Chimps and Intelligence
- Thread starter Twila
- Start date
We do accept human volunteers for medical experimentation. I have friends who've volunteered for studies. But we try very hard to make sure that it's not possible to prey upon the downtrodden in doing so. Here it's illegal to pay participants for their involvement.
Prison is full of people who've given up their rights, true. But it also contains people who've had no choice but to end up there. People who've been wrongly accused. People who have killed because they felt there was no other way out of a situation (beaten women for example). To start preying on them wouldn't be a great idea. If we want to use that as a punishment fine... but to pile punishment on top of punishment doesn't make for a fair justice system.
Prison is full of people who've given up their rights, true. But it also contains people who've had no choice but to end up there. People who've been wrongly accused. People who have killed because they felt there was no other way out of a situation (beaten women for example). To start preying on them wouldn't be a great idea. If we want to use that as a punishment fine... but to pile punishment on top of punishment doesn't make for a fair justice system.
I'm with you there. While the choice between one life or the other is clear in my head, there should be strict rules of what is acceptable research and what is not. Nothing should suffer for cosmetics for example other than the one's who want to sell it and buy it. They can have their fill.
But to the point of animal testing of drugs and research into health matters it is a sacrifice that must be made. I use a drug for Asthma that without I probably would have died by now or at the very least I would not have the level of health I have now. But more important is the life of the children I see that are given back to them as a result of that research and testing.
We need to see that animals that are used in testing are cared for and given an acceptable level of care and make for them a life aside from the research that is in some way fulfilling to them. The obligation to make sure this is enforced resides with each and every one of us.
But to the point of animal testing of drugs and research into health matters it is a sacrifice that must be made. I use a drug for Asthma that without I probably would have died by now or at the very least I would not have the level of health I have now. But more important is the life of the children I see that are given back to them as a result of that research and testing.
We need to see that animals that are used in testing are cared for and given an acceptable level of care and make for them a life aside from the research that is in some way fulfilling to them. The obligation to make sure this is enforced resides with each and every one of us.
I never suggested preying on them. I suggested giving incentives. This could be...an extra hour in the yard for a "hole" inmate or other segrated inmate. A tv in their cell. A bigger TV in their cell even. More cents per hour at their job for canteen purchases...etc.
To my understanding most of Canada has taken the stance that people should not profit from selling their bodies for medical reasons (blood tests, experiments, clinical trials, organ donation), because it ends up being a form of fiscal Darwinism, with the poor risking their health in order to try to get a leg up. If society has decided that it is essentially exploitation to do it in our typical cultural setting, then in my opinion it would be doubly so to do it with inmates. The perks you mention are still essentially currency, and it's still exploitative.
Well if society has the right to vote, no matter skin colour or gender yet prison inmates don't...then the laws can change for those particular individuals. Personal choice is not exploitation. They don't have to do this. It's not like they won't get food unless....The poor of society are a completely different matter. Mind you this is only in Canada.
In the US they pay for your time for certain experiments.
The fact is, if it wasn't for the death of several thousand animals, I would have died horribly at the age of 8.
I'm all for animal testing.
Society has defined the rights a prisoner loses, and the sentence they are to receive. They are the terms of their punishment. We can't just go heaping more on once they're incarcerated. We've decided what is a fair punishment already.
There WASN'T a viable option at the time. If those animals hadn't died, I would have. And so would millions of other children.
Let me tell you what happens to a diabetic who doesn't get insulin:
first they feel tired a lot, they tend to have a strange taste in their mouth and maybe their legs and arms get achey a lot. Their mouth gets really dry and gooey, then they start to lose weight. By this time they're peeing all the time and drinking tons to try and get rid of the horrible taste in their mouth. After a few months of this their eyes are starting to get damaged, little aneurysms busrting in their retinas. They can't tell yet but they're starting to go blind. At the same time their liver and kidneys are both being stretched to the limit, and there's a strange smell around them. They may be half their original weight now, and often feeling breathless or light-headed.
Around this time a parent usually realises something is wrong and takes their child to a doctor. This is when things get interesting:
Nowadays, a doctor does a simple test for glucose in the urine and/or blood, and when it comes back stupidly high the kid is immediately given insulin and will recover over the next few weeks and live a normal (but still difficult and short) life. Back as recently as the 60's, the doctor might well have said that it was diabetes but there wasn't anything they could do, and the parent would have had to watch the child slowly degenerate, slip in and out of a coma, going blind, their kidneys dying, their liver packing up and their breathing becoming more and more useless as their blood becomes too acidic to carry oxygen. Eventually, the child would have died.
