PROMOTING CRUELTY TO HUMANS

Here's a simple question. Is Animal Research absolutely necessary for the development of life-saving drugs, medical procedures, and biotech treatments?

According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Murray, M.D.: “Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements, and all vaccinations.” Explains former American Medical Association president Daniel Johnson, M.D.: “Animal research--followed by human clinical study--is absolutely necessary to find the causes and cures for so many deadly threats, from AIDS to cancer.”

Animal Rights wackos supreme - PETA - beg to differ. Quelle surprise!

The founder of PETA, Ingrid Newkirk, has declared unequivocally that animal research is “immoral even if it’s essential” and that “Even painless research is fascism, supremacism.” When questioned what her movement’s stance would be if animal tests produced a cure for AIDS, Newkirk responded: “We’d be against it.” Chris DeRose, founder of the group Last Chance for Animals, writes: “If the death of one rat cured all diseases, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.”

Great article here on PETA's campaign to ensure that Alzheimer's victims remain without hope. As the author, Alex Epstein puts it,

"What is needed is a principled, intellectual defense of the absolute right of animal experimentation, against the deadly notion of “animal rights.” Anything less is cruelty to humans."

Cruelty to humans is what PETA does best.

Comments

[beano]

I wonder how Ingrid Newkirk would feel about an cure for AIDS developed from animal testing if it affected her or someone in her close family. Would she refuse to use said cure in protest?

[Madradin Ruad]

Load of nonsense. Animal research is mostly
a waste of time. It's all to do with ego's and money and the medical profession will always hold out "we may find a cure to X,Y or X if you let us see if we can graft a guinea-pig's eye onto an elephant's backside". The Drug industry and especially the medical profession are not to be trusted. Look at Thalidomide - thousands of animals met a really gruesome and painful end and the medics and drug industry ignored the warning signs anyway.

[Madradin Ruad]

Joseph Murray, M.D.

an impartial source LOL

[Sean Fear]

"Load of nonsense. Animal research is mostly
a waste of time

How do you know that?

[Madradin Ruad]

Was involved with the system for decades, still have friends in research. Have you ever been in a research lab ?

[Sean Fear]

No, but given a choice between believing someone like Joseph Murray M.D., and believing PETA, I believe the former.

Is Murray wrong in his view that advances in the areas he lists owe much to animal research?

[Madradin Ruad]

Why trust a Doctor just because he's a doctor ? He's unlikely to be in any way impartial or objective. And Doctors have done things that would sicken hardened terrorists.

People trusted the doctors and companies that allowed Pthalidomide to wreak havoc.

[Sean Fear]

PETA are hardly impartial or objective either; and some animal rights activists do sickening things also.

The point is; is Murray's statement true or false?

[Madradin Ruad]

That might be the point that interests you Sean. I'm interested in the bigger picture.
The fact of the matter is that only a tiny percentage of the animal reseach that has been done can be said to have contributed to the developement of the things listed.

Yes animal rights activists have done terrible things, but nothing anywhere near as ghastly as the medical profession and the medical profession in my lifetime.

We need to rein in the chemico-medical industry.

[Sean Fear]

Well *if* animal research has contributed to the medical breakthroughs that Murray has listed, then it seems to me that *some* animal research is worth doing, and that the position put forward by PETA is untenable.

What types of animal research do you think are immoral/a waste of time?

I don't revere the medical profession by any means. The BMA is an appallingly sanctimonious organisation, and I detest abortion. But I think your denunciation of the profession is far too sweeping. I think most doctors and nurses mean well, even if they don't act well.

[Madradin Ruad]

Sean - again it boils down to deciding if the ends justifies the means. I don't think it does. If you accept that then when a doctor asks to experiment on human beings because he "might" find a cure for whatever emotive disease he dredges out of the hat, you will have a hard time refusing him.
We have already crossed that line , and here I'm not talking about war crimes or events in the USA or the ROI or Russia or the use of people as guinea-pigs by companies in the third world - with studies on human embryos. It won't be long before a doctor is asking to experiment on someone in a vegetative state.

[Madradin Ruad]

I'll add that because some good comes out of something does not in any way validate or excuse what has been done. There were huge advances in Trauma surgery made by doctors in Northern Ireland dealing with the carnage wreaked by republican and Loyalist terrorists.
That doesn't give one iota of validity to their actions.

Madradin

In 1998 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved thalidomide for use in treating leprosy symptoms (FDA Talk Paper: July 16, 1998). Studies are also being conducted to determine the effectiveness of thalidomide in treating symptoms associated with AIDS, Behchet disease, lupus, Sjogren syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, macular degeneration, and some cancers (MOD, November 1998).

Evil thalidomide!

"Animal research is mostly
a waste of time."

Why? Facts and figures, please.

[Madradin Ruad]

anonymous - have you ever met a thalidomide victim ? I have. That the drug can now be used in certain conditions in no way excuses what happened - thousands of animals met a really gruesome and painful end and the medics and drug industry ignored the warning signs anyway.

I'll return your logic - Doctors have used the results of some of the Horrendous experiments done on human beings by German and Japanese doctors. Does that retrospectivley excuse what happened ?

Medical science learned a lot from the shameful Tuskegee episode - does that excuse or justify what happened ?

Useful data resulted from using Children in orphanages in vaccine experiments - does that restrospectively justify what was done ?

Medical science benefitted from using poor people in the third world as unwitting guinea-pigs. Does that make it OK ?

[Jo]

"It won't be long before a doctor is asking to experiment on someone in a vegetative state."

..if so, it will probably be Dr House, tonight C5, 10pm :)

[Neal]

MR - so what's your solution? Would you outlaw all human research? All medical research? We'd lose a lot more than just bathwater. You're absolutely right that there are a lot of egomaniacs in the academic health professions, but even they can produce data that are important. I don't know how it works in the UK, but here in the US any research proposal has to be approved by an institutional review board that is mostly made up of administrators and other academics in permanent CYA mode and always includes members of the general public. So if I did propose to do research on people in vegetative states, for example, I would only be approved if I could show it wouldn't be harmful. The thalidomide episode as well as the others you cite were terrible and should not have happened, and a lot more care is taken now.

[Sean Fear]

MR, several of your points are good ones, insofar as they apply to human beings.

But I have few qualms about basing medical advances on animal experimentation, and I certainly don't consider such experimentation to be morally on a par with experimenting on people in concentration camps.

I appreciate that to people like PETA, or Peter Singer, that makes me a "specieist". I can reply that that is a charge to which I would happily plead guilty.

[Madradin Ruad]

Sean - appreciate the friendly discussion.
There's one heck of a difference between the friendly GP and the research scientist. People have a starry-eyed view of these people as altruists whereas the reality is very different.
Cheers

[Neal]

Although the reality that you experienced may have been very different from the starry-eyed view, you're painting with a very wide brush. That's not been my experience. And rhetorically, is altruism necessary?

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