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

It evidently is highly debated or you wouldn't be writing three paragraph comments every time you write.

Not at all: I'm not echoing received opinion here. I'm quite capable of formulating my own views on the subject.

To study the result of head trauma, primates were strapped in machinery to receive high-impact blows to the head that left them with severe brain damage and cruel taunts from vivisectors, as documented by video tape. (University of Pennsylvania)

To examine severe burns on live tissue, pigs were restrained to prevent their escape and then burned alive with a flamethrower until the charred flesh could be removed from the live animals in large pieces (U.S. Army)

To measure recovery from injuries, dogs were strapped down, and vivisectors mutilated the dogs’ knees by cutting apart skin to leave flaps. At the end of the study, all dogs were killed. (Uniformed Services University -- Department of Defense)

To demonstrate the eye’s protein levels are not different in sight deprived monkeys compared to normal ones, animal experimenters sewed the monkeys’ eyelids shut. (Emory University, NIH project P51 RR00165-38)

To test the hypothesis, among others, that it “will result in reductions in body weight, body fat and lean body mass” vivisectors withhold normal amounts and types of food from monkeys. (University of Wisconsin- Madison, NIH project P01 AG11915-05S1).

To demonstrate that deaf cats ‘meow’ louder than cats with hearing, kittens’ aural canals were destroyed, and then researchers measured the loudness of their cries. (UCLA, Brain Research Institute)

To create an illness not previously seen in cats, vivisectors successfully created a feline disease that results in jaundice seizures, delayed mental and motor development, and premature death. The diseased animals are bred for other animal experimentation labs. (Colorado State University, NIH project R01 RR06886-07)

So? What is the point you are making? That all animal research is unnecessary and cruel? Or just some of it? If the latter, you'd better start drawing a distinction between 'animal testing' and 'vivisection', a distinction glaringly absent in your entry. If the former, then I'm afraid, you really don't know what you are talking about.

Sorry I can't be more charitable about this.

you claim there is no "highly debated issue"
I say how could there not be when experiments like this are conducted
And don't apologise for not being charitable, you evidently can't help your unpleasantness.

Eh calm down calm down in full scouse accent..

I think the point he was trying to make was that it isn't at the moment highly debated not that it shouldn't be...

What you nearly had is a consenus to work on an intellegent and balanced article... please don't let your different opinions turn into a flame war..

Werekitty.. it is possible to work with people who's opinions differ from your own, but it's difficult to learn to.

I remember when I was youngher imagining that I could never be friends with someone who wasn't vegetarian.. then I came into the real world! my point is please don't let this go..

I would love to work on this article myself but I just don't have the knowledge that FM has..

I think that the issues are emotive enough without getting personal, no?

It's good that people care about things and are passionate about things.
I rather suspect that the animal rights lobby has been a good thing in that it has forced sciensists to think about the way they treat animals, and this has been a good thing. I think everyone would agree about that. I would like to see scientists being more forward in putting the case for animal experimentation, but it would be brave of them to do so, given the terrorist activities of the ALF and their allies who don't want a debate.

What if everyone attempts to construct the strongest possible case for their view a combined for / against entry?

Otto

You haven't answered my question: do you maintain that there is NO case for animal experimentation? Or ony for highly limited and regulated experimentation? I'd like to know the answer to this before I get flamed again.

thats what I was trying to do in collaborative writing until whatshisface came in and starting insulting and ignoring me when I asked him to write his opinions and stuff in a manner that i could add them to the entry.
It's out of peer review, and in cww.
But he repeatedly knocks my view and gives comments that are tantamount to calling me stupid!

Urhm he didn't call you stupid he said if you meant XXX "you didn't know what you are talking about" you've admitted in several other posts that you're not an expert on the subject, you've never worked in a lab yourself.

He was only requoting your views, if not in the most poliet way..

as you're stressed at the moment why not leave this for an hour or two? you can always come back to it later?

