O RH negative blood might need all abce plus d additives.
Progressive monitoring might have taken 10 to 30 years of lab work. In the general human population of 6 billion people with a 100% success rate for venom control realized for 30 years.
Then one day a person with an odd protein mixed with O-RH negative blood and an even rarer liver disorder shows up with a snake bite. He gets antidote injection, goes spastic, then drops blood pressure and progresses into heart failure, which becomes terminal.
Should we throw away the antidote that worked for so many years at 100% success and classify it as a failure because something makes it suspicious now? No! We would continue to use the antidote and specify that a person with x protein,O-rh negative blood and Z liver condition is at a HIGH RISK of death, until a new antidote can be found for that specific condition.
It is progressive monitoring which will offer a more conditioned response to ANY VARIABLE in the science of preventing death by Rattler venom. Funny thing is, it started with a ground squirrel and a snake. Who knows how long progressive monitoring would take? However! Without testing, what synthetic compound will save each and every individual. NO ANIMAL RIGHTS volunteers were involved in this testing. NO surprise there, as they had to go through a lot of lower classed animals to reach today's standards. I feel comfortable with that. The human community has been spared more friends and family longer because of animal testing and PROGRESSIVE MONITORING SYSTEMS.
Thus I the pragmatist will continue to recognize the facts and avoid the emotionally charged compassion that actually is compassionless with regards to the folks I feel to be the more important them lab rats.
Unless of course your talking about the application of ESCs, then your no pragmatist at all are you Donnie. What makes you change all of your rules then? My grandpa's life is of more value to me than an embryonic human stem cell tailored with a specific disease line to be researched. But no you get all emotional with your human superiority then dont chya.
Its the exact same circular logic that lanthe just went blue explaining to you and Wesley.
Your clearly not grasping how your head is swallowing your tail young tadpole.
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