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Kazimiera
10-21-2012, 07:22 PM
Do you think it is acceptable to test chemicals, cosmetics and drugs on animals?

http://www.animalexperimentspictures.com/images/rabbits/cosmetic-rabbit-testing.jpg


Animal experimentation

A difficult issue

Animal experiments are widely used to develop new medicines and to test the safety of other products.

Many of these experiments cause pain to the animals involved or reduce their quality of life in other ways.

If it is morally wrong to cause animals to suffer then experimenting on animals produces serious moral problems.

Animal experimenters are very aware of this ethical problem and acknowledge that experiments should be made as humane as possible.

They also agree that it's wrong to use animals if alternative testing methods would produce equally valid results.

Two positions on animal experiments

In favour of animal experiments:
Experimenting on animals is acceptable if (and only if):
suffering is minimised in all experiments
human benefits are gained which could not be obtained by using other methods
Against animal experiments:
Experimenting on animals is always unacceptable because:
it causes suffering to animals
the benefits to human beings are not proven
any benefits to human beings that animal testing does provide could be produced in other ways

Harm versus benefit

The case for animal experiments is that they will produce such great benefits for humanity that it is morally acceptable to harm a few animals.

The equivalent case against is that the level of suffering and the number of animals involved are both so high that the benefits to humanity don't provide moral justification.
The three Rs

The three Rs are a set of principles that scientists are encouraged to follow in order to reduce the impact of research on animals.

The three Rs are: Reduction, Refinement, Replacement.

Reduction:
Reducing the number of animals used in experiments by:
Improving experimental techniques
Improving techniques of data analysis
Sharing information with other researchers

Refinement:
Refining the experiment or the way the animals are cared for so as to reduce their suffering by:
Using less invasive techniques
Better medical care
Better living conditions

Replacement:
Replacing experiments on animals with alternative techniques such as:
Experimenting on cell cultures instead of whole animals
Using computer models
Studying human volunteers
Using epidemiological studies


Animal experiments and drug safety

Scientists say that banning animal experiments would mean either

an end to testing new drugs or
using human beings for all safety tests

Animal experiments are not used to show that drugs are safe and effective in human beings - they cannot do that. Instead, they are used to help decide whether a particular drug should be tested on people.

Animal experiments eliminate some potential drugs as either ineffective or too dangerous to use on human beings. If a drug passes the animal test it's then tested on a small human group before large scale clinical trials.

The pharmacologist William D H Carey demonstrated the importance of animal testing in a letter to the British Medical Journal:

We have 4 possible new drugs to cure HIV. Drug A killed all the rats, mice and dogs. Drug B killed all the dogs and rats. Drug C killed all the mice and rats. Drug D was taken by all the animals up to huge doses with no ill effect. Question: Which of those drugs should we give to some healthy young human volunteers as the first dose to humans (all other things being equal)?

To the undecided (and non-prejudiced) the answer is, of course, obvious. It would also be obvious to a normal 12 year old child...

An alternative, acceptable answer would be, none of those drugs because even drug D could cause damage to humans. That is true, which is why Drug D would be given as a single, very small dose to human volunteers under tightly controlled and regulated conditions.

Are animal experiments useful?

Animal experiments only benefit human beings if their results are valid and can be applied to human beings.

Not all scientists are convinced that these tests are valid and useful.

...animals have not been as critical to the advancement of medicine as is typically claimed by proponents of animal experimentation.

Moreover, a great deal of animal experimentation has been misleading and resulted in either withholding of drugs, sometimes for years, that were subsequently found to be highly beneficial to humans, or to the release and use of drugs that, though harmless to animals, have actually contributed to human suffering and death.


The moral status of the experimenters

Animal rights extremists often portray those who experiment on animals as being so cruel as to have forfeited any own moral standing.

But the argument is about whether the experiments are morally right or wrong. The general moral character of the experimenter is irrelevant.

What is relevant is the ethical approach of the experimenter to each experiment. John P Gluck has suggested that this is often lacking:

The lack of ethical self-examination is common and generally involves the denial or avoidance of animal suffering, resulting in the dehumanization of researchers and the ethical degradation of their research subjects.