Calm down. I am *not* insulting you but I cannot let the comments you make pass without being challenged; I have had on numerous occasions to run the gauntlet of protestors on the way to work, who scream at me and call be an unfeeling b*****d (and worse). And I only program the computers, for Chrissakes. It's pretty mild to the way you've been treated here, I think.
If you want to see my comments as a personal attack then that's your choice, but one of the hazards of making public one's strongly held views is that there will always be somebody who has the *opposing* view and is quite determined to defend it. One thing you will learn about people like me is that we divorce *issues* from the *people* who hold strong views on them. We don't (generally) see an attack upon our views as a personal attack, and are quite happy to change them if someone out-argues us.
Now, if you can convince me, without getting emotional, that my interpretaion of the issues is wrong, then I'd like to hear it. You have the floor.

*erects an abestos screen to protect my from flames*
In the interest of balance I'm just going through a couple of your examples of extreme cruelty pointing out the other side..(I'm leaving out the ones that aren't medically based becuase they're harder to defend.

"To study the result of head trauma, primates were strapped in machinery to receive high-impact blows to the head that left them with severe brain damage"

Were they anasetised for this? if so they suffered no more from this than they would do being destroyed at the vet's which is where a lot of our "best friends" end up. The results of this could benifit the 135000 people in the UK, (many of them under the age of 30) that require around the clock care after head injury.

I used to work as a care assitant in a residental home for the elderly. Except there was a patient there who was 21, since his head injury that left him unable to talk, move or commuicate he had spent his days sitting in front of a TV not understanding what was going on surrounded by elderly people with dermentia.


To demonstrate the eye's protein levels are not different in sight deprived monkeys compared to normal ones, animal experimenters sewed the monkeys; eyelids shut. (Emory University, NIH project P51 RR00165-38)

Again were they anasetised? if so did they sew both eyelids togehter? I presume the purpose of this experiement is to find out more about how the eye works. This could help the 19 year old nurse who I heard about on the radio last night, one day without warning she became blind. As a result she lost her job and her lifelong ambition and her hosiptial flat leaving her homeless and jobless, the NHS has lost a nurse.


Being emotive is all very well, it grabs people's attention and makes them think however you can be emotive in both ways. You could tell many heartbreaking stories of people who benifit from new drugs, or are harmed by drugs that weren't tested properly.

with the monkeys the point was the way it was conducted. people taunting the monkeys whilst theyre having their brains smashed out on video is not my idea of a regulated and care - conscious experiment

FM, can you find me someone on h2g2 who totally supports animal testing as you do, who doesn't make money out of it?

Well I agree with that, it is sick. But I have a couple of points to make in responce, the UK has some of the toughest laws governing animals research in the world. After a few minutes with the nice softwear at google I have managed to discover that for an experiment to take place both a project licence and a personal license for the reserchers concerned have to be obtained.

This is a link to the actual legistlation http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1998/19981974.htm I hope it works anyway.


A project license is only given if. the secretary of state is statisfed that the project could not be compleated without use of an animal and that animals of the lowest neuophysiological sensitivity must be used. The use of a primate requires a special licene after it has been proved that no other species could be used.

After reading this i am not sure that such an act could take place at a university in the uk unless a lot of benifit is going to come of it.

Uhrm WK I don't make money out of it! and I'm a vegetrian as well and I totally support it as FM does.

didn't you agree that idealy animals should be fazed out of research and alternite options should be researched to a greater extent?
Does FH agree with that?

sorry been playing final fantasy 8 - FM I mean.

ripped this off a website, whadya think?

Here's part of the text of a leaflet produced by the British Anti-Vivisection Association, PO Box 82, Kingswood, Bristol BS15 1YF.
There are endless possibilities for producing irrefutable evidence in support of any theory, through the use of various animal species; all one has to do is to select the appropriate species.


