Animal Testing

coolhandc

if monkeys were top of the food chain and more advanced then us they would be doing it too!

Mr. Incognito

Against

Do you weigh an animals life above a humans?

No. If a house was on fire you save the family before the families pets.

Animals have sentience to an extent

You're dipping into the realm of philosophy here. The best explaination is the difference in cognitave functions and the steps up the evolutionary ladder.

1. Animals are known as dumb beasts for a reason. There instincts are hardwired and though they can be relaxed eg. domestication of dogs and cats they can never be fully supressed as these animals have not evolved beyond the level of reaction to their core instincts. Humans are more evolved both in intelligence, communication and emotionally. A dog needs to pee, He will pee. A dog wants to have sex, he will have sex. He doesn't feel ashamed. He just does it. Humans have evolved to the stage where they can choose and command their instincts. (although there are behavioural scientists that may disagree with me)

Humans can THINK, can plan, can debate and can reflect. We have conquered out base desires and can choose whether to sucumb to them or not. We have instincts but they are controlled in the manner of social conditioning and personal choice.

Yes animals can feel base emotional responses e.g pain but they do not have the understanding or intelligence intrinsic to humans. A good way of describing this would be to use an example. An animal can be conditioned into responses. e.g taught to attack. But it doesn't truly understand or make decisions on whether to attack. It does it because that is what it's instinctual leader has conditioned it to do. It cannot differenciate between friend and foe. It is taught tricks.

2. Humans can manipulate their environments. Animals react to theirs.

3. Humans have advanced communicton systems and language. Animals have very basic language skills and communication.

4. Human have an ability to learn beyond their instincts. We have discovered chemistry, physics and transfered and applied this knowledge into daily lives.

5. Perhaps the major difference is what Steinbeck referred to as the "leap of the imagination" that people are capable of. That metal jump that can link two diverse ideas or that flash of inspiration that led Einstein to suddenly understand that E=MC2 etc.

There are many many other arguements that can lead one to deduce that humans are superior to animals. You cannot say strength for the bear is stronger, you cannot say speed for look at the cheetah. We cannot fly. But we can THINK! It is our minds that set us apart. To allow us to have this debate. And it is our minds that have led us to become the dominant species on this planet and to have the ability to lock the other species up and test eyeliner on them. It is our minds that allow us to debate the ethical morality of this.

But make no mistake. Animals are not equal. They are sub-human. They are our pets for lack of a better word. Maybe we should take better care of them but they are in our care nonetheless.

hopalong85

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

SetantaL wrote: »

There are many many other arguements that can lead one to deduce that humans are superior to animals. You cannot say strength for the bear is stronger, you cannot say speed for look at the cheetah. We cannot fly. But we can THINK! It is our minds that set us apart. To allow us to have this debate. And it is our minds that have led us to become the dominant species on this planet and to have the ability to lock the other species up and test eyeliner on them. It is our minds that allow us to debate the ethical morality of this.

Don't chimps have the mental capacity of a six year old human child on average? Pretty sure i heard that somewhere. If so that means they can also think yes? Is it fair to subject a thinking creature to testing?

faceman

MooseJam wrote: »

you use cosmetics ? you're a bloke aren't you ?

last time i checked..

I assume you are a bloke too who uses deo, soaps, cologne etc..

Mr. Incognito

Against

Is it fair to subject a thinking creature to testing?

Fair? Fair is an abstract concept we teach to our children to ground some compassion in them. Does a zebra turn around and say to the Lion, "Don't eat me, that's not fair!" Life is not FAIR period. Get used to it.

As to the ethical morality of these practice it's the weighing of the perceived benefits verses the inherient suffering these practices may submit. I find it ironic to think of the German experiments on children and twins and the moral disgust verse the current practices on animals and the correlations between them and moral uproar or lact thereof they inspire. However it's a subjective personal choice based on ones own moral compass. To speak of fairness is to reduce this debate to the level of that six year old chimp.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

wouldn't a six year old chimp be at least as advanced as a seven and a half year old though? that raises some prickly moral issues.

Mr. Incognito

Against

wouldn't a six year old chimp be at least as advanced as a seven and a half year old though? that raises some prickly moral issues.

Depends on how you look at it. Define advanced. Off the bat I don't think a chimp is as advanced as a 7 year old. For one thing it does not have the same verbl dexterity. You can prove anything you want with a proper test design. Children can understand concepts that chimps cannot.

regardless of having seen the data, it certainly does not mean that a chimp is the equivalent or equal to a 7 year old. A 7 year old is a human, a chimp is not regardles of any similarities.