Let me tell you what happens to a diabetic who doesn't get insulin:
first they feel tired a lot, they tend to have a strange taste in their mouth and maybe their legs and arms get achey a lot. Their mouth gets really dry and gooey, then they start to lose weight. By this time they're peeing all the time and drinking tons to try and get rid of the horrible taste in their mouth. After a few months of this their eyes are starting to get damaged, little aneurysms busrting in their retinas. They can't tell yet but they're starting to go blind. At the same time their liver and kidneys are both being stretched to the limit, and there's a strange smell around them. They may be half their original weight now, and often feeling breathless or light-headed.
Around this time a parent usually realises something is wrong and takes their child to a doctor. This is when things get interesting:
Nowadays, a doctor does a simple test for glucose in the urine and/or blood, and when it comes back stupidly high the kid is immediately given insulin and will recover over the next few weeks and live a normal (but still difficult and short) life. Back as recently as the 60's, the doctor might well have said that it was diabetes but there wasn't anything they could do, and the parent would have had to watch the child slowly degenerate, slip in and out of a coma, going blind, their kidneys dying, their liver packing up and their breathing becoming more and more useless as their blood becomes too acidic to carry oxygen. Eventually, the child would have died.
Who would say that animals should suffer if there were a truly viable option? I can't think of any research institution that would. It's expensive and cumbersome to have to care for animals plus fund the committees and such who have to review and approve applications for research. Plus it's hard on the researchers to work with animals. They do it, because they feel it's necessary, but it doesn't come easily.
Not to mention that animals aren't a precise representation of how the human body and mind react.
I can't imagine any person or institute not jumping at the chance to use some other method.
Herman, I hadn't meant to anger you. I'm fully aware of how animal testing has saved people And I'm fully aware of the affect of ALL types of diabestes.
I'm a mixed bag. I almost died as a child BECAUSE of animal experiments. Almost died from the innoculations all children received. Almost died but was saved also because of animal testing.
They're are now viable options the free animals from being tortured for our benefit. I was only asking if you thought a viable option was there would you still want it done on animals.
uhm, no. Society doesn't. Ask any victim if they're happy with the sentence rec'd by their victimizer...Judges and lawyers decide.
Laws were meant to be changed. As any African decendant and woman will attest to.
I'm a mixed bag. I almost died as a child BECAUSE of animal experiments. Almost died from the innoculations all children received. Almost died but was saved also because of animal testing.
They're are now viable options the free animals from being tortured for our benefit. I was only asking if you thought a viable option was there would you still want it done on animals.
uhm, no. Society doesn't. Ask any victim if they're happy with the sentence rec'd by their victimizer...Judges and lawyers decide.
Laws were meant to be changed. As any African decendant and woman will attest to.
What I'm saying is that we've decided that the sentence a judge hands down is all we're allowed to punish them with. We can't decide, three months down the road 'let's heap some more on'. If we want laws changed, yes, we change them... but not to pile extra on top of men who've already been sentenced. I pointed that out when this topic first arose... if it was a clear part of sentencing, perhaps it would be a different issue.
I'm not angry. Just trying to let you see the point:
You still don't see it though. You're asking a hypothetical question about IF there was an alternative. There wasn't, and there still isn't an alternative to animal testing. You can't develop drugs and treatments without testing on animals.
I don't believe that anywhere there are scientists who sit in a lab and say to themselves "hmmm I need to test something, but should I do it using animals or without? " and then decide " Actually it's much more fun with animals... I love it when they squeal and die in agony... and then I get to cut them open while they're still alive".
working with animals in the lab is a pain in the arse, training-wise, permissions-wise and expense-wise. Why would anyone do it if they didn't have to?
It's not punishment. It's a choice. They choose to go with this incentive program.
Herman, I do see your point. I didn't mean to infer that back then there was a choice. I'm simply suggesting that now maybe there is a choice.
Exactly. We already have incarcerated individuals. Why not ask them if they'd like to do something positive for their fellow man.
For diabetes testing, the choice is no longer there to make. We know how to manage diabetes now, and so we rarely have to do such awful things to animals any more.
Other diseases still warrant the need for animal testing. Even if there IS a choice, it hardly seems like a choice when it's YOUR child who's going to die if it isn't done.
I can't predict the future. Perhaps one day we'll be able to make a computer program simulate the entire human body. But for the foreseeable future, animal testing is and will remain necessary. And I suspect if we ever designed the computer program to simulate the human body, some people would be up in arms about us "hurting" them too.
Herman, have you heard that they will in the future provide for sale a machine that sits on your counter that makes...meat? Maybe they'll be able to manufacture something like that?
They can grow ears on mice backs...maybe fake human flesh with no soul..
They can grow ears on mice backs...maybe fake human flesh with no soul..