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Comment by nihonde | Hacker News Reader

In that case, why not start with human subjects?

start is incorrect since human subjects are already being used from time to time. Way less than animals though, and often (e.g. electrical stimulation to fight epilepsy/tinitus) though not always (e.g. recording from electrodes in malicious brain tissue which is going to be removed anyway) they benefit so much it would be almost unhuman not to help them.

The times that has been done have raised complicated ethical questions beyond the obvious. Many have refused to use the data gathered despite some of the it being potentially helpful as the use of the 'tainted' data gives a validity to the method of gathering. http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/30171/Steinberg.HumanRes...

Economic reasons? Humans are worth a lot more than monkeys. I know it's a cruel reason and hardly the only one.

Unfortunately not entirely true, depending on where you live.

Americans would be astounded to learn the usual settlements awarded for deaths due to traffic accidents (as an example I'm familiar with) in South America.

Payments of 25.000 dollars aren't uncommon. Colombia and Uruguay pay around U$ 150.000 per death. Heck, even first world countries like Spain can pay less than that.

So, an expensive monkey pet can be more expensive than a human.

http://www.therichest.com/luxury/most-expensive/10-most-expe...

https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Most-Expensive-Pets/

(Spanish) http://sociedad.elpais.com/sociedad/2014/04/08/actualidad/13...

Probably because many treatment options can cause harm. So no researcher wants to take the very real risk of harming another human. If you harm an animal unintentionally, and in the name of trying to do something good, not many people will question it. But if you kill a paralyzed patient, or make him suffer excruciating pain, you're likely going to feel remorse and his family is going to demand an answer.

I think the social taboo is self-reinforcing argument. Animals have the same rights as humans. Indeed, we are animals. Those who draw categorical lines to justify their morose experimentation ought to be judged in the same light as someone who would cage a human boy and deliberately sever his spinal cord in the name of a higher good. It's the same. I don't condemn the science, but I do condemn the hypocrisy.

>Animals have the same rights as humans. Indeed, we are animals

By that reasoning, oughtn't we grant the same rights to a sea sponge?

It's not clear to me that animals, as a general class, deserve any particular care or rights beyond what we might extend to living creatures in general. So far as we grants rights to animals, the clear criteria seems to be complexity (especially of the intellectual sort) and closeness to humanity.

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