Xref: utzoo sci.research:602 talk.politics.misc:21257 sci.bio:1802
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!marty
From: marty@june.cs.washington.edu (Marty Sirkin)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio
Subject: Re: animal research
Message-ID: <7123@june.cs.washington.edu>
Date: 1 Feb 89 18:56:40 GMT
References: <5963@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <674@intvax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 23

In article <674@intvax.UUCP>, morimoto@intvax.UUCP (Alan Morimoto) writes:
> [ about saving people via animal research]
> Yet what do we accomplish by all of this.  We end up with a lot of sick 
> people that would not survive without medical help.  

Not always.  I remember back in the early-mid 70's when my father was about
to die.  He had a bad heart, and the doctors told him that he wouldn't last
the month.  They did tell him that they could try a very new medical
procedure which had been tried on animals, but very few humans.  He went
ahead and had a bypass.  And survived until 1983.

Granted he had some problems in the 8+ years extra he lived.  But very few.
He was not much of a burden on society, and lived to see his children 
graduate from college, and one of his children married.  Seems like a useful
procedure to me.  

In addition, he was a diabetic for some 30 years (after he had had children,
and passed on his genes).  Without the animal research he would have been
dead.  With the medicine he lived a very useful, productive life.  He was
not "sick" save that he had to have his shots/pills twice a day.  Seems like
a very good tradeoff to me.

						Marty Sirkin