Animal tests get renewed backing

[monkeytrousers]

here

I think this is a tricky one. I'm a vegetarian, mostly for moral and ethical reasons and I'd like to hope that one day science and medicine could move away from this area. But at the same time I couldn't campaign against such testing while it remains vital to medical research, as I would support stem cell testing also.

I was briefly a member of the BUAV but their language was increasingly sensational and overly emotive and that made me doubt their findings. I wanted a more middle ground stance.

What does anyone else think?

old wives' tale

But there is hope in the future for more modelling - even if it is only to reduce the number of animals that are required for testing.

Oh modeling is great. I have mates who do this, modeling the active ingedient to the receptor that people are interested in. But that can only go so far. In the end you have to see how the entity you have designed is metabolised by the live, and how the metabolites act of the whole organism. At the moment we have far too little understanding of the whole system to rely on computer modeling.

And the people pusing our understanding are not the people attacking the scientists, they are the scientists.

But heck, what do I know about it? I only worked in the buisness

Whilst I believe that herbal remedies may contain active ingredients, homeopathic remedies are (IMHO) inactive. But that's a whole other topic which I don't really want to get into now!!!

Haven't read the whole thread but it is incredibly difficult and costly to get new drugs tested on animals and there are very strict regulations in force as to how they must be treated. For example, a mouse with a tumour being given a cancer treatment has to be killed before the tumour becomes too large, in order to prevent unnecessary suffering.

at present it costs £300 million to get a drug to market

I realise that pharmacological standards are necessary - I mentioned it matters. Merely noting the difference between non-conventional, non-laboratory based healing of the past when labs did not exist, rainforest medicine guru´s and the variance in mentalites towards healing.

HMB see my post 3:40:53 PM re deciding to use animal tested drugs - it would be with a heavy heart and I would follow all holistic means possible. Also I would follow alot of spiritually based mechanisms that have been used for healing. It would be incorporated with alot of forethought and as much knowledge as I could get my hands on. My family has recently had several members experience cancer - all three have come through so far. All the best to you, your dh and family x

Just out of interest, did your family members have drug treatment or did they have spiritual healing alone?

Ps very glad that they are doing well

HBM

see my posts below regarding statistics of drug discovery (all since lunch) - current estimates are nearer a billion to get a neuroscience drug to market. Costs are rising all the time.

Wow, thought it would have surprise me re neurosciences, I used to work in field, many years ago. The £300 million quote was for the ABPI website. When I worked in the industry 10 years ago it was 'only' £100 million. Costs spiral as we expect ever higher standards.

I currently work in the industry and in the last four years estimates have gone from 3/4 - 1 million (dollars, by the way!).

And only a fraction of the drgs ever get the development costs back.

I worked for Boots at one point. The medical director told me that he was invovled in the aubmission of Ibuprofen to the MCA in the 1960s the documentation was about 200 pages in total! Ebven when I worked with them in the mid 90s the documantation to get a drig to market took a pantecnicon lorry! I hate to think what it would be nowerdays!

2 had breast cancer. Mum´s was low grade and she had radiation and had one prescription drug. She got cancer a couple of years after taking premarin - I told her not to take it because of the warnings of breast cancer she is high risk and because an active ingredient is pregnant horses urine. She did change to a plant based alternative and then stopped taking it once cancer was found and started doing alot of personal positive self building which had it seems has had shorter and longer positive benefits - healthwise and mentally. I lived with them for 2 years while she took premarin and equivalent - had moved to CH when she found out about cancer... but in the meantime did alot of pro-female confidence building in her
Cousin had chemo and radiation, unaware of what drugs she took.

Father-in-law had major op, chemo drip button that slow released and lots of drugs. He took a holistic path after refusing to go to a specialist for a blood test the conventional doctor recommended. Was not till a homeopath he visited recommended that he really needed a blood test that he had one and he was hospitalised the same day the results arrived.

If it was me ill or my child I would follow conventional, holistic and spiritual means combined.

I think it?s not just the experiments that could be considered cruel but the conditions the animals are kept in, certainly primates and other social animals. Even if the majority of scientists and lab techs are not into animal cruelty I don?t think there?s much of an argument against this. These are sentient animals with complex nervous systems and are just as capable of feeling dread, fear and sadness as we are. All animals are hardwired for survival and will become distressed when their survival is endangered. Whatever your position in the chain, you have to steel yourself against identifying too much with these animals, or the work you need to carry out would be unbearable. As humans find it easier to commit atrocities on other humans they deem to be doomed, it follows that the same must be true for animals in the same situation. This is without a doubt what happens in the meat industry. But I don?t think that?s the argument here though. As Edam said, it?s Hobson?s Choice, a dilemma. It?s no good creating false dichotomies or straw men to easily knock down. It?s much too complicated for that.

There are arguments which say some experiments give negligible results as the difference between species is too wide, but they must continue because of the law. I don?t know what the argument is for companies doing this to ?make a profit?. Common sense dictates that companies need to protect themselves from lawsuits, that?s not making money from experiments, just saving it in the long run. Everything a company does will be fiscally determined.

I don?t want to be forced into either camp within this debate. Like I said in my original post, I?ve got a foot in both camps, though that doesn?t mean I?m comfortable with that morally. I?m just being pragmatic.

How do companies 'make money' from animal testing?

They would make more money if they did not have to animal test.

Animals are a. Expemsive
b. require a home office licence
C. that involves spot checks by independed vets
d. involve expencive maintainece
e. will get you picketed by the ALF who may well threaten you, or your family

If your basic premic eis that drug companies are in it for the money (and they are I used to work for one! )

Why do you think they use them if not because there is no alternative????

I'm in agreement with both of you. My premise was never that compaines are in this for the money. I didn't even have premise, just a nag, IYSWIM.

Drug companies test animals to discover drugs and to make sure they are safe. There is currently no other way of doing this and will not be for the forseeable future.

They discover drugs to make money. Whilst some of this money does go to make people rich. 19% goes straight back in to fund research to find new drugs.

The by line of this is that millions of peoples of lives are improved and lives are saved. Of course sometimes things go wrong (thalidomide, vioxx)...

BTW - this debate is going around in circles as we are goikgn through many arguments that have already been posted

Ah well, thats the nature of dilemmas though, isn't it? There's no solution..

No, on that I think that we would agree.

But one thing is for sure, it isn't going to be solved by the sort of tactics that have driven the farm out of buisness.

I agree and echo your sentiments Monkeytrousers regarding the emotional distress a sentient being will experience in laboratory conditions. I was going to mention it earlier but did not want to flare the discussion into potential to dissolution. But I must admit to me I view lab animals and animals kept in cages for human consumption to be another version of concentration victims like the Jewish people were in WW2.

It upsets me and I feel saddened that I have to make a choice between the life of a tested animal being over my human life. I hope technology can one day find another alternative through further understanding of the DNA of the human body.

One lab that I know of, which did serious and well respected research on the well being of primates held in captivity (research that went towards benefiting primates held in zoos which also help to restock wild troups) was picketed on a daily basis by people who insisted that the reaserch was 'torture'. Which it wasn't. But that didn't fit in with protesters world view.

If the same research was performed on humans would it still not be considered torture HMB? Not having a go, but just begs the question, well considering my more emotive viewpoint regarding animal testing that I just posted.

Research is carried out on humans as well.