Xref: utzoo talk.politics.misc:21514 sci.research:630 sci.bio:1819
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!xanth!nic.MR.NET!shamash!nis!sialis!orbit!pnet51!avatar
From: avatar@pnet51.cts.com (Timothy Fay)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,sci.research,sci.bio
Subject: Re: animal research
Message-ID: <614@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 5 Feb 89 20:25:10 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.UUCP
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 46


 
dpb@hen3ry.Philips.Com (Paul Benjamin) writes:
>In article <593@orbit.UUCP> avatar@pnet51.cts.com (Timothy Fay) writes:
>>I can accept that, under certain conditions, some animal research MAY be
>>necessary.  But please spare us this baloney that animal research isn't
>>cruel to the animals.  It IS cruel and, someday hopefully, it will also
>>be unnecessary.
>
>Up till now I've been just observing this seemingly eternal
>argument, but I feel I have to point out the extremely
>simplistic position that seems to be emerging.  There is no
>doubt that a lot of cruel animal research exists, and that
>regulations are needed.  But to say that ALL animal research
>is cruel is wrong.  There is a great deal of valuable work involving
>many topics that are not cruel at all, e.g., diet (large doses
>of vitamins), or biological rhythms (20-hour days, 30-hour days,
>etc.), that are not necessarily cruel at all to the animals
>involved, and cannot be realistically done with humans (and
>certainly not with simulations).  Try controlling the daylight
>and night hours of a large group of humans for a long time.
>To lump all animal research together is oversimplifying, and
>gives a vacuous argument.  Let's try to stick to the main point -
>cruelty to animals, whether in the name of research or not.
 
The person I was responding to claimed that animal research
*wasn't* cruel.  If my argument is 'vacuous', then the claim that
all animal research isn't cruel is at least equally vacuous.  
 
It may be that not *all* animal research is cruel, but the
overwhelming majority of it is.  Most lab animals are used in
cancer research or product testing, and the methods used can be
very cruel, indeed.  The vitamin research you cited often invoves
administering hyper-doses to a sample group of animals, until 50%
of them die.  To me, that's cruel.  Necessary, *perhaps*, but don't
tell me it doesn't cause the test animals pain and suffering.  
 
This is not to say all researchers are horrible, fanged monsters
and sadists.  Nor am I demanding an immediate halt to all
experimentation on animals.  I am, however, asking that we
consider how this kind of research affects the animals involved,
and to work to find methods of experimentation that do not
require animals as unwilling subjects.  

UUCP: {uunet!rosevax, amdahl!bungia, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!avatar
INET: avatar@pnet51.cts.com