# Animal testing ban?



## Xitheon (Jul 27, 2021)

Ricky Gervais campaigns for ban on all animal experiments in UK
					

Fellow actor Peter Egan calls for inflicting suffering on laboratory animals to be made illegal




					www.independent.co.uk
				




I'm generally against animal testing, but I'm not exactly in possession of all the facts. There is so much propaganda on both sides, as far as I can see.

Is it justified? Are there humane alternatives? I've noticed that some people seem to think that testing on human prisoners, rapists and murderers for example, would be a solution. I strongly disagree with this. It would be bad to infringe upon the human rights of even the "worst" humans. We should treat people with mercy, whatever they may have done. It would be an ethical step backwards and bad for our society as a whole.

All opinions are welcome in this thread. I'm curious to see what other people think.


----------



## TyraWadman (Jul 27, 2021)

It's definitely one of those iffy things. I would very much prefer if no animal testing were necessary! 
But...
How many people would be willing to line up and risk death over an injection to see if it works? :/ I honestly don't know what other alternatives exist but of course if there were ways, I'd choose it in a heartbeat!

The real downside of letting them experiment on criminals is a terrible idea, because how many innocent people have been convicted? Then there are those being framed and killed by rogue cops already. It would be disastrous to hear 'ah we ran out of prisoners, please fetch me some more'. Yea... that would definitely lead to some terribly dark stuff...


----------



## Regret (Jul 27, 2021)

I was always under the assumption that it was either animal testing or consensual human testing pick your poison kind of situation.

I have read the arguments about those who are in favor of animal testing and those who oppose it, and as cliche as it is/sounds I do believe they both have some merit. Regardless, I know that I am not as highly read on the subject as I would need to be in order to make some kind of judgement as stated in OP finding good information on this topic or any moral issue for that matter quickly turns into a minefield.


----------



## ben909 (Jul 27, 2021)

testing on people is a odd "moral" thought for me, as i know there is a lot of useful info that would be gained, but at the cost of the test subjects lifes(likely)

i don't think its comparable to animal testing, and honestly i find it hard to see some wanting to test on humans, even if they are "bad" and not animals

... but outside of that, all testing has risk, most teating can cause bad things for those tested on, but the things learned from the test can benefit the others in the world.  

in my view at least, the entire topic should be viewed as benefit vs damage or risk, not if doing bad things make it "right" to test on humans or not


----------



## O.D.D. (Jul 27, 2021)

I hate animal testing.  The biggest reason I hate it is that sometimes there are NO GOOD ALTERNATIVES.

There are no "model" humans.  The ethics of creating a strain of "model" humans would make any sane person blanch.  We can certainly use animal testing LESS, and this is already in motion with cruelty-free cosmetics and toiletries.  But if you need to know the LD50 for a medicine, or need to research the effects of a promising diabetes drug, or need to test a way to cure paraplegia due to spinal cord damage... you get the idea.  Until we can somehow simulate an entire organism and use it to predict things like this accurately, our options are "shitty" and "shittier".


----------



## Muttmutt (Jul 27, 2021)

I will always feel that human life trumps animal life. I think this is just a natural bias that humans have anyway. We want to protect our own and preserve our species. We’re social animals and so we will generally prioritize one another.

That being said, animal testing is pretty awful. However, we don’t have any effective alternatives yet. We also don’t have enough human volunteers nor people kept in controlled environments in order to run these tests. There’s just too many variables. Someday, with the way science has been evolving, we might be able to do away with it, but for now I think it’s just a necessary evil.

It’s a shame but I will always be in support of saving human AND animal lives by doing testing on animal subjects. My heart goes out to the innocent creatures killed in the process but sometimes there’s not much that can be done.


----------



## Nexus Cabler (Jul 27, 2021)

All I can say right now that can help is make testing methods as humane and painless as possible. Improvements have been made in the meat and farm industry, due to people speaking up and revealing the conditions inside. Animals are still killed, yes, but it's a lot less cruel.

The same could be ensured in scientific research and product testing, but I'm not sure what methods are used on animals currently in this field.


----------



## O.D.D. (Jul 27, 2021)

Nexus Cabler said:


> All I can say right now that can help is make testing methods as humane and painless as possible. Improvements have been made in the meat and farm industry, due to people speaking up and revealing the conditions inside. Animals are still killed, yes, but it's a lot less cruel.
> 
> The same could be ensured in scientific research and product testing, but I'm not sure what methods are used on animals currently in this field.


Lab animals are, to my understanding, under a certain degree of oversight to prevent abject, needless cruelty but it can still happen.  They have to induce a lot of things that the animals wouldn't necessarily be subjected to in "normal living" so they can study how it happens, or how to fix it, or what have you.


----------



## Ramjet (Jul 28, 2021)

Necessary unfortunately, especially for medicine development.
Pre-clinical animal testing is vital to pursue drugs to the next step in real human clinicals.


----------



## §AnimeDestroyer22§ (Aug 3, 2021)

We should do human testing instead


----------



## Flamingo (Aug 3, 2021)

^


----------



## Makoto95 (Aug 8, 2021)

when we start doing human testing "Somewhere in Japan" about to be "Somewhere in the UK".