Gluck offers this advice for people who may need to experiment on animals:

The use of animals in research should evolve out of a strong sense of ethical self-examination. Ethical self-examination involves a careful self-analysis of one's own personal and scientific motives. Moreover, it requires a recognition of animal suffering and a satisfactory working through of that suffering in terms of one's ethical values.


Animal experiments and animal rights

The issue of animal experiments is straightforward if we accept that animals have rights: if an experiment violates the rights of an animal, then it is morally wrong, because it is wrong to violate rights.

The possible benefits to humanity of performing the experiment are completely irrelevant to the morality of the case, because rights should never be violated (except in obvious cases like self-defence).

And as one philosopher has written, if this means that there are some things that humanity will never be able to learn, so be it.

This bleak result of deciding the morality of experimenting on animals on the basis of rights is probably why people always justify animal experiments on consequentialist grounds; by showing that the benefits to humanity justify the suffering of the animals involved.

Justifying animal experiments

Those in favour of animal experiments say that the good done to human beings outweighs the harm done to animals.

This is a consequentialist argument, because it looks at the consequences of the actions under consideration.

It can't be used to defend all forms of experimentation since there are some forms of suffering that are probably impossible to justify even if the benefits are exceptionally valuable to humanity.


Ethical arithmetic

The consequentialist justification of animal experimentation can be demonstrated by comparing the moral consequences of doing or not doing an experiment.

This process can't be used in a mathematical way to help people decide ethical questions in practice, but it does demonstrate the issues very clearly.
The basic arithmetic

If performing an experiment would cause more harm than not performing it, then it is ethically wrong to perform that experiment.

The harm that will result from not doing the experiment is the result of multiplying three things together:

the moral value of a human being
the number of human beings who would have benefited
the value of the benefit that each human being won't get

The harm that the experiment will cause is the result of multiplying together:

the moral value of an experimental animal
the number of animals suffering in the experiment
the negative value of the harm done to each animal

But it isn't that simple because:

it's virtually impossible to assign a moral value to a being
it's virtually impossible to assign a value to the harm done to each individual
the harm that will be done by the experiment is known beforehand, but the benefit is unknown
the harm done by the experiment is caused by an action, while the harm resulting from not doing it is caused by an omission

Certain versus potential harm

In the theoretical sum above, the harm the experiment will do to animals is weighed against the harm done to humans by not doing the experiment.

But these are two conceptually different things.

The harm that will be done to the animals is certain to happen if the experiment is carried out
The harm done to human beings by not doing the experiment is unknown because no-one knows how likely the experiment is to succeed or what benefits it might produce if it did succeed

So the equation is completely useless as a way of deciding whether it is ethically acceptable to perform an experiment, because until the experiment is carried out, no-one can know the value of the benefit that it produces.

And there's another factor missing from the equation, which is discussed in the next section.
Acts and omissions

The equation doesn't deal with the moral difference between acts and omissions.

Most ethicists think that we have a greater moral responsibility for the things we do than for the things we fail to do; i.e. that it is morally worse to do harm by doing something than to do harm by not doing something.

For example: we think that the person who deliberately drowns a child has done something much more wrong than the person who refuses to wade into a shallow pool to rescue a drowning child.

In the animal experiment context, if the experiment takes place, the experimenter will carry out actions that harm the animals involved.

If the experiment does not take place the experimenter will not do anything. This may cause harm to human beings because they won't benefit from a cure for their disease because the cure won't be developed.

So the acts and omissions argument could lead us to say that

it is morally worse for the experimenter to harm the animals by experimenting on them
than it is to (potentially) harm some human beings by not doing an experiment that might find a cure for their disease.

And so if we want to continue with the arithmetic that we started in the section above, we need to put an additional, and different, factor on each side of the equation to deal with the different moral values of acts and omissions.

Horrible pictures of animal testing, please be warned - not for sensitive viewers

http://25.media.tumblr.com/kWsCGIpSonaqw8pqXAZN0qyno1_400.jpg
http://im.glogster.com/media/5/32/2/59/32025964.jpg
http://cccinfotechapp.wikispaces.com/file/view/animalmonkeytesting.jpg/198356194/animalmonkeytesting.jpg
http://im.glogster.com/media/5/32/2/55/32025515.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/experiments_1.shtml

MfA_
10-21-2012, 07:26 PM
if it's made to cure diseases or other beneficials for human it's acceptable, but if it's like sci-fi, creating frankesteins mutant etc it's not..

