Vivisection? Yes please
When it comes to scientific progress, and animal research in particular, I think it's entirely moral and humane to slice open the skin of animals, and stick hypodermic neddles in them, or to cut their skulls open to place electrodes on their brains. Or to test out new life-saving drugs on them - indeed, I think this is absolutely necessary and proper in order to find cures for such horrible diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or Huntington's.I know a lot of people will read this and say 'my word, what a sick and sad person I am', but, the people I find really sick, are those who stand opposed to scientific animal research for the betterment of humanity.
When it comes to debating animal research in Britain, it's been the sicko's from the organisation SPEAK who have made all the running and made the most noise. The super sicko's of the Animal Liberation Front have gone further, and declared all staff and students at Oxford University to be 'legitimate targets'. Now, if that's not the declaration of a sicko organisation - I don't know what is.
posted by Courtney Hamilton @ 6:30 PM
5 Comments:
this is a narrow minded approach. There are scientific groups of medics and scientists, some of whom have particpated in animal trials.
For example on a brief search on the net I found :
http://www.pcrm.org/
http://www.ohsukillsprimates.com/quotes.htm
http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/online/research/dav.html
A very good history of animal testing can be read in Greek & Greek Sacred Cows and Golden Geese. I recommend you read this well argued for book book without prejudice, just as I expose myself to those who argue in favour of testing or in deed slaughter.
Animal testing is often used as mere tool of stating that research is done.
There are real human victims beside the animal victims of this type of research, when drugs that worked perfectly on rats was not working on humans.
There is also a rather somber history of how animal research became the accepted norm. Mostly availability and an argument of "it worked on mice". Yet this is never a given on human application. It is often also an excuse to attract necessary funding, because a company can be seen to do something.
Recently Iread that some new brain resarch carried out operates on monkeys monkeys brain to simulate brain damage on humans. The then brain dmaged monkey had to perform various skills. The scientist argued that this was senseless because there are ample of humans with brain damgages, both genetically inheritted, accidental and disease caused. These together with MRI assessment of teh affected areas would give much better indications what works and what does not.
Sometimes the need and requirement of animal testing prior to human testing delays the testing of a cure on humans (the applications on humans have to be tested anyway). This also creates more victims on the human side.
Doctors have told me further to have learned little from slizzing up frogs and mice, and that they only really learned how to operate when working on dead human bodies.
In any way whilst some limited animal research may be necessary at the bottom line for some tests.
Real human applicable medicne and progress may in fact be faster if it would not be tested on animals but on humans. In a perverse twist the greatest medical beneficiaries of animal testing are animals, because you find out what works and what does not.
On conclusion I don't understand how even with taking your stance, you could not perhaps agree that much less testing and vivisection is truely possible.
A final point on the exploitation of those with lessened voices. Only 15 years ago some companies used various third worlc countries and their people as medical human guinea pigs. 50 years ago we know that African American were injected with nuclear substances in the name of science and in the holocaust some helpless Jews were likewise subjected to research.
The findings for example on air pressure are common knowledge to day and used. On the other hand some of the racist research has brought about damaging misconception that damage people today. One example is that sicke cell aminia is a black disease for example (read Keith Wailoo).
So we are left with a major conclusion: Research is best, progress is best if it is tested on the target animal - humans. Animal tests delay the chain to reach human testing. Human samples have to be used of free consent in absence of exploitative practices. Operations are best learned first on human dead samples, later on living....
Nough said.
Dear Courtney, after much deliberation, mainly due to your straight forward, articulate and friendly way, I came to the conclusion that I will remove you from my listings. The posting about the neo jacobin blog however will remain (re-edited) and you are free to comment on any of my postings which evidently you do not agree with. However I believe it is for others to recommend you in the special listing section, mostly those who agree with you full heartedly. I thank you for likewise allowing my comments to stay as they are. I expect you will seek to also take similar steps on recommending Daniels Counter and remove it from your recommended blogs.
It is good to have what you may call culture war, although I might prefer calling it debates on issues and perspectives. It makes for a more plural and diverse world.