----------



## Yakamaru (Aug 8, 2021)

Animal testing should and need to be done in a proper environment where the animals are taken well care of and treated well, including being shown love and affection, that this isn't all there is to their existence. Living for the sake of being experimented on sure as hell ain't a fun concept, and this isn't something I would want for anything or anyone. It's cruel beyond words. Animals cannot consent and should be taken well care of by the species that supposedly should technically have the intelligence to understand the importance of consent and treating each other with respect.

I am for people to have the option to opt in for experimental drugs and treatments with explicit written consent and acknowledging that this is experimental and may not produce the results wanted and/or may have a mixture of various effects, possibly lead to death depending on the treatment/drug/procedure. Who knows, that experimental drug and/or treatment that you were allowed to take may show a lot of promise for you, of which we have a lot of well-documented examples and cases of of various experimental drugs/treatments/procedures.


----------



## Kit H. Ruppell (Aug 8, 2021)

§AnimeDestroyer22§ said:


> We should do human testing instead


False dichotomy.


----------



## O.D.D. (Aug 8, 2021)

I think my biggest peeve with extant cruelty laws surrounding lab animals is that mice and rats are specifically exempted from those protections.


----------



## Makoto95 (Aug 8, 2021)

O.D.D. said:


> I think my biggest peeve with extant cruelty laws surrounding lab animals is that mice and rats are specifically exempted from those protections.


that makes me ask many questions.
for one, they've been testing other kinds of animals until now?
for two, what's even the point of changing the law if it's not going to stop anything?


----------



## O.D.D. (Aug 8, 2021)

Makoto95 said:


> that makes me ask many questions.
> for one, they've been testing other kinds of animals until now?
> for two, what's even the point of changing the law if it's not going to stop anything?


Mice and rats are the most commonly used animals, but pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and others are used.  Just for perspective, reptiles and birds receive protection with those laws, but not mice and rats.  All those other animals are protected.  The prevalence of cruelty-free cosmetics and toiletries is largely thanks to animals like rabbits and monkeys being protected by those laws.  They do apparently (indirectly perhaps) stop some cruelty.  Laws themselves are not able to STOP anything per se, they just imply consequences, but apparently the implied consequences were enough to get cruelty-free shampoos and such into the mainstream.

The decision to exempt mice and rats is likely due to their prevalence in a lot of other kinds of testing.  It's a money thing, almost certainly - that and not many people rally behind mice and rats because "EWWWW VERMIN".

I don't really entertain any illusions about complete animal testing bans being workable for a number of reasons, but I also don't accept the idea that "since it can't be completely prevented, it's not worth mitigating in some fashion".


----------



## Makoto95 (Aug 8, 2021)

O.D.D. said:


> Mice and rats are the most commonly used animals, but pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and others are used.  Just for perspective, reptiles and birds receive protection with those laws, but not mice and rats.  All those other animals are protected.  The prevalence of cruelty-free cosmetics and toiletries is largely thanks to animals like rabbits and monkeys being protected by those laws.  They do apparently (indirectly perhaps) stop some cruelty.  Laws themselves are not able to STOP anything per se, they just imply consequences, but apparently the implied consequences were enough to get cruelty-free shampoos and such into the mainstream.
> 
> The decision to exempt mice and rats is likely due to their prevalence in a lot of other kinds of testing.  It's a money thing, almost certainly - that and not many people rally behind mice and rats because "EWWWW VERMIN".


i like rats. they're nice pets.

the rats they use in the tests aren't even the kind of rats that are vermin in the first place.
they're pet rats they buy from a pet store and breed.
they're bred to be timid and kind unlike their wild cousins.
that's like saying testing on huskies is okay because they're related to wolves.


----------



## O.D.D. (Aug 8, 2021)

Makoto95 said:


> i like rats. they're nice pets.
> 
> the rats they use in the tests aren't even the kind of rats that are vermin in the first place.
> they're pet rats they buy from a pet store and breed.
> ...


Actually pet rats/mice (fancy rats/mice in parlance) originate from lab strains.  This is kind of why pet rats/mice tend to have the health issues they do, and some fancy rat/mouse breeders have been trying somewhat to mitigate what coming from "model animal" stock tends to cause (model animals are the closest thing to clones you can get at the moment without using test tubes and petri dishes really).  Basically at some point in the past some of the people who work with them in labs took home some of the offspring instead of just euthanizing them as excess stock, and have been gradually breeding them into pet stock over years and years.  (Also for... other purposes, but I really don't like wrestling with THOSE particular conundrums.)

And all dogs are closely related to wolves, they're a fairly small evolutionary step removed from wolves in the wild really (if you could even call it that) but the core of the matter here is that a lot of people don't really CARE about rats and mice, they're very frequently maligned as vermin, and while wild rats and mice can become pests in the wrong environment a lot of the maligning is just pop culture at play.  You can get your average person on board with "PROTECT THE DOGS FROM BEING TREATED BADLY" but many will look at you askance if you tell them that mice and rats are capable of being remarkably personable, are intelligent and should be afforded a level of decency in treatment.


