Dead Machine wrote:
Whatever floats your boat. Onward.
1. Medical experiments in which humans are paid to be tested on are generally not fatal. Taking a room full of humans and giving them all a certain amount of toxins to determine the L.D. 50 is ridiculously fatal and far more cruel than doing so to any animals. Besides, who the fuck are you going to get to participate in a drug trial that would almost certainly involve the death of the participants? How is that more sensible than using genetically modified mice to minimize complications and outside factors?
2. Well sure the seal-killings aren't saving human lives. However, would you blame all slaughterhouses if a few of the employees get their kicks from grabbing pigs and throwing them into baths of acid? It's not like you can argue that a majority of seal hunters are psychopaths who get off on the sounds seals make when they get clubbed in a non-lethal fashion. For that matter, a study conducted by the canadian government showed that 98% of all seals were killed instantly upon being harvested.
3. I don't see a problem with vivisection if, as is mandated by the government, a general anasthetic is used on the animal prior to cutting it open. It's not going to feel anything.
As for what you're saying concerning polio, it's disingenuous to state it like you are stating it. All early advancements into the polio vaccine were as a result of animal testing. Even if you're going to dismiss that out of hand, that doesn't stop me from pointing to any one of the dozens, if not hundreds of other vaccines and treatments that have been made possible as a result of animal testing. Rabies, for one. A vaccine for rabies was developed by Pasteur as a direct result of his work on dogs. The development of kidney dialysis was as a result of animal testing. Same with antihistamines, organ transplants, and suppressing the immune systems' response to abovementioned organ transplants.
It should also be noted that the Thalomide fiasco was as a result of the researches not using any pregnant animals to test the drug on. Later on it was concluded that thalomide would have had similar results on ape babies, and the chemical would have been kept from the market as a result of such. That's just the fault of shortsightedness on the part of the scientists, not the fault of animal testing as a whole.
EDIT - Forgot that. What's nihilistic is equating human life with animal life to such an extent that you're saying we should be 'punished' for destroying the environment by being killed over other animals. It's bloody lunacy, it is.
1. Mice react very differently to humans. But you've got a point, that sort of testing is more worthy than lobotomising monkeys.
2. Again, no, but I'd make damn sure slaughterhouses were regulated better.
3. Well, there are plenty of cases where the animals seemed awake and alert during the process, which is where all the screaming monkey horror comes from.
To be honest, I don't know enough about the development of vaccines to make a broad stand, but it seems pretty obvious that testing a rabies vaccine on dogs will be helpful since dogs get the disease in the first place. I do know that Pasteur developed a vaccine for smallpox by injecting a milkmaid with cowpox; really each case is individual. I'd argue generally that animal testing isn't as important as it's made out to be and should be controlled much more strenuously.
It was more a suggestion, I wasn't seriously advocating the punishment of random humans for their ancestors' crimes against mother earth. Humans are basically slightly more advanced animals, though.
