h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ooohps sorry I'm going scarey and medicy.. I do try not to do that.. and I still don't know them! oh well..

How's things withyou.. feeling calmer now?

I am always under control...
Except with friends, but then I'm never agressive I just forget the some of the do's and don't's of society. Like don't do monkey impressions at the top of your voice in the middle of a crowded shopping mall. And don't drink puddle water.

















dont ask...

Riiiiiiiiiiiggggggght.












Feels very tempted to ask!

I made sure it didn't have any oil on....


I was really thirsty...

that doesn't sound that bad! I'm sure it just gave your immune system a good work out.. bet your friends never let you forget it though!


Z

they just laughed. You're talking about people who will wear a dress for a dare. My mate, really big strong guy wore one of my dresses for a dare...



I took a photo...

OOOOOOOOoooooooh what blackmail matieral for the future...

I'm just waiting for him to get a fiancee

Oooh, see that article in Collaboritive work it's way down my conversations
bye bye *waves*

As someone who actually *works* in the pharmaceutical research sector (albeit on the scientific computing side), I'd like to weigh in with my two-penn'orth:

* Firstly, people in drugs research don't actually *want* to do animal research. It is very expensive, and any cheaper and more reliable way to do it would be welcome. They also don't like using animals because it isn't very nice. They do nevertheless try and give the animals involved a good quality of life.

* There is a *statutory requirement* upon drugs companies to perform animal experiments, and the UK has probably the most dracionian requirements regarding animal research in the world. Unless there is a strongly demonstrable case for it, it doesn't get done.

* I take beta blockers: these are necessary to keep me from dying. There is no way at the moment, using in vitro or in silico methods, that one could model the action beta blockers on a beating heart. One has to use an animal model.

* If the sort of experiments being performed today were performed when 'Distaval' was put on the market, I wouldn't have seen anywhere near as many armless or legless kids and teenagers when I was a child.

* The vast majority of these experiments are carried out on rodents. The difference between the mouse genome and the human genome is 200 genes. And you categorically state that animals don't make good models for research? Unfortunately sweeping generalisation just don't cut the mustard: there are a lot of quite clever people arond here capable of picking holes in poor arguments. For instance, if animal models are so poor, and the pharmaceutical industry uses the, why are there so many effective and safe drugs on the market? Answer that one, please.

I don't particularly like the idea of animal experiments either, and neither actually do most people in the pharmaceutical sector. But they also recognise that life is not perfect and that the achievement of something worthwhile often involves many difficult choices along the way. You can't make an omlette without breaking eggs.
If you had ever been in this position yourself, then perhaps you wouldn't be so quick to judge others.

Also
(a) It isn't balanced
(b) It isn't at all well written

Hi FM!

This entry did rile me at first as well, but in responce to the comments made in the PR thread Werekitty has put the piece into the Collbarative Writing Workshop so she can get agruments from differnet side and produce a better piece..

(ps I agree with you on animal testing!)

how'd you find this posting? It's out of peer review and in community precisely because I know it's biased and I want some comments and stuff from people like you. However, if you find it that insulting I will delete it for you

Being a Scout I get every conversation listed on my Personal Space. Yours came up there, and I was hoping for an incisive, balanced discussion on the ethics of this subject.

If you are going to make it more balanced you could start with incorporating all those points I mentioned, each of them a bloody good reason why we should continue with animal testing. Also, you could remove all of the plain wrong assertions that you make. The title could be changed to the 'Ethics of Animal Testing', which is what it really is about.

The highly manipulative and emotive statistics in you article could go as well: they give the impression that the only ethical issue is how many animals we get through. Some other statistics, such as those contained in my very own Edited article, A784046, might help to give some demonstration of the true nature of 'balance' in this issue: children's lives against the lives of rodents. I know which I would choose in every case.

Regards
FM

Ok its gone! Im sorry my views dont agree with yours so ill take them away. Im unsubscribing from this convo im sad that you wouldnt put these comments pleasantly into the collaborative writing workshop, where I could have edited them into the work.

sorry I lost my temper
a bit freaked out about the suicide of a family friend.

No, don't take it out of PR. Leave it here and rework the comments into it. I'll even work on the article with you, if you like. This subject needs to be addressed and it needs both viewpoints.

PS: I'm sorry about the death of your family friend. Perhaps you should take some time out and come back to this when other, more relevant, emotions have subsided.


FM

That's what I wanted, that's why I put it in CWW.
I wouldn't have written one in the first place only I noticed a distinct lack of one and thought it might provoke someone into writing one. I know that I am deeply biased about the subject since I looked up vivisection in google image search, that sent me off in tears.
And there is a history of malpractice, especially in HLS. I know i don't know much about the subject, I've never had any first hand experience, I just thought such a highly debated subject needed to be covered.
I'd love to work with you on it, just don't be too scathing... I'm very sensitive.

I'm generally scathing of ideas, not people, so don't take it personally. I'm H2G2's fully-paid-up urinator-on-bonfires as well, the miserable Welsh git. Imagine a Welsh version of Robbie Coltrane, except more ugly, and you've got the picture.

The problem with this subject is that it is *not* highly debated. If that were the case, the the rubbish that the antis' come out with would have been exposed as such long ago. Their sweeping assertion that 'animals experiments do not work' is simply *wrong*. Most animal testing is done from a safety perspective: something that causes readily causes cancer in a rat is likely so to do in a human.

I'm a chemist by training, and I work with chemists and biologists every day. I was told a horrifying story by a colleague, who had made an intermediate chemical in a sequence of syntheses. It was a derivative of fluoroacetic acid. Fluoroacetic acid is an incredibly toxic chemical: it messes up the Krebs cycle in cells. He had made about 100 g of an ester of FA in the lab. Being a very cautious person, he sent it off to be safety tested. They gave each rat 10mg. It killed all the rats in the sample. So they gave each rat 1mg. It killed all the rats. So they gave each rat 0.01mg. It killed all the rats. They then worked out that the fatal dose of this stuff for a human, which he had made in an afternoon, is 1mg!

The moral of this story is that through exercising caution he had saved probably his own life and those of a few colleagues as well. A few tens of rats had died to prove this point, but sodium fluoroacetate is used routinely every day as a rodent poison. It seems hypocritical for someone to condemn the killing of rats for safety purposes while being quite happy to for others to make sure that they don't infest our cities and parks.

I often compare the stance of the animal rights lobby to those who look down upon the Indian 'untouchables'. The latter despise these people for working with leather, which is the hide of a sacred animal, but are quite happy to wear it on their feet. Similarly, I can bet you that any member of the ALF with cancer would be demanding that they get the best chemotherapy going with the fewest side effects, while similarly condemning out of hand the process that developed the drug in the first place. Unfortunately, progress comes as a package, and there is always a price to be paid, but some people can't see or accept this.