----------



## Makoto95 (Aug 8, 2021)

O.D.D. said:


> Actually pet rats/mice (fancy rats/mice in parlance) originate from lab strains.  This is kind of why pet rats/mice tend to have the health issues they do, and some fancy rat/mouse breeders have been trying somewhat to mitigate what coming from "model animal" stock tends to cause (model animals are the closest thing to clones you can get at the moment without using test tubes and petri dishes really).  Basically at some point in the past some of the people who work with them in labs took home some of the offspring instead of just euthanizing them as excess stock, and have been gradually breeding them into pet stock over years and years.  (Also for... other purposes, but I really don't like wrestling with THOSE particular conundrums.)


so in a human sense it's kinda like segregation.


----------



## O.D.D. (Aug 8, 2021)

Makoto95 said:


> so in a human sense it's kinda like segregation.


Not really, except in the vaguest sense of people's conceits about "lesser animals".  Segregation among human beings is a different ball of wax and was driven by some extremely pernicious factors.  Comparing lab animal issues and issues involving humans is something that invites a lot of controversy, generally, for a number of reasons.


----------



## Makoto95 (Aug 8, 2021)

O.D.D. said:


> Not really, except in the vaguest sense of people's conceits about "lesser animals".  Segregation among human beings is a different ball of wax and was driven by some extremely pernicious factors.  Comparing lab animal issues and issues involving humans is something that invites a lot of controversy, generally, for a number of reasons.


well i mean like we scooped them out of where they were, forced them to work for us with extreme cruelty and then accepted them into the wider society but still treated them like inferior to the other animals.


----------



## Jubatian (Aug 8, 2021)

Complex stuff.

I tend to relate it that way, how you yourself would feel in the same situation (like depicted in Planet of the Apes). Pretty horrible. Those creatures we necessarily do those medical testing on are although simpler, but structurally very similar lifeforms, capable to feel the same sorts of things like ourselves. Anything physical we do to them they feel very similarly to what we ourselves would feel if subjected to the same. They are also often very capable learners, and thus are also subject to related emotional stresses, recognizing patterns, anxiety, by the repeating patterns of painful experiments.

But we are also in a difficult status-quo, especially related to vital sciences, such as notably medical.

We can not afford to change ways as it will necessarily end up with dire consequences. If we remove a significant tool from our medical scientists, that will hurt horribly. It is not just about some people dying who could have survived otherwise. It is the situation we are experiencing nowadays, this global pandemic. If we remove an important tool, that could proceed into a cascading effect with us not being able to even maintain the present status quo in life quality and preservation.

There is really no good answer in my opinion, there is no magic here. Realistically it is about decades of progress, maybe even a century, to replace those methods we necessarily have to use today with alternatives which doesn't involve harming any creature, without compromising overall quality of life.

And then further all the complexity of how we relate to all the life around us. Such as the fact that we also tend to consume meat, which necessarily similarly comes from creatures alive at some point. Of course this might also change in the future, where that meat could be coming from.

Those harming any creature for the idea of cosmetics and fashion should have a dedicated place in Hell in my opinion, though.

Just my views on these, I don't think there is any "good" "solution".


----------



## TyraWadman (Aug 8, 2021)

Jubatian said:


> Complex stuff.
> 
> I tend to relate it that way, how you yourself would feel in the same situation (like depicted in Planet of the Apes). Pretty horrible. Those creatures we necessarily do those medical testing on are although simpler, but structurally very similar lifeforms, capable to feel the same sorts of things like ourselves. Anything physical we do to them they feel very similarly to what we ourselves would feel if subjected to the same. They are also often very capable learners, and thus are also subject to related emotional stresses, recognizing patterns, anxiety, by the repeating patterns of painful experiments.
> 
> ...


I can agree especially with the makeup thing. Its a luxury item!!!!


----------



## Xitheon (Aug 9, 2021)

O.D.D. said:


> Mice and rats are the most commonly used animals, but pigs, dogs, cats, rabbits and others are used.  Just for perspective, reptiles and birds receive protection with those laws, but not mice and rats.  All those other animals are protected.





O.D.D. said:


> The decision to exempt mice and rats is likely due to their prevalence in a lot of other kinds of testing. It's a money thing, almost certainly - that and not many people rally behind mice and rats because "EWWWW VERMIN".



I know a lot of rat keepers who are passionate about pointing out this loophole and how wrong it is that rats and mice can be legally tortured. 

I love rats. They're smart and emotionally complex - they can even suffer from depression if maltreated. If we abused dogs and cats as badly as we abuse rats and mice there would be uproar. In fact, there *is* uproar about it.


----------



## Faustus (Aug 10, 2021)

Antivenins used to treat potentially lethal snake and spider toxins are typically produced by injecting animals with the venom in question then harvesting antibodies. This is not necessarily lethal for the animal, but it's probably unpleasant. If all animal testing were banned, and assuming this covered any process that caused harm or distress to the animal, then we'd probably be looking at a worldwide antivenin shortage, leading to an uptick in deaths and hospitalisations from snake and spider bite.

Not an argument for or against the proposition, just another factor to take into account.


----------

