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Comment by goldenkey | Hacker News Reader

That's right, the chance of saving a human life is not equal to horrid abuse of other lives, in all but the most twisted utilitarianist, sapien-centric models.

Animal testing is a moral quandary. Rats, even if they weren't intelligent (which they are), don't deserve the tortures we put them through.

Gender identity and sentient AI equality have become fenceposts for our populist cross-dressing Musk-rat technocratic movement - but somehow, for many among us, animal rights still doesn't fit in...

The ends do not justify the means. Feminism and equality means giving a voice to those who cannot be heard - women, minorities, LGBTQ, and yes, primates and other animals. You must follow your precepts to their logical conclusions. Otherwise, you are not for true equality, and instead are for convenient equality, shackled to time and place, not forward thinking.

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>Feminism and equality means giving a voice to those who cannot be heard - women, minorities, LGBTQ, and yes, primates and other animals.

Just want to point out something I've noticed. Everyone has a different idea of what exactly feminism is, and everyone thinks their idea of feminism is obviously the real one.

So you volunteer to replace the monkeys in experimental drug research?

No, I'd prefer to remain free. But at least you are asking for consent - that's a start in the right direction!

Consent - something which the monkeys have not given. Something which their world-splitting cries of agony, anguish, and tortured existence, clearly indicate. It appears their disposition to being used as biological pin cushions is quite oppositional, one could say their entire life is dedicated to saying "No."

Imagine a life dedicated to saying "No." Your mind is disoriented, deteriorating. The world is spinning, and your insides are churning, throbbing, and burning with the pain of a thousand suns. Your skin is peeling, your muscles ache, your bones dull with a hollow pain, and your body feels like it isn't even yours. Implants and incisions, scars and scabs, your body riddled with pockmarks.

It sounds laborious and awful, more than nightmarish.

Would you volunteer for it?

> . But at least you are asking for consent

trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but about the best model available.

monkeys are not asked for consent, true, but they're not picked at random either, because it would be useless.

There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or poorer people?

An finally, how would you ask for consent to monkeys?

Do you ask mosquitos to leave before killing them?

edit: what really baffles me about this discussions is how much the mood of the population swings.

We have seen literally revolts on the streets against COVID vaccines being a way to force untested drugs onto the people but at the same time people complain that there is too much testing on non people

> trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but about the best model available.

Wait, then why aren't we using humans? Humans are the best model available for human biology, no?

> Wait, then why aren't we using humans?

because we can't and do not want to artificially breed and engineer humans for that purpose.

we don't grow kids with rare diseases or tumors just to make them suitable models, not counting how long it would take.

but if you prefer it...

You're assuming your conclusion in your premise.

The question is "should monkeys be available for research?"

You state that "we should use the best models available", therefore we should use monkeys for research. But this assumes that monkeys are available in the first place! It doesn't show that we should experiment on monkeys, just that we currently do.

> You state that "we should use the best models available", therefore we should use monkeys for research.

unless you want to test drugs' safety on the actual best model available, they are the second best model available.

> that monkeys are available in the first place!

they are not available as in nature, they are bred to be available.

we're not going to some rain forest to capture them in the wild.

we could do the same with humans, in fact Nazis did it and it worked remarkably well, ethics issues aside.

Anyway, only a few thousands monkeys are used in trials and most of them in non lethal (they do not risk to die) trials, for a short period of time.

Most of the animals used are not primates.

Even assuming researches and pharmaceutical companies are evil and have the worst intentions, monkeys are the most expensive option and it takes a lot of times to breed them, a true evil entity wouldn't waste all that money and time, when a rat gestation time is 21 days and they mature in a few weeks.

> . But at least you are asking for consent

trials are not about who's willing to partecipate, but about the best model available.

monkeys are not asked for consent, true, but they're not picked at random either, because it would be useless.

There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or poorer people?

An finally, how would you ask for consent to monkeys?

Do you ask mosquitos to leave before killing them?

Last but not least, do animals reciprocate those feelings?

Do they ask for consent before exploiting other animals?

As long as we can avoid mosquito we should. That's why I still prefer nets and repellent creams. However, I am not going to judge if some people kills mosquito that sucks their blood or spread dangerous diseases like malaria.

Comparing monkeys with mosquitos is kind of disingenuous. How many monkeys have killed people in 2022 compared to mosquito?

