Comment by vj44 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vj44 | Hacker News Reader

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I'd like to challenge the underlying assumption of NIH's reasoning here: “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero. “

This is not true. The demand for research animals is huge, and growing. Due to extremely restrictive laws and procedures governing the use of animals in research in the US and the EU (source: my own experience), virtually all interesting research (=breakthrough/publishable) becomes impractical.

What has already happened is that all interesting research moved to countries with less restrictive laws, namely China (source: direct exposure to my Chinese colleagues in neuroscience). With their vast and unrestrictive funding (CAS etc.), it is the Chinese who are now coming out with some fascinating results. More than that, some of my EU/US colleagues collaborate directly with them, on the exact same research, just on the Chinese soil (read: inconvenience of relocation, but that's about it).

I agree that this comment “We reached a point where in that five years the need for research has essentially shrunk to zero.” is a bit disingenuous as it is the same restrictive regulations that these institutes have put into place that have driven the demand to zero.

However, that was the intended consequence I would argue. And rather than say, “This is the state of affairs we wanted, we wanted zero invasive research on primates.” they are going to deflect blame because they get charged with endangering public health, “Given NIH’s primary mission to protect public health, it seems surprising,”

And that _is_ what is happening. It's an ethical trade-off. I'd actually prefer them to say that they were aware that some science might take longer but that the chimpanzee's well-being was now being taken into consideration, so sorry about that. I can see why they don't though, even if that's what they believe.

This makes a lot of sense, and makes me wonder how much experimentation on humans has risen in the time it took for that demand to reach zero. Or maybe how much regulation of human experiments has relaxed. I doubt there's much advocacy for these people, who are often just people in need.

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