Yours Daniel C
When you say that '[a]nimal testing is often used as mere tool of stating that research is done', what you seem to imply, that animal research, is often done just for the sake of it, and that this is somehow improper.
I, for one, happen to think that scienfic research, even on animals, for the sake of it, is an entirley legitimate affair. As we speak, there are ongoing scientific experiments to combat AIDS, heart disease, cancer and all manner of other horrible afflictions - all of them involve animals.
Indeed, some of the only hopes we have to find cures for such crippling diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or Huntington's, all rely on the very experiments that anti-vivisectionists want banned today.
You say my thoughts are too 'narrow minded' when it comes to scientific experiments on animals, when, it's in fact, quite possible to argue the reverse. I would like to call myself a defender of reason, and of scientific freedom, and progress. So, when it comes to an issue like animal experimentation, I would tend to opt for scientific freedom - because, this is what I see as the main problem with the debate surrounding vivisection is - this is the bottom line.
To me, even basic research, is really, just a simple attempt to try to understand something just for the sake of understanding it. Today, we need to fully investigate and try to understand the animal world, and the human world. That's why, I think there's nothing wrong with studing the structure of a monkey's brain simply to understand that structure, is there? Or would you prefer we lived in blissful ingnorance of such knowledge? Of course not.
The strongest arguments against animal experimentation are not even scientific, it comes from the moralists. Animal experiments are wrong because humans aren't all that special, therefore researching on animals is a highly dubious business - period.
It is the moral question of 'animal welfare', no one it seems has balls (so to speck) to take on that question, not even the scientific community itself. Well, I have an argument, human beings are special, and that is precisely why 'animal welfare' cannot, and should not be the business of scientific research.
It is here that the scientific community are losing the argument - in the one hand scientist turn to the public and say 'yes people, when we conduct animal experiments it's done firstly for 'clinical need', and secondly, with the animals 'welfare' in mind. Then, the next day, the same scientists cuts open the chest of a conscious cat to take photos of it.
If you ask me, the scientific community need to reconstitute themselves for the tough moral arguments ahead. Humans and animals are different, and the scientific investigation of animals increases our knowledge of the animal world. Scientist should just be honest and say that humans beings are the most exceptional entities in the whole universe, and that is why we experiment on animals - for our benefit.
The only thing I'd change with your conclusion would be, progress is best if it was left free to benefit us all.
Best wishes
Some 150 years ago they scientifically investigated Arabs, Blacks, and Jews scientifically. Not specism but racism was at hand. They measured "scientifically" brains, feet and curiously studied the "Hottentot Venus, Saartje Baartman" - only recently burried in Soutrh Africa after years of storage in France.
Science for its own sake is totally dependable and limited on the humans that conduct it. Animal Right campaigners and Anti Vivisection Campaigners at least question the self-importance of that "scientific community." Curiousity itself is not a justifier in its own right. Therefore we can full handedly reject today what they have then to investigate human races. Or else what you would say is that by being curious and researching they can be apologised.
To be an animal rights campaigner does not essentially mean that we do not agree that humans are notr at the hight of the evolutionary chain. The protection of the sactitity of life is not based on equality that animals are like us, but on measured knowledge, some of it scientifically prooven that animals experience pain and fear.
You rightly say that we don't know all about the animal world. Much amazing things on animals interactionand social life is still coming about, and was vealed because of our own self conception that made us think that animals are not capable of skillful and cognitive behaviour. FRom what I read animal behaviour researchers are much more humble now, This goes from observation of parrots, dolphines, whales, dogs, and many other creatures - thet there is more to their abilities than we would have wanted to subscribe to them.
So because we know that, constitutes a reason for us to treat these lives with some respect and dignity.
Secondly, as I said earlier, the cure point is not as straight forward as it is often made. Animals Tests are by no means a straight path to discoveries of cures and as said can in fact delay the application of a cure by many years.
Regarding the points you made on plants I found this faq by coincident.
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Morality/Biology/InsectAR.htm#faq43
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