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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

A lot of animal testing is general research, not drug testing. For example, it's fairly impossible to do brain research on anything but a brain. Also, a lot of research is basically infinite trial-and-error until you find something that works; doing this on a scale large enough for humans would kill lots of people, versus lots of mice. It's also faster with mice because they breed quickly and prodigiously, so we don't have to wait 300 years for enough testing to find a result.

Your basic argument is "it's error prone so we shouldn't do it." But that's exactly why we do testing - to work out the errors! The fact that all of these failures are occurring is proof that doing human research would simply take more time, not less.

"Organ on a chip" is also only useful to test for specific response. It does not show how the experiment works when introduced to an entire system of organs.

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yep, the same logic of vivisection, concentration camp hypothermia experiments, Tuskegee syphilis experiment, etc... - "it advances science"

>Also, a lot of research is basically infinite trial-and-error until you find something that works; doing this on a scale large enough for humans would kill lots of people, versus lots of mice.

Doing research on humans vs. mice would [these days, though not even 40-60 years ago] force to do the research differently, mindfully and efficiently, instead of meat chopping factory it is now.

Of course it would force them to do the research differently. Like, not at all, for example. Some research involves seeing processes which can only come after death. I can't even begin to explain all the other research that wouldn't happen, because I am not a bioresearcher.

It's really easy to judge an entire range of research with zero insight on what actually goes on or why. I would suggest you go ask a bioresearcher to explain what they do to you, and why it is necessary to do it that way on animals, before you call it "a meat chopping factory".

We use the resources we have available.

The sad thing about most of the experiments you list is that we gained a lot of useful knowledge from them. Sure it's easy to now look back and be horrified by them because we have the luxury of being able to do so, a luxury that is (in part) derived from the knowledge those experiments give us.

And yes, I think 100 years from now people WILL look back at us and be horrified about how do experiment on animals. But they'll be able to do so because they can afford that luxury. A luxury that's being built now, using those horrible methods.

Morals are never free of context.

I envision a future when we can grab a handful of organs on a chip, then decide on what kind of experiment we want to run. Want to see if something affects the cells in bone marrow? Bone chip. Want to understand if a drug is cleared exclusively through the kidney? Bone chip + kidney chip vs bone chip + kidney + liver chip. Want to test subcutaneous vs intravenous delivery kinetics? Put together a bunch of chips: bone, kidney, liver, gut, and skin.

This is laughable.

You aren't testing kidneys (or whatever) you are testing your chips.

But your chips and the real world are only partially the same.

If we knew the real world so perfectly we could make a good chip we wouldn't need those experiments.

(This is the same problem as you get when you try to do physics via simulation.)

Hell, if you're going that way, let's go the whole nine yards and grow mindless clone bodies for testing and transplants. It'd still probably be more expensive and time-consuming than animal experimentation, but it would allow for "human-like" testing faster than we can do today.

I'm pretty sure "the future" is going to be based on time, money and technology. The organ-on-a-chip thing is just one of many possibilities. But until it's cheaper and more efficient than the cost of feeding and keeping rats, keep on dreaming.

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