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Comment by peoplefromibiza | Hacker News Reader

> . 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

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> 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.

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