Lastly, many research takes place for beauty creams, shampoo etc.. that are total useless. There are also many research were animal are disregarded as useless. Maybe sustainable research is needed instead of dumping them uselessly?

Thanks!

> Lastly, many research takes place for beauty creams, shampoo etc.. that are total useless.

That's a popular argument, but it's a false premise.

If the objective is saving animals, why don't we ban flight transport altogether ?

It kills, directly and indirectly, a lot more (a LOT more!) animals than medical trials will ever do.

In the end it's mostly people going on holidays, it's useless.

We're for reducing suffering, not reducing death - the latter befalls everyone and everything.

I'm good with it.

> There's also another matter: who's gonna consent to participate to trials in your proposal, rich people or poorer people?

Probably those who want the benefit of the medication badly enough.

> Probably those who want the benefit of the medication badly enough.

it doesn't make them good models anyway.

not better than peaking up a random animal from the zoo or a random. human from the population.

in fact access to experimental trials is not on a consent only basis, patients need to adhere to some parameter.

for example: my mother in law was rendered almost blind by a degenerative disease.

She volunteered for an experimental trial on a new treatment but she was too old and her condition too advanced to be a suitable candidate. She was fully willing to be part of it, but consent alone wasn't enough.

Sometimes, people will be suitable candidates, and sometimes they won’t. In the cases they aren’t, we’d just have to accept that this will slow down the development of the medication.

and that's exactly how it works now.

I'm not happy we have to rely on animals, believe me, but suitable patients are already hard to find, if we don't test drugs for at least a reasonable definition of safe, we risk to kill the research, not simply slowing it down.

and that's much more probable for those diseases that are rare on humans, that are already underfunded and under researched.

So not poor people, but desperate people? That's just a different sort of problematic

Just because there's no perfect replacement solution to something doesn't mean we ought to continue to exploit the current one.

Debating as if there needs to be a replacement solution to a problem to justify change - that's Whataboutism style of debate.

If we used this line of logic with slavery, we'd still have plantations.

> Just because there's no perfect replacement solution to something doesn't mean we ought to continue to exploit the current one.

isn't it saying that we lack "the perfect replacement" whataboutism itself?

we lack any replacement.

Or we would be using them already.

> If we used this line of logic with slavery, we'd still have plantations.

slaves are people.

Sorry to point it out, but it makes a little bit of difference to me.

But to further expand, the problem with slavery have been the USA, in Europe, for example, the Catholic Church, following the teachings of Tommaso D'Aquino (Thomas of Aquino for anglophones), considered it a sin and was practically abolished starting from the first centuries of high middle ages. It took USA 5 centuries to catch up with the civilized World.

So at the times an alternative WAS ALREADY AVAILABLE, but white Americans thought slavery was cool (it was also cheap for them).

Researchers do not think animal trials are cool, they know there is no alternative at the moment and would very much prefer to use something else.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

Do you always debate in a dishonest fashion?

> Do you always debate in a dishonest fashion?

I'm simply not an English native speaker.

So the question goes right back at you, I guess.

Would you prefer to argue in Italian?

I can be much more precise in my native tongue.

p.s. please remind me what false arguments I provided. It would be much appreciated. thanks.

The dishonesty stems from the intent and tactics - not from a specific statement. Asking a lot of questions is really not a valid form of debate - it's moreso a form of argument.

I do not believe that lab animals should exist, period. You are in search for a replacement solution to drug development. I am not. There lies our dispute. I feel that it is okay to not be able to solve this "problem" because our current solution is exploitative and wrong.

I agree that often in human trials, the people who volunteer are poor or desperate, and this is a different issue which goes to the root of capitalism -- since work itself is a coerced form of volunteerism with the societal threat of homelessness.

Pretty much all of capitalism is coerced, just on different degrees or levels. The same applies to most of what is considered voluntary or consenting.

For example, joining the military. One can argue that most who join are lost, confused or poor. And they'd be right.

Or prostitution. Or working a minimum wage job. Etc.

The problem with fake consent in capitalism is much larger than drug trials.

> The dishonesty stems from the intent and tactics > Asking a lot of questions is really not a valid form of debate

It's the same question, actually.

> I do not believe that lab animals should exist, period.

What you believe it's irrelevant.

> You are in search for a replacement solution to drug development.

I'm perfectly fine with what we have.