Personally I would like to see some sort of legislation that some sort of review board would have to be approached to judge the benefits of any scientific study involving animals. I cannot see it happening judging by the political power these drug companies wield but that would be my approach to the situation. In cases of more advanced animals like primates and domesticated creatures I would definately like to see a higher burden placed on applacants to establish a common public benefit to contraversial testing.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

o.0

popecatapetal

I've always felt like telling the anti-animal-testing people in town that if they want to help the animals so much, they should volunteer for the testing instead of them.

Reku

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

SetantaL wrote: »

Depends on how you look at it. Define advanced. Off the bat I don't think a chimp is as advanced as a 7 year old. For one thing it does not have the same verbl dexterity. You can prove anything you want with a proper test design. Children can understand concepts that chimps cannot.

regardless of having seen the data, it certainly does not mean that a chimp is the equivalent or equal to a 7 year old. A 7 year old is a human, a chimp is not regardles of any similarities.

Now you're getting more in to nature Vs. nurture since there have been children raised by wild dogs who had no linguistic ability from a human language point of view, only barks and yelps, and even as adults continue to have drastically reduced communication abilities. Then what of chimps trained to use sign language, many humans do not know sign language so by your logic (that one's ability to use a human language to communicate is a measure of intelligence) would these chimps not therefore in fact be more intelligent than some of the poorly educated members of our species?

Simple fact is we are only "more advanced" because we say we are, we are the ones setting the definition of what intelligence is so who is to say that dogs do not make all the same arguements as to why they should have the right to discipline (bite/snarl at) their human. The only thing that in anyway really separates us is our technology so we're more creative is all really. It's like trying to say that we are stronger than an ant because we can lift more, it's a biased viewpoint so we win, whereas if you examine which can lift more relative to it's own weight (a less biased measurement) the ant wins hands down. We need an unbiased 3rd party to establish the tests before we can really say that we are more advanced in any sense other than technology.

As for the arguement of reacting to Vs. manipulating the environment, rabbits dig burrows, beavers build damns, termites build mounds, are these not examplese of changing one's environment? Unless you mean poisoning it in which cause we win, no contest.

You say we have more complicated languages, if that is so why can we not understand what animals are saying, if our languages are so complex and we are so advanced then we should have no difficulty decoding the language of animals.

Animals also learn beyond their instincts, otherwise they would be untrainable as guide dogs, circus performers, messenger pigeons etc...
Monkeys and chimps have been known to use tools in the wild, birds will use gravity to open things with a hard shell, etc...


Strip away man's technology and we wouldn't even be more than a blip on the map.
One could in fact argue that viruses are the most advanced lifeform since even with our technology there are many we have yet to really beat (e.g. the common cold, AIDS, west nile, ebola, etc...) and they evolve at a far faster rate than we do or than our technology does.

Tar.Aldarion

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

popecatapetal wrote: »

I've always felt like telling the anti-animal-testing people in town that if they want to help the animals so much, they should volunteer for the testing instead of them.

What makes you think they would want to help humans?


Edit: for the above post.
An argument that gets rid of that animals only do things on instinct thing.
Some animals play games with quite advanced rules, with no purpose other than being trivial. Some animals eavesdrop. Etc.

ScumLord

Simple fact is we are only "more advanced" because we say we are

that's a load of horse poop. I love chimps and they can do allot of the same things that make humans stand out, using symbolism and such. They have great potential but there still Milena behind us. What a child can pick up in five minutes might take a chimp it's whole life to learn or even understand.

Strip away man's technology and we wouldn't even be more than a blip on the map.

Technology is us extending our imagination into the real world. You can't just say take it away. It's like saying take away a bats sonar and see how great he is at flying around blind.

The fact is the human is the greatest animal to set foot on this planet. We have the best qualities of every other animal, I think a species success can be judged by it's abundance and we're everywhere.

Tar.Aldarion

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

The fact is the human is the greatest animal to set foot on this planet. We have the best qualities of every other animal, I think a species success can be judged by it's abundance and we're everywhere.

We don't have the best qualities of every other animal, all we have is our intelligence. Other animals are fater, stronger, and have far better immune systems.
Everything we have apart from our brain, a different animal has better.

