Personally I find this unconscionable, as there's an endless supply of all cancers in most species which would benefit from treatments.
It was an hour run, the time he spoke of it, of absolutely disgusting shame for our species and in particular because these experiments were largely grant securing.
Moral consistency on animal welfare is really hard because we have so many blind spots due to how commonplace some practices are. There is definitely a push for ending things like cosmetics testing on animals[1], but I'm not sure we can or should stop testing things like cancer treatments on animals. At least not until we have viable alternatives.
[1] https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/timeline-cosmetics-t...
Closer to toddlers actually. I'm not a vegetarian or animals rights activist or anything but I'm kind of surprised people eat pigs with how smart they are.
That really depends on what kind of value system you're starting with.
You must really like dogs. Pig intelligence is vastly superior to dog intelligence. Pigs basically are as smart as children, with a full range of emotion. Seriously, stop eating them. Be an example rather than entitled to indulge horrid tastes. We can all live without.
How do you rationalize that? Not many people admit to being aware of the way food animals are treated.
I'm legitimately curious, not trolling.
I worked in immunotherapeutics and gave cancer to ~25 mice. I can't say it helped progress the field much, and I still feel bad. Cannot imagine what it's like to give cancer to a dog.
and it was (long story short) greed, not science. just appalling.
I think I know what you mean, but the impression was that the tests were for treatments in dogs, perhaps the presumption being they'd work in humans, but that was not clear.
There were something like 3,000 dogs... all in one building... all penned up from birth.
And upon hearing about the 3,000 dogs, I was like, "Can I see them?"
So she snuck me in.
And they were all bred to have some disorder, I don't remember what now, but like the article said... it was fatal.
And we got to the lab at like 9 PM and nobody else was there.
The dogs were all so happy to see us. God they seemed lonely. They were kept in these little like 10x14 pens, 2-3 dogs per pen. Some dogs were in cages.
But like... they were just dogs. Y'know? Most were just happy and looking to be pet, and it was overwhelming to be there.
I got to give some treats.
One of the pens had a dead dog in it, and my friend agonized over dealing with it or waiting until her shift officially started -- she didn't want to leave the dead dog in the pen, and she didn't want people to know she was sneaking her friends in to play with the dogs. So she decided to deal with the dog, and just tell her supervisor she came back for her wallet or something.
Anyway, for a kid 2,500 miles away from home... who missed his dogs... it was really nice to have an hour to play with puppies and young dogs.
As we were leaving she said that most of the dogs were euthanized at the 6-month mark to check for heart defects, or heart issues. Even the healthy dogs.
Fuck it was devastating to hear that.
I'm sure there's a reason and I'm sure we benefit somehow... and a dog who has never seen the sun, and will never see the sun, probably doesn't know what all they are missing... but they have to know, right? Like every living thing has to know they weren't made to sit in a little pen waiting to die.
I don't know, just felt like they should be outside, playing in a field, all that stuff... being mentally challenged and taught how to fetch and instead... they were bred just so their hearts would fail, or so they could be killed and dissected to see why their heart didn't fail.
Most people at the school didn't even know there was a dog lab like that on campus.
Easier not to think about this stuff.
Yeah, sure, lad. This is not how it works in the real life.
> a dog who has never seen the sun, and will never see the sun
Why? there is not a sun in your planet?
There is a fair chance that when this dogs are walked in the streets or the university gardens by its caretakers will be able to see the sun, sniff the sun and even to pee in the sun
I like the term "LinkedIn Broetry" though... instantly knew what you meant. Ha.
(2) It was a good story and a relevant comment.
No reason to bring gender into this discussion, why not criticize/discuss the comment itself.
Big-time cognitive dissonance there.
Behavioral problems, etc make reproducibility harder.
When we can overcome those problems, like with cultured cells, most prefer human cell lines.
But the intention is to have a "model" rather than the full thing.
And why is that a problem? More research, more study material. In the two generations you'll have a cure+extra compared to a single dedicated animal study, that may not even work on humans. Loosely speaking.
Rat: easy for you to say.
Also, this was the plot of Shinsekai Yori.
Phase 1 trials are to test safety and possibly design input for the next (phase 2) trial. In particular in oncology, there is no expectation that a patient in phase 1 will even potentially benefit from an experimental drug but there will likely be (detrimental) side effects in the high-dose groups at which point we back off.
So let's acknowledge that many of the (more modern) drugs we take are also a result of fairly heroic consent from human patient volunteers without any chance of personal gain.
This sounds grim that this is a big push. Scientists not even working on their own animals, leaving technicians to kill them without ever thanking the technician, and the technician never knowing why animals they feed and clean after for years suffer and die.