You're rhetoric skills must be quite weak if you need to put words in my mouth.

> I am not. There lies our dispute. I feel that it is okay to not be able to solve this "problem" because our current solution is exploitative and wrong.

Then just don't use drugs or any product coming from animals.

Watch this

https://www.ted.com/talks/christien_meindertsma_how_pig_part...

> I agree that often in human trials, the people who volunteer are poor or desperate

Nobody said it and not necessarily.

They are simply ill.

You can't use healthy people to prove a drug works...

> since work itself is a coerced form of volunteerism with the societal threat of homelessness. > Pretty much all of capitalism is coerced,

    (・_・ ヾ

«The dishonesty stems from the intent and tactics»

The way we do consent is ”find the poor and the destitute, the ones who have no other options left”. Consent given under duress is not real consent.

Indeed. By consent I meant, without duress, which I thought was pretty clear. These folks use logical fallacies like "Appeal to Definition" in order to cloud the debate with arguments about the definitions of words.

Consent of certain actions is almost always under duress in a capitalistic society. These folks' arguments about consent not being "true" are just arguments against capitalism and for socialism, and I would agree with them, you'd probably too?

It's pretty clear cut that these animals aren't consenting, so their arguments are just moving the fencepost to gripes with capitalism.

> Imagine a life dedicated to saying "No." Your mind is disoriented, deteriorating. The world is spinning, and your insides are churning, throbbing, and burning with the pain of a thousand suns. Your skin is peeling, your muscles ache, your bones dull with a hollow pain, and your body feels like it isn't even yours. Implants and incisions, scars and scabs, your body riddled with pockmarks.

Representing this as typical of the research animal experience is disingenuous. You should be able to make your argument without resorting to hyperbole.

We're talking about monkeys, whose biggest use in recent research was in vaccine development. So e.g. Rhesus macaques were given injections of vaccine candidates (and convalescent plasma, etc), and then immune responses were measured. Some were then exposed to SARS-COV-2 to determine if the vaccines were effective. SARS-COV-2 produces much less severe illness in macaques than humans.

I've experienced an allergic reaction to medication before. It was the worst hour of my entire life until I had an injection of Benadryl. Every moment, I felt like I'd rather be dead than experience another moment of the agony.

So sure, experimentation effects may vary but the upper limit is fucking brutal and definitely depends on what stage the drug is in. Early on in development, the effects could be worse than death.

> So sure, experimentation effects may vary but the upper limit is fucking brutal and definitely depends on what stage the drug is in. Early on in development, the effects could be worse than death.

So could the effects of e.g. life in the wild. Anything can go very badly.

IMO: You can't be completely blind to the utilitarian angle. The average and distribution of outcomes matters.

So, we go through an escalating series of tests-- designed to both weed-out drugs cheaply and to avoid suffering; from conceptual models to computation to tissue cultures to organ models to small animals to larger animals to small numbers of humans to large numbers of humans.

If you weed out the last couple of steps before humans, you're going to either try a lot fewer drugs on humans, or increase human suffering a whole lot to protect smaller animals.

That sounds fair to me. If we want to get the benefit of something, we ought to pay the price. Not offload it to some poor soul, literally.

> It sounds laborious and awful, more than nightmarish.

Powerful stuff. I agree this suffering should be reduced.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200203215527/http://www.xenosy...

It's insanity that we are in the minority. Capitalism and imperialism has grown these people into unconscious exploiters.

The problem with consent is it can easily be pressured. The only people that will consent to being tested on are people that are really desperate. I mean by that logic instead of testing on monkeys, we should test on hungry third world children. They'd surely consent to keep for starving to death. And because it's consensual, we're much more moral than if we tested them on monkeys. What a moral paradise!

By consent I meant, without duress, which I thought was pretty clear. We can quibble about what represents "true" consent but that's aside the point since it is clear that imprisoning and torturing animals is nonconsensual, not in any grey area. In the theory of socialism, consenting to working is illegitimate since the alternative is homelessness.

Do you have any actual arguments or just hypothetical slippery slopes?

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_definition

That's not a slippery slope. I argued that by your logic testing on desperate 3rd workers is more moral than testing on animals.

That's not really an argument against me, it's one against capitalism, since consent of certain actions is almost always under duress in a capitalistic society.

Your argument is more for socialism, and I would agree with you.

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