What if you were to judge a species by the harm it has done to the planet, what then? :-)

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

what harm would that be? the planet's fine

Tar.Aldarion

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

By 'harm the planet' I mean make it harder for themselves to thrive in it. Using up all the things you need to thrive at a fast rate(and not leaving time to make the transition from oil etc to alternatives without economic trauma. ), whilst getting a bigger population.
Being detrimental to your own survival. The planet will still be perfectly fine when we are extinct.

AngryBadger

Against

I don't know why this kind of thing always degenerates into an ethics debate.

Research involving animals is unavoidable. You have a theory, you develop something based on the theory. You test your concoction in isolated cell cultures, and a few other in vitro models, but inevitably you have to move onto in vivo (i.e. within the body) tests, otherwise there's no way of knowing if your treatment/whatever will have the desired effects.

Animal research should always be done humanely, and only where there are no suitable alternatives available. But it's not something we can just decide to stop. Logistics dictates that there will always be animal testing before products get approval, otherwise it's pot luck every time you take medication.

P.S. I'm referring almost exclusively to animals used for the development of medical products, or other research which aids human progress, I'm not talking about cosmetics. Frankly if people want cosmetic products so badly then let them volunteer to be guinea pigs, maybe they'll throw in a few free samples.

ScumLord

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

We don't have the best qualities of every other animal, all we have is our intelligence. Other animals are fater, stronger, and have far better immune systems.
Everything we have apart from our brain, a different animal has better.

What if you were to judge a species by the harm it has done to the planet, what then? :-)

We do have a good spread of abilities. We can cover large distances when we where hunters our range was massive) but we also have quick short burst speed. We can swim excellently, we can climb, we can deal with heat much better than the vast majority of other animals. We're a jack of all trades rather than specialised in any particular field which is a major advantage and makes it easy for us to colonise new and unfamiliar territory. We can successfully hunt alone but in a pack we're practically invincible.

The fact we're causing so much damage just goes to highlight the brilliance of the human form and abilities. We're to good in a way. Compared side by side to any other animal on the planet your much better off being human.

Sonnenblumen

Tar.Aldarion wrote: »

We don't have the best qualities of every other animal, all we have is our intelligence. Other animals are fater, stronger, and have far better immune systems.
Everything we have apart from our brain, a different animal has better.

What if you were to judge a species by the harm it has done to the planet, what then? :-)

But humans unlike animals are also good at talking through their arse!

You've omitted the religious aspect to humans ie soul? Animals don't do soul.

Tar.Aldarion

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

Yes, we all have a mythical soul...
Ah, intelligence...I take it back.

2Scoops

Against

Sonnenblumen wrote: »

You've omitted the religious aspect to humans ie soul? Animals don't do soul.

Are you sure that humans do 'do soul'? I've certainly never seen one. Perhaps human creativity and imagination is the key difference.

MooseJam

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

my budgie has a soul

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61QYH0iknJw

Reku

Only if its an Atari Jaguar being tested upon

ScumLord wrote: »

We do have a good spread of abilities. We can cover large distances when we where hunters our range was massive) but we also have quick short burst speed. We can swim excellently, we can climb, we can deal with heat much better than the vast majority of other animals.

Emm... you haven't really looked at the people around you lately, have you?
Many people consider the distance from one Luas/bus stop to the next to be a large one as they're too lazy to walk it. I know many who will readily admit that they can't do chin-ups (pansies!) so what hope do they have climbing for their food/survivial. As for speed bursts, yeah, followed by a heart attack....:rolleyes:
Swim yes, but excellently, no... many just know enough to be able to survive in a pool, put them in a flowing river and they're done for.
Dealing with heat/cold, if that were true they wouldn't be fiddling with the air conditioning every 20 minutes or so in my office.
We had these traits, we're now so enamoured with our technology that we're letting our physical abilities decay.:(

ScumLord wrote: »

We're a jack of all trades rather than specialised in any particular field which is a major advantage and makes it easy for us to colonise new and unfamiliar territory. We can successfully hunt alone but in a pack we're practically invincible.

Practically invincible is a bit of a reach...:rolleyes:

ScumLord wrote: »

The fact we're causing so much damage just goes to highlight the brilliance of the human form and abilities. We're to good in a way. Compared side by side to any other animal on the planet your much better off being human.

Actually cockroach/virus capable of infecting many species have the best long term prospects for survival as a species.



As for the spiritual argument you just insulted every Buddhist out there since they do believe in animals having a soul, would inability to respect other people's points of view and belief not be counter-indicative of intelligence?:p