Animal cruelty - lack of support on threads

I know. I have to ea less than 1500 calories a day to lose and I track on MFP. I’m on steroids for arthritis as well as the antidepressants and im not mobile - I walk with crutches and have a wheelchair for bad days. My priority is staying alive at this point (don’t take that the wrong way- I was SA’d and raped so violently that I can’t describe it here) I current am not eligible for the WLI due to cancer anyway.

Yes, animal care technicians are softies. Or at least the ones I know are. They do cuddle and comfort the animals they look after. There are strict rules about socialisation and interactions with them. Europe is way ahead of US, which is probably not a surprise. All the ones I know genuinely love animals and they do the job to ensure that they are given the best possible care they can within the confines of the study parameters. Every single study has to go through independent ethical approval and no procedures are conducted unless absolutely essential.

I suspect human trials would be more effective. The testing on animals is not for effectiveness (sort of obvious isn’t it, they’re not the same as us).

Sorry to hear you are so unwell though, that sounds very hard and I hope you have a good recovery ahead.

Somewhat OT but GLPs are not likely to be effective if you genuinely don’t overeat (antidepressants tend to make us hungrier but most of us underestimate our intake).

i find the laxatives that work for me very unpleasant.

my life sucks as it is and if there was a new laxative that could make me have a more normal life, yes I would want to avail of that. As I understand it, currently that means it would have to be rested on animals and I would accept that.

fwiw were I to be offered the chance to take part in a clinical trial for a drug like this, I would volunteer myself.

So the hundreds of existing products and natural solutions are not sufficient for you, you want to put animals through even more suffering so you don’t have to suffer?

Moot anyway because I’m sure what we already know about how substances act on gut motility would be enough to develop new laxatives anyway. And for some people, nothing is going to work that well because of the opiates. Just one of those horrible things.

That’s not how human rights work.

As someone who has chronic constipation due to opiates, yes. If needed (which as I understand it, is the current law)

What were you doing when you were a teenager? That's pretty much when there was an explosion in the availability of Cruelty-free/BUAV approved cosmetics and products.

So we should just endlessly test new variations of all kinds of drugs and products on animals because we ‘don’t know what will happen’? Obviously not. There should be a clear purpose. Are you really going to defend the testing of new laxatives?

I really don’t understand this as a counter argument. The fact is all drugs that exist now have been animal tested. That can’t be changed. The question is whether we need to continue testing new variations, and also whether those tests need to be quite so invasive. In the example the pp gave, was it necessary to kill the dogs? I haven’t read the paper so can’t say for sure but we do have flea prophylaxis, which has already been tested. Why are we killing more dogs to create more drugs that do the same thing?

It used to be legal for men to rape their wife, and to drink drive, and to include lead in face make up. Things change, thankfully.

We don’t have the evidence for new drugs do we?

I loathe cruelty in all its forms, whether towards kids, animals or other adults. And I think there is a lot of unnecessary animal testing - the bare minimum should (perhaps) be allowed for medical research.
But people here jumping on their high horses when they use cosmetics that have been tested on animals and eat cheap factory-produced meat? I say, get your own house in order first.

In all the examples you quote, I think we have so much data that we no longer need it. all those drugs exist and work fine, changes to them should build on that knowledge. Remember animal testing is for toxicity, not effectiveness.

@HappyInTheSea I think the problem is though, that if someone is cruel to animals they DON'T necessarily go to prison... Our whole society signals by the pathetically small sentences that this is an unimportant crime - the amount of people that are horrifically and disgustingly cruel and violent to dogs, who then get 'banned from keeping dogs' as if that's an appropriate sentence to somebody who has knowingly and spitefully inflicted pain.

There's a society-wide issue with people not viewing this as an important moral matter.

to support a very well known vet administered pet flea treatment. It wasn’t enough, apparently, to test for efficacy against fleas.

That is about safety, not efficacy. Particularly for parasiticides that impact insect nervous systems and are intended to kill them, there is a very real risk of similar effects on dogs. There are also some breeds of dogs with specific genetic mutations that make them extra sensitive to side effects, which means specific studies have to be done (again, mandated by regulatory agencies) to ensure safety in the most sensitive individuals.

People have been campaigning about this for decades. Some people care, others think there are more important things going on. 🤷‍♀️

Do we actually know that these scientists are big softie animal lovers? You’d have to be incredibly desensitised to do this job for any length of time or just not care about animals at all. These aren’t pets that can be cuddled, they’re live test subjects. Even if they wanted to, presumably they wouldn’t be able to? It doesn’t exactly give much comfort.

Huh? Why the agression? We are on the same side!

Perhaps my post was not clear...
Animals are sentient beings; they feel fear, they feel pain, joy, sadness, they enjoy belonging in a pack etc. Primates in particular have very similar family structures. Sentient beings... Just like us.

I do think that is reason enough to be upset at animal (primate or otherwise) testing, yes. What other reason would there be?

It is why I am upset at that image of the the monkey, (and, after clicking theough to the article- the beagles whose image was not posted in thread.). However, I am not upset at an image of someone cutting a carrot.

I wonder if my use of the word primate confused matters?

What, the vets who without exception have to use medications tested on animals to treat the animals in their care?

I think many many people will be amazed at have 'few' animals are used in bringing a potential drug from the test-tube to be accepted by a regulatory authority so you can inject something never given to a human being before for the 1st time. It is suprisingly few animals.

Absolute rubbish, most people who do this job are wonderful caring compassionate people towards their animals.

People who are not caring and compassionate are weeded out quite quickly and moved to other areas. No-one I have ever met who works in this area allows anyone to commit animal abuse/crulety at all. Cameras are everywhere, nothing can be hidden, everyone is watched and if there are any accusation of mistreating the animals it is investigated and if found to be true they are fired and sometimes reported to the police.

There are alternatives to many of the previous animals tests, almost all companies use alternatives if they can (organ on a chip is promising but we've found issues with it, AI is not ready yet).

WRT to the high number of animal tested drug not going to human trials - yes but that is a good thing as it means less chance of humans being harmed.

I am absolutely against animal cruelty/abuse, I have pets myself, but I see that testing potential drugs on animals (limiting the numbers used to the absolute minimum) and carefully considering how the experiments are done is something we can not get away from (at the present time).

A prisoner is still a human being. Human rights aren’t based on for good behaviour or the character traits of a person. it would open the door to abuse, torture, and inhumane conditions.

And do you mean all prisoners, or just those who have committed the worse crimes? What about the people who have been wrongly convicted? And what about prisoners who are there because life has treated them so badly they ended up making bad decisions?

Well as far as I am concerned, some prisoners have put themselves outside of such considerations by their own disregard for other people's right to live. There were actual scientific reasons why it's not feasible.

You do know that the use of WLIs on the nhs is not really just for people who want stand clear if the pies don’t you?

i became overweight once I was put on to steroids. Due to a life changing accident that left me disabled. And then antidepressants following a traumatic event. I don’t over eat. I can’t even tell you the last time I had a pie… and I can’t stand. Not without support.