Charity & Animal Experimentation: Is it Cruel?

[wolram]

http://pw2.netcom.com/~axleplus/stuff/hotstuff/charity.html

Charities that support experiments on animals, I am on the fence with this one
animal experimentation may be the only way to solve some human need, but
i don't want to pay for it unknowingly or indirectly through a donation to charity

 

[Mk]

I am on the fence too.

Oh I remember this joke:
Pete and Repeat are sitting on a fence. Pete knocks Repeat into a pile of horsesh*t whose left?

 

[hypatia]

I don't want my money going for experiments on animals either. I too understand the need for it. This year I've been leaning twards local food banks and shelters, but even now, I think I should be buying canned goods and blankets and dropping them off in person.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I think it would depend on what exactly they are doing. I think you can run experiments involving animals and not harm them.

Oh I remember this joke:
Pete and Repeat are sitting on a fence. Pete knocks Repeat into a pile of horsesh*t whose left?

Is that it or is there a punch line because I don't get it otherwise.

 

[Moonbear]

Folks, first, that initial linked site is entirely inflammatory. Second, if you look at the list of foundations, what do you think they fund? There are no surprises on that list, those are charities dedicated toward finding cures for diseases. They don't hide that charitable contributions to them go toward funding research, in fact, they promote it as one of their primary purposes. This isn't like donating to the Red Cross or your local animal shelter and learning the funds were used for something other than disaster victims or feeding abandoned puppies; if you donate to one of those organizations, you would know that your money is going toward research or lobbying Congress for more research funding.

For more rare diseases, funding through private foundations and charities like those are really the only way to get funding because it's hard to justify to a government agency the need to spend taxpayer funds on research that will only help a handful of people worldwide when there are plenty of health problems affecting many more people.

 

[russ_watters]

Is that it or is there a punch line because I don't get it otherwise.

Answer the question and find out...

 

[wolram]

Moonbear, you may be the best person to ask, which human ailments, "need",
animal research, and how many animals are used, "die", per year in this research.

 

[moose]

Answer the question and find out...

"Pete knocks Repeat into a pile of horsesh*t whose left?"

Well, Pete is left.
Are you sure it shouldn't have been the other way around?

 

[russ_watters]

"Pete knocks Repeat into a pile of horsesh*t whose left?"
Well, Pete is left.
Are you sure it shouldn't have been the other way around?

Heh - yeah, MK said it backwards. I didn't notice it the first time.

 

[Bladibla]

I lost a close relative to cancer and the only help modern medicine could provide was absolutely useless (and possibly even more damaging than the cancer itself). Even a prime-time paper, USA Today, had an article stating what a complete bust the $30 billion "War on Cancer" has been. The only people to benefit are those who do the actual research, as they're the ones that get the money.

So we should presume all none-animal tested products do save everybody?

I don't understand why the rights -activists are so fired up with the rights for animals. We, as humans have rights as more than any other species on this earth, and i find absolute no problem in the fact that we test animals to make a better cure for us.

A animal rights activist will still get eaten by a wild tiger if not careful, whether he is a animal right activist or not.

Another thing that is flawed is the comparsion between the 'good' and 'bad' charities. Just what is inhumane about about the 'bad' guys? Arn't they also trying to help people, whether they do experiments or not?

Comparing the 'good' guys ''Concerned Citizens for Humanity'', the 'bad' guys 'Alzheimer's Disease Research ', I'd much more be obliged to donate for the latter (that has a specific goal) rather than extra 'concern' for humanity. The general trend i notice of the 'bad' guys is that they are much more inclined to research than those of 'good' guys. Its not a perfect world, there ARE going to be people dying from cancer and AIDS. Both of my grandfathers died of Cancer, but I'm still more inclined towards experimentation-research. I'd rather pay money for a research group that will make a cure in the next 20 years than a 'ethically sound' group that will just contemplate how to do proper just experiments without the use of animals, which, is unpractical.

 

[loseyourname]

One of my best friends was conducting stem-cell research at Cal Tech before Bush cut the program and she was laid-off. Pretty much all she did was experiment on animals. It's funny how pro-stem cell research but anti-animal research this board is.

Are you people aware that every single drug that ever goes to market must be tested on animals as part of the FDA approval process?

In animal testing, drug companies make every effort to use as few animals as possible and to ensure their humane and proper care. Generally, two or more species (one rodent, one non-rodent) are tested because a drug may affect one species differently from another. Animal testing is used to measure how much of a drug is absorbed into the blood, how it is broken down chemically in the body, the toxicity of the drug and its breakdown products (metabolites), and how quickly the drug and its metabolites are excreted from the body.

http://www.fda.gov/cder/handbook/develop.htm

 

[Moonbear]

Yes, basically, if we understood something well enough to do entirely in vitro studies or computer modeling, as the animal rights activists keep suggesting we do, then we would already understand it well enough to have a cure.

All people using animals for research need to show they are following the 3-Rs, Reduction, Refinement, Replacement. That means, be very careful to only use as many animals as is needed to obtain statistically useful results (too few and you might as well not do it because the statistics won't be powerful enough), and if you can use one animal for more than one purpose, such as coordinating with multiple researchers to share different tissues all harvested from the same animal, then you should. That's reduction. Refinement means we continually need to update our procedures based on the newest findings. We need to show that we have done appropriate literature searches about any new methods that can reduce any pain or discomfort and use them if available. And then replacement is considering in vitro models; on every animal use protocol we submit for approval, we have to justify why animals are necessary, and why the animal model we chose is the most appropriate as opposed to using a lower vertebrate or invertebrate.

And as LYN pointed out, every drug making it to market has been tested in animal studies; that's the law. Since the horrid problems with thalidamide years ago, not just one, but two different animal models are required, to ensure something very dangerous doesn't make it to human trials just because the animal chosen for the studies wasn't affected for some reason.