Mraz
10-21-2012, 07:38 PM
I only agree for research on health, if it can save Human's life then yes, but for cosmetics and other purposes, it's no, it's barbaric.

Kazimiera
10-21-2012, 07:53 PM
I'm somewhere between "under certain circumstances" and "no".

Caismeachd
10-21-2012, 10:35 PM
I'm not against it because a lot of medications are developed that way. A lot of animal rights activists and PETA people take meds needed to survive/for quality of life reasons and they aren't even aware that animal testing was needed to make those meds. For cosmetics, soaps, etc I'm against animal testing though. It's not needed to put soap or perfume in animals eyes.

When you look at the reality of what they do in those tests. Like severing a mouses spinal cord to test if they can regenerate the nerve damage, it seems cruel. But image if you had a spinal cord injury and could no longer feel your legs. I think you wouldn't mind if they were using mice to try and find a cure for you.

Kazimiera
10-21-2012, 10:38 PM
I'm not against it because a lot of medications are developed that way. A lot of animal rights activists and PETA people take meds needed to survive/for quality of life reasons and they aren't even aware that animal testing was needed to make those meds. For cosmetics, soaps, etc I'm against animal testing though. It's not needed to put soap or perfume in animals eyes.

When you look at the reality of what they do in those tests. Like severing a mouses spinal cord to test if they can regenerate the nerve damage, it seems cruel. But image if you had a spinal cord injury and could no longer feel your legs. I think you wouldn't mind if they were using mice to try and find a cure for you.

I think if I had a spinal cord injury and couldn't feel my legs, I wouldn't mind if they tested on me. What do I have to lose?

Gaijin
10-21-2012, 10:38 PM
As much as I love animals, at some extend I have to say yes.
Only in certain circumstances.

"You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."
- Joseph Stalin

Kazimiera
10-21-2012, 10:41 PM
I think I would go "under certain circumstances". The pictures at the bottom of the page of the poor animals suffering are horrible. Cosmetics and toothpaste being dropped into eyes is unnecessary. I know with certain medications it needs to be done, but it makes the animal's suffering no less painful.

alb0zfinest
10-21-2012, 10:59 PM
No.
1)There are other ways of testing.
2)Testing on animals is not always accurate for finding a cure for a disease.
3)Those animals can be infected and spread that disease, so in the end you could do more harm then good.
4)It's immoral

alb0zfinest
10-22-2012, 10:55 PM
I'm surprised this topic didn't get as many views as it deserved. Its quite a controversial topic.

MfA_
10-22-2012, 11:04 PM
I'm surprised this topic didn't get as many views as it deserved. Its quite a controversial topic.

Well you shouldn't expect more attention from rasicts for animals when they are ready to attack different race/ethnicity.. They dont respect different persons than they are, let alone animals..

Kazimiera
10-22-2012, 11:14 PM
Well you shouldn't expect more attention from rasicts for animals when they are ready to attack different race/ethnicity.. They dont respect different persons than they are, let alone animals..

You are right.

I was going to say that people here are more interested in racial/ethnic matters than animal rights.

Tabiti
10-23-2012, 06:02 AM
Only in certain circumstances and only if the next tests are on humans. Animal testing is useless in many cases, since the animals in lab conditions react differently then people in everyday life.
I'm not a person who disgust or touches easily, but one of the most shocking pictures I've seen was a laboratory cat with opened skull. Believe me, I wouldn't pay attention at the image at all if it was human.

Anusiya
10-23-2012, 07:55 AM
It is acceptable, and don't start with the cuteness factor.:shakefist

here, enjoy the cuteness, fur lovers :P :
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/you-want-a-coke-motherfucker-polar-bears.jpg

Barbarossa
11-11-2012, 10:39 AM
Only in certain circumstances. And I think that this is only important medicines and simmilar stuff no cosmetics or new edition of Aspirin is the reason. Cures for cancers, lewkemis etc. are one thing, new headache pill is another. It shall be also donne as less as its posibile,

initpaul
11-21-2012, 08:17 PM
No. I regard the whole philosophy behind it as abhorrent and an example of Christian arrogance - we're above nature, we're better than animals, we can do what we want with the world and its creatures.