Do you want to prove that the amanita is by no means a deadly mushroom, but rather a delicacy fit for humans?
Just feed it to a rabbit, morning, noon and night. He will thrive on it.
Do you want to ruin the citrus fruit growers?
Then feed their lemons to cats, who die from too much vitamin C.
Do we wish to prove that prussic acid, the mere smell of which can kill a human being, makes a fine aperatif?
Then let's feed it to toads and sheep.
Do we want to stop cooks from using parsley?
Let's give it to the parrot, and you will find him stone dead the next morning.
Or do we want penicillin to disappear from all drugstore counters?
Let's give guinea-pigs a taste of it, and they will promptly die from it.
The amount of opium a porcupine can actually swallow in one lump with no trouble at all would keep a human addict groggy for two weeks if he just smoked it, let alone what it would do to him if he just swallowed it.
To convince consumers that botulin is harmless, just add a bit of this poison to some cat-food.
The cat will lick its lips. But the cat's traditional game, the mouse, will die from it as if struck by lightning.
Moonshiners are responsible for blinding thousands of people, owing to the methyl-alcohol in their booze.
But this same methyl-alcohol doesn't affect the eyes of most laboratory animals.
Arsenic is supposed to be poisonous?
That is a pure invention of the crime writers. The proof? Sheep can tolerate a considerable quantity of arsenic.
Does your pussycat have the sniffles?
Be sure not to give her any aspirin unless, of course, you want to kill her.
Are you asked to demonstrate the uselessness of vitamin C? Then remove it entirely from the diet of some animal that's close at hand - a dog, cat, rat, mouse, hamster.
They will nevertheless stay healthy, because their organisms produce their own vitamin C. But we may not withhold it from guinea-pigs, primates, or humans. Deprived of all vitamin C they would eventually all die from scurvy.
One hundred milligrams of scopalamine leaves dogs and cats unaffected; but five milligrams are sufficient to kill a human being.
Strychnine, as popular among the murderers in detective stories as arsenic, has no effect at all on guinea-pigs, chickens, or monkeys, not even in a dosage which would put a whole human family into convulsions.
Hemlock, well-known through the death of Socrates, is dangerous because of its similarity to parsley, but is eaten with great relish by goats, sheep, and horses.
Amylnitrate dangerously raises the internal pressure of the eyes of a dog, but lowers the pressure within the human eye.
The foxglove (digitalis) was formerly considered to be dangerous for the heart because, when tested on dogs, it raised their blood-pressure.
For this reason the use of this medicament, which is of undisputed value for the human heart, was delayed by many years.
Novalgin is an anaesthetic for humans, but in cats it causes excitement and salivation, similar to what occurs in animals suffering from rabies.
Cycloserin is used for tuberculosis patients, but has no effect on guinea-pigs and rats which have been made tuberculous artificially.
The anti-inflammatory Phenyl-butazone can be administered to dogs and other animals in high doses, for it quickly loses its effect in their bodies.
But if similar doses were given to humans, poisoning would soon set in, because this medicament needs 100 to 150 times longer to become inactive and checked in its effects.
Chloramphenicol often seriously damages the blood-producing bone marrow of humans, but not the marrow of animals.
Acidium oroticum has a healing influence on the human liver, but causes fattiness in the liver of rats.
Chlorpromazine damages the human liver, but not the livers of laboratory animals.
Methyl fluoroacetate has a toxic effect on mammals, but the rat can tolerate a dosage forty times higher than the dose that kills a dog. And man? Will he react like a rat, or a dog? Or neither? In a nutshell, one only needs to find the appropriate animal species to obtain the desired answer; black or white, positive or negative. You name it, they will get it.
That is a kind of elastic, malleable science, like the dough we mould in the kitchen. But it is tragic that some would have us believe that they can manufacture human health in the same way.

Even if you are no expert, no specialist, it should not be difficult to draw a conclusion of fundamental importance from the examples we just quoted. If animals react in such a different way from human beings, how can one test on them medications that are intended for us?