When we're working with humans taking blood draws, we want trained phlebotomy technicians taking blood draws, not because we're monstrously detached from our subjects, but because our expertise is elsewhere (for example, antibody detection).
If you're working with research animals, you want their care (and yes, their deaths) done and supervised by someone who is an expert in that specifically.
Should researchers see the facilities their animals are housed in, and acknowledge the efforts of those workers? Absolutely. But that's hardly because scientists are uncaring - it's a result of things like the animal housing sites often being at the very periphery of campuses, and science generally having not done a good enough job acknowledging the efforts of technicians in all aspects of science, dating back decades.
We already know that dosages above 10 micrograms/kg of body weight is carcinogenic and should be avoided, so establishing where in the 100,000-300,000 microgram/kg range the LD50 resides does nothing for us.
as someone else noted, a lot of this is done as a form of grant-securing, and it's done on a long-term 'maintenance' basis rather than on experiment-basis.
a 'better option' would be the removal of such political and economical games from facilities that are supposed to be doing research; this reduces the suffering and death without much loss to discovery and progress.
the trick being that we, as humans in this world, have little hope of removing extraneous politics from where they do not belong.
but I just care to point out that we're nowhere-near optimal w.r.t. how we operate in the research sector. it can be better.
It's not that finding a cure to cancer is not important, of course it is, but that doesn't mean the animals need to be treated in deplorable ways. Of course, it's understandable that precautions need to be met and sometimes this means animals need to have reduced contact with other animals and be kept in particular conditions; I worked in immunology for a while so I'm familiar with it.
But I believe the real reason why these animals have to suffer such torture is simply because treating them as best as we could is too expensive and no one wants to pay the cost of animal dignity. No one. So we just justify it saying it's for the greater good.
I mean, it's just a utilitarian position: the potential of millions of lives being improved is worth the suffering of these animals, after all, a human life is much more valuable than an animal life under this frame of reference.
Genuinely ignorant and layperson curious here ... how are these two things connected? There are so many types of cancer that this sounds bold and almost too ... simple?
The key will likely include the ability to induce tolerance or an immune response to a specific antigen and possibly of a specific immune subtype, so as not to derange the entire system. Also, the ability to target medications to specific regions of the body so that the entire immune system is not affected.
The goal isn’t just to get someone to say “okay”; the point is to make sure they’re doing so freely and with a complete understanding of the possible outcomes.
Some of this article sounds familiar, including (near the end) the sneaking off to find somewhere to cry. Even though she was pretty tough.
I don't recall her mentioning troubles related to the animals, other than some physical pain related to some of the repetitive movements handling small cages, and being bothered if other techs didn't do the animal care properly.
She did have problems with a clique of other vet techs bullying her. Though some techs were nice, and the supervising vet and the head of the lab were nice to her, and mostly supportive, other than not managing to fix the nastiness problem.
Going only from one person's experience, and this short article:
1. Can the nature of the lab vet tech work lead to, or select for, nastiness in some people?
2. Do labs let some bad behavior slide, due to the difficulty of hiring (given that the work can be rough, and the pay is poor)?
1) Vet techs have been some of the kindest, most patient people I have met. They are humans, which means some of them are nasty, but between the compassion fatigue, the relatively low pay for the amount of training, etc., I don't think "nastiness" is selected for.
2) Difficulty hiring is one. Difficulty firing is another, if they're at a state university. But there is a national shortage of these types of technicians, and it's not a job that can't get done.
Very few new hires have any inkling about any of this when they start, so there's a period of a few weeks where they're forgiven a lot. It's a big ask, because a lot of it is new habits, and some of it can be strange new thinking, too. But ultimately the hires who can't adapt are fired.
Consequently a lot of the hires end up studying animal science or veterinary medicine later on. My point is: the nature of the work that comes before the lab tech work can have an impact, too.
https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2019/09/04/veterina...
Perhaps something about caring for animals attracts depressed or possibly suicidal people in the first place.
Just an anecdote, but within 1 month in 2018, the lady I adopted my dog from(Stacey Radin), my dog walker, and a lady who ran a horse rescue in my hometown all committed suicide(none knew each other). I don't think I know anyone else directly who has committed suicide, and they all worked with animals.
> Several studies have identified a link between suicide and occupation (1), including the healthcare professions and our own profession. The rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged as close to twice that of the dental profession, more than twice that of the medical profession (2), and 4 times the rate in the general population (3).
Imagine you're a human doctor, except your patients are mute and can't give consent, and they're brought to you in a sorry state for emergency care by people who are frequently hostile and grossly neglectful to your patients. To that pile of daily woes, add significant student debt, chronic under-staffing issues, and increasing PE ownership.
It's a really tough industry, almost everything is stacked against them. [I've worked in a pet-care-adjacent space for a few years].