Cuteness is not the issue for me - I don't like cute things particularly. I just find it hubristic and arrogant of humans to experiment on animals.

kabeiros
11-21-2012, 08:21 PM
I can't think of a better use for mice and rats. Give them cancer, AIDS, syphilis I don't give a shit (not other animals though)

chocolatcandy
01-29-2013, 12:33 PM
yes of course it is.

SkyBurn
01-29-2013, 12:35 PM
For cosmetics and random science, certainly not.

However, I will concede that mice/rats (small pests), while sentient, can be used for serious medical research, unless the experiments are brutal and against a certain standard of care.

YellowRose
03-07-2013, 03:24 PM
I do not think they should test on animals. I do not think it is right.

I do think that they should perhaps test on the sick people in prison that have a life sentence with no chance of parole... especially the ones that find a sick pleasure in molesting and raping innocent women and children or who are in there for murder.

member
03-07-2013, 03:26 PM
Better on rats than humans.

Stefan
03-07-2013, 03:27 PM
Depends how poorly they treat the animals. If it tortures the animals, no. If it is a quick death, or not very harmful, then certainly.

member
03-07-2013, 03:28 PM
I do not think they should test on animals. I do not think it is right.

I do think that they should perhaps test on the sick people in prison that have a life sentence with no chance of parole... especially the ones that find a sick pleasure in molesting and raping innocent women and children or who are in there for murder.

This has it's own drawbacks: testing might lead them to certain conditions that would cost more than a healthy state for the tax payers.

Aredhel
03-07-2013, 03:33 PM
I'm between against and under certain circunstances leaning more towards against.

It's unacceptable when people damage animals to prove cosmetics or soaps but if we're talking about medical research I have to admit that I could tolerate only if it's regulated by some authorities and other organizations.

Žołnir
03-07-2013, 03:35 PM
I only agree for research on health, if it can save Human's life then yes, but for cosmetics and other purposes, it's no, it's barbaric.

Exactly. I have same opinion. These tests for health, etc. they are like neccesary evil. Besides we kill alot more animals for eating.

member
03-07-2013, 03:42 PM
I'm between against and under certain circunstances leaning more towards against.

It's unacceptable when people damage animals to prove cosmetics or soaps but if we're talking about medical research I have to admit that I could tolerate only if it's regulated by some authorities and other organizations.

But is there any big necessity to test cosmetics on animals? I mean, cosmetics are not supposed to be harmful to human''s health because cosmetics do not heal anything, they're not medicine hence they're not a necessity and not worth using them if they damage your health.. On the other hand, it's no sectret that comsetics contain dangerous stuff, even cancerogenic (not all). And probably just because it's cheaper.

berzerk
03-07-2013, 03:55 PM
i think only until AI software to test graphically the chemical bonds of the elements in different environments can be produced. then only use some animals to test mad scientist sci fi stuff.

Aredhel
03-07-2013, 04:03 PM
But is there any big necessity to test cosmetics on animals? I mean, cosmetics are not supposed to be harmful to human''s health because cosmetics do not heal anything, they're not medicine hence they're not a necessity and not worth using them if they damage your health.. On the other hand, it's no sectret that comsetics contain dangerous stuff, even cancerogenic (not all). And probably just because it's cheaper.

But they mistreat animals, that's what I can't stand. In my opinion a possible solution would be that companies that use animals for experimentation were regulated in order to avoid this abuse. I think that we as costumers have to be conscious and if we know that "x" company is using animals and they're severely damaged, we shouldn't buy more products of this trade.

YellowRose
03-08-2013, 01:45 PM
This has it's own drawbacks: testing might lead them to certain conditions that would cost more than a healthy state for the tax payers.

LOL I guess you do have a point there. Too much money in taxes is already wasted on them enough as it is.

Scholarios
03-08-2013, 01:48 PM
These days, with computer genetic modeling, the uses of animal testing are getting less and less... its mostly a matter of financial or practical reasons...

therefore it's the same as choosing to be a vegetarian or not.. one of convenience.. .or nearly so at least.

Sikeliot
03-08-2013, 01:55 PM
Let's test on child predators, rapists, and murderers.

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/537592_494354770626222_399327182_n.jpg