Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Cyph0n | Hacker News Reader

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The state of medicine today is built on top of similar experiments. Countless people -- yes, people, not just animals -- have died for us to discover so much about the human body and its inner workings. It's unfortunate that most people are either oblivious to this fact, or simply take the immense work going on behind the scenes for granted. Keep this in mind next time you visit the hospital ;)

Performing this experiment could have far-reaching implications. Perhaps it ends up helping scientists understand whether or not such an adaptation could transfer to humans. Or maybe it ends up being crucial in helping us understand the function of a seemingly unrelated process in the human body.

It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are extremely strict when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats. If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or publication.

When you talk about people dying for science is it Marie Curie and the radiation poisoning, or Nazi's testing hypothermia? One is someone boldly (of her own volition) pushing the bounds of science, the other is an oppressive group performing horrendous experiments. Perhaps cancer patients on the verge of death opting for a potentially life extending drug?

When humans test on humans (in modern societies where things haven't gone horribly awry), care is given as to whether it's safe for the individual and would help them. Consent is a big word you'd never hear in an animal study. Animal testing is weighed against what benefits "science" in some way and some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric which doesn't seem to account for much. Anecdotally, my girl friend is a neuroscientist and has heard about things going on in labs that would make your skin crawl. One study that came to mind is on rats defending their territory based on how much food they were given, led to rats basically ripping each-other apart on camera.

We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.

What I had in mind were the people who volunteered for experimental medical procedures. Transplants, blood transfusions, neurosurgery, skin grafts, etc. The techniques were only perfected through the suffering and death of a vast number of nameless people.

> Animal testing is weighed against what benefits us in even the slightest way and is some sort of "unnecessarily cruel" metric.

> We say these things are okay, and important, but when I think that almost 13,000 animals were killed, beagles, cats, monkeys, rats, just so we could have splenda, I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.

That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life. But exactly how much more valuable is it? Can we accurately quantify how many mice can die so one human can live? Does it depend on the animal and its intelligence, at least as we perceive it? The questions can go on and on with no end in sight.

Now, I'm honestly not intimately familiar with what goes in the life sciences, particularly when it comes to experimenting on live subjects. Nonetheless, I am convinced that modern ethical standards are a good way to set universal limits to what can be done to animals in a laboratory setting, while also ensuring that we as humans benefit from the results. The alternatives would be either to delay the discovery of new procedures because we don't want to hurt animals, or to just experiment on humans directly. Neither of these sounds like a better option to me.

> We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life.

No, not at all. Ethics are relative. Sure, this is the a generally accepted opinion in our society, but so was slavery.

This is honestly one of the weirdest statements I've ever heard. Are you actually comparing the impact of slavery to the use of animals for research purposes? Please tell me that I misunderstood that.

Well, the GP mentions moral relativism, so it's no so farfetched.

I believe they are saying times change and some things that seem fine to most of the populous currently seem monstrous later. It's a lot easier to dismiss if you interpret it as you did, though.

> That is a deeply philosophical argument. We can obviously agree that -- all things being equal -- a human's life is worth more than an animal's life.

Normally I would agree, but, for example, if there is news that an Elephant trampled a poacher to death you won't find many readers rooting not for the animal.

I think splenda is a good example, in the end after killing thousands of animals to approve it people discovered it can actually cause weight gain[1]! Kind of destroys the original reason for it.

That's the thing with models, they're just models and ultimately they will have flaws. We rely heavily on animal testing and have built up reasoning to say why it's right, and that it helps, but we also don't know how much it hurts our own science with ridiculous blunders like that. Another recen inflammation, and they've been used for decades![2]

That being said, do I think science would progress slower without animal testing, or just far less and safer for the animal testing? Sure, probably, but it's worth the cost, and we'll get some benefits with less horrible blunders by relying on models. Another example, science could progress a lot faster if got rid of safety laws to test on humans, but somethings are just wrong so we don't do it.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/09/08/the-awful-trut...

[2] http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/08/08/mou...

Wow, looks like I accidentally a secente there and I can't change it.

> Another recent study showed that rats handle inflammation very differently than humans, making lots of past research useless and they've been used for decades![2]

Here's another view of what goes on in life sciences:

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-wa...

It's far too easy to ignore the atrocities in our system.

We (in the US) killed 28 million cattle for beef in 2015[0]. Just cause we like the taste of beef.

I gotta be honest, 13,000 animals for a common food product is pretty much a drop in the bucket. Amortize Splenda's animal cost over a 40 year usage timeline against beef, and you're talking 0.001%. (And would drop rapidly if I included chickens, pork, and fish.)

[0] http://www.beefusa.org/beefindustrystatistics.aspx

It's not just the taste though, it's a pretty good price to protein ratio. If we didn't kill animals for protein, it'd be a lot more expensive to get.

Not really. For example, one serving of black beans has as much or more protein than your average hamburger patty, and black beans are cheaper than meat in most places.

Ground beef has 0.26 protein to weight ratio, while pinto beans have 0.22.

About 440g of pinto beans for $0.8, so about 120g/$1 for protein.

Ground beef according to Google factoid was $4/lb in mid-2015, so about 30g/$1 for protein.

It sounds like beef is already an expensive source of protein.

I'd say it's all awful, one being worse doesn't make the other better.

>I think that whatever we value non-human life at must be so trivially small.

If you want to depress yourself further read about the "Great" Emu War.

Not to be a debbie downer, but a lot progress, especially pre-20th century is built on human misery and suffering.

But none of that really justifies animal experimentation.

> It's important to note that ethics committees nowadays are extremely strict when it comes to using live subjects, humans or otherwise, so rest assured that the experimenters did their best to minimize the suffering of the rats. If they didn't, their work would probably never be accepted for funding and/or publication.

I don't buy it. These ethics committees are starting with the presumption that it's ok to use animals in experiments to begin with. Have they outlawed vivisection yet? I've talked to a researcher at a large US state school who routinely sawed through monkey's skulls and installed removable, screw-on skull caps so that they could poke and prod at their brains more easily.

I mean, I'm a hypocrite for saying that though. I still eat chicken. But I don't delude myself about it.

If you don't think it's an effective system, propose an alternative.

http://www.pcrm.org

I'm not talking about whether it is effective or not. If you want a maximally effective system, do away with ethical considerations altogether.

That's exactly my point. The alternative is to either throw all ethical rules out of the window or to never experiment with any living being for any reason whatsoever. What we have right now strikes a good balance between the two, at least the way I see it.

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