ofcourse its not great, but afaik we still can't do much better. Perhaps if universities and their medical centers got proper budget they could grow humans and human parts to test on. theres many things like artificial wombs and 3d printing of tissue etc. but afaik these will be hugely expensive and way outside their budget.
Or does peta prefer only big pharma to be able to do research and sell simple medicines for ludicrious prices (as we've all seen them do already).
Wonder what other people's take on it is.
i also wonder why they dont fight for human rights instead of animal rights. i mean, sure animals are essential, and sentient, and know what is suffering and incarceration, but so do many humans around the globe, even in 'developed' countries.
maybe they should put them in a childrens' hospital full of kids with incurable diseases and ailments -_-. i've been there and seen _that_ and its a ton more depressing and horrible and a few monkeys suffering (which is still horrible but magnitudes less i can tell u).
try looking one of those kids in the eyes and tell them you are advocating for something that will prevent their chance of a cure how slim it might be. im quite sure u need to be pretty unempathic to be able to do that to say it lightly....
this kind of advocating causes litterally violence to some of these researchers... completely bonkers.
Plus it's not like Pharma companies want to do primate research (for some things, yes) but almost exclusively it's because regulators require it for approval.
that's like saying "I wonder why you're volunteering at an animal shelter instead of a homeless shelter". a large majority of the population isn't doing either. it's bonkers to criticize the people actually doing something about any injustice in the world. i bet most people working for either cause have done more than you or i will ever do in advancing rights for any species, human or non-human
They poisoned pregnant macaque mothers to see what would happen to their babies. Really sick stuff.
Everyone knows the real answer is that we can just wait 10 years and AI will solve it after faster than light travel and ushering in luxury gay space communism.
The WaNPRC says the monkey studies have contributed to an understanding how prenatal domoic acid exposure may affect learning and memory: “These findings remain relevant to public health.”
However, there is no clear evidence that the experiments led to changes in public health recommendations.
This research has little real value for human medicine. If anything, animal testing might have set back human healthcare. (People have literally died by taking medicine that worked fine on animals yet severely harmed humans).
There was a recent post about using bacteria to kill cancer. They selected 50 strains of bacteria. With in vitro test they reduced thenumber to 9. Withmice test they reduced the number to 1. I think they are testing only that bacteria in other animals, because it may still be a bad idea (or hopefuly a brilant one).
> maybe peta can offer themselves as human test subjects to study disease and medicine
One of the issues with animal testing is that there's very few transferable results. Animal testing continues because it's the done thing, and "better than nothing". We're getting few public health benefits when we weigh it against the death of the millions of animals killed for science.
> this kind of advocating causes litterally violence to some of these researchers > does peta prefer only big pharma to be able to do research and sell simple medicines for ludicrious prices
Lazy. Make an effort at least, please.
> i also wonder why they dont fight for human rights instead of animal rights
This is the part that makes me confident about your lack of logical thinking, if you were wondering. Why are you on HN instead of fighting for human rights? Are you a Nazi? Why aren't physicists fighting for human rights? I mean sure space is important, and essential, but look into a dead kid's eyes and tell me you want to work on making telescopes better.
> try looking one of those kids in the eyes and tell them
Pretty certain that kids are much more likely to advocate for animal rights than adults are. Show these videos to your kids and ask them.
> a few monkeys suffering (which is still horrible but magnitudes less i can tell u)
What you can tell us seems to be of limited value...
Do you think researchers that experiment on animals do it for the pleasure of managing all the bureaucracy that comes with it, the potential pain of the animals and having to wait months or years for a result ?
Highly recommend reading “animal liberation” if you want to learn more about it.
1) you MUST do experiments on primates. Because there aren't any other animals that have human immune systems, and while "fake" human immune systems exist (in transgenic mice), they are not accepted by the FDA.
You want a treatment to transplant something (either biological or technological) into humans? You must do primate testing. You want to mess with the immune system? You must do primate testing (common for monoclonal antibody treatment that is often the only option for older people, as well as immunotherapies for various cancers). And then of course there's a bunch of medicine that just won't work on any other species.
2) you CANNOT do experiments on primates. Or mice for that matter. Oh and you can't make them transgenic in the first place either.
The benefits of animal research for medicine, even if "there is no clear evidence that the experiments led to changes in public health recommendations" for any one specific lab, are too great to throw away over a bleeding-heart animal welfare story.
I don't celebrate the cruelty; in fact, I think things should be far different, mostly for the current state of factory farming, but I am not an idealist who thinks that the suffering we bring these animals invalidates the benefits we bring our own species through these experiments.
There are some recent breakthroughs that make it way easier to do testing without animals, including biochips that use human cells for drug testing. I greatly support this and hope it spares more animals from experimentation, but for certain domains like one highlighted in this story (neurological research), I am willing to accept that animal testing is still necessary.
>The project ran from 2014 to 2020 and received more than $4.2m in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding
Thanks Obama.