We're predators. We consume other animals. The fact we have found other ways to consume them doesn't make for a moral conundrum.
Indeed, true to the empathic nature of a social species, we even go out of our way to minimize the suffering of our prey.
Do you think the bear does that, as it eats its pray alive? Or the animals that swallow whole & alive, and kill during digestion only? Or parasitic wasps?
You can be as self indulgent and narcissistic as you want, but if you see a loved one painfully dying of a disease that 10 years of no-holds-barred (FDA-unencumbered) medical research could have have prevented, we'll see how quickly your narcissist "think of the animals" self-indulgence will be replaced by "why are authorities letting this happen" self-indulgence.
Virtue comes from doing what is painful but must be done, not indulging in your high horse like a child who's yet to understand the world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-38906351 This is where the true outrage should be pointed at.
And those who want to abuse animals can do so legally, by live feeding it to their snake or lizard. It just makes my blood boil in anger.
Because we have no alternative for research, and because other animals are cruel with each other, then it absolves us of compassion? By the same token, there are vicious criminals that are unable to control their base instincts so we should all be viciously killing others whenever we feel justified? That’s how psychopaths and wild animals do it after all.
We don’t have to kill animals and make them suffer like we do currently to raise and eat them. We have the knowledge and technology to thrive on a plant based diet.
Research is a very different thing unfortunately. I very much hope we’ll develop theoretical and computer models to avoid the need for research on animals altogether because this is such a cruel and inhumane thing. But right now, there is no alternative unlike any other situation where we use animals historically (clothing, food).
It seems like modeling clinical conferences that discuss patient cases that have been particularly upsetting to staff could be a model for animal care staff as well. Something like a monthly meeting where animal care staff and research staff could decompress and discuss the importance of the research that is being conducted while acknowledging the unique emotional toll of working with animals.
It's because humans have moral and ethnical frameworks. Despite a document drafting XYZ is okay because "its for science" it still is wrong in the sense you are sacrificing something with a memory, sadness, happiness, etc for a possible "greater good". Especially for dogs, an animal deeply engrained and coevolved with humans, I cannot imagine the amount of cognitive dissonance, or more likely, sociopathy that would be required to engage in such experiments.
We trivialize the fact it's unethical to experiment on humans. I am not a treehugger or anything but to suggest talk therapy will help solve a very real moral and ethical problem...well I'm not sure you understand. Veterinarians have an extremely high suicide rate for a reason. Moreover, I will never forget the callousness of the veterinarian who suggested I put my family dog down for something that wasn't immediately fatal. It's only a small step from that asshole to these assholes and that step is complete transcendence into pathological psychopathy. We simply sometimes benefit from these psychopaths gassing dogs and pigs. It does not imply such a thing is either morally or ethically correct and no amount of "decompressing" will fix it. It just is what it is and some people have developed the pathological brain wiring to allow themselves to do it.
The way to justify animal testing is to say, "Ok, we can make these animals suffer for 50 years... or we can make humanity continue to suffer or another 250 in order to better understand this and how the disease grows and evolves... what's worse?"
But... that's the only way I can think to justify it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
I recall a NYT article recently titled something along the lines "you'll forget most of the Covid pandemic and that's a good thing" - and as angry as that title made me I know its right - Solzhenitsyn talked about the memory of the Gulag years fading away from him, getting fat and complacent, turning back to old things - so even if such great trauma is lost in time I have no doubt most people just forget about how pigs are slaughtered in a week or two.
I almost think its almost by evolutionary design, to live otherwise and carry and accumulating all that weight over the course of a life time is very hard. The alternative is to turn into a stone and abandon your humanity altogether. I don't mean to be cynical, it's just an observation.
In the UK, all abattoirs have to have a vet in attendance when they are slaughtering animals. I always thought finding that your job as a vet must feel like a weird career turn. You become a vet to help sick animals and now you're helping kill healthy ones.
I dislike unnecessary suffering and some of it does sound very unnecessary. I can give some level of dispensation for necessary pain, but even then it should be a good reason ( and it seems sometimes the reasons are in the 'not great' category ).
All that said, what are the options here with regards to research animals?
1. We stop research on all animals 2. We don't stop 3. We research even more 4. We adjust it to some more acceptable status quo
Personally, I have a recent opinion that may jar some as I am more and more leaning towards #1. I think what eventually got me was dog cloning services in US.
What will follow is a move a different type of testing ( and hopefully more humane ): human testing.
It will come with its own set of issues, but, at least, subjects will be able to consent.
The researcher who was the most drained from her work was doing work that was entirely focused on the animals she works with. Veterinary schools use research animals as well.
Bitterness aside, I feel for these animals and for the people trying to make their short lives better.
