BS: Vivisection-Your Views?

Subject: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 11:52 PM

I am Pro-Vivisection if it saves human lives, and is genuine research, ie not just done for the sake of it.
I am against the testing of cosmetics, aftershave etc on animals.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 25 Dec 03 - 11:59 PM

By genuine research, i mean only testing new drugs, I have heard about people testing existing drugs, but with different names, ie, an old drug that has been tested before, released again with a different name, and tested again, obviously this is wrong, and pointless.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:00 AM

fereash.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Amos
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:19 AM

John:

Get sober.

Then stay sober.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:22 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:34 AM

John - it is up to your girlfriends to have their tubes tied.

Don't make it a "male thing"

Afterall, it is their kid, their, body and their life.

Having a vivisection is the "unkindest cut of all"...why should you... a strong virile male be reduced to the status of a Eunich...all for the the sake of "love?"

Sure, you can put in one of those little golden valves to restore the flow...if needed......but its just so un-manly when you have to "ask permission" to return the juice.

Dump the girl...you will find another more worthy of YOUR testoserone stream.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:46 AM

refresh [sensible comments only please].

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Padre
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:56 AM

Surely (or is it Shirley) you can't believe that Mudcatters would offer comments that were not sensible? That's a Hull of a bad attitude.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:58 AM

gargoyle0learn to spell, eunuch, permision, testosterone, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Morticia
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 07:30 AM

Hey Garg, that was actually pretty funny....have they changed your meds?

John, I can't believe you, of all people, are lecturing Gargoyle on spelling! I've lost count of the number of times you have pointed out this is a music site not a spelling site.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 11:53 AM

I can't believe I read the WHOLE thing......

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Arnie
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:15 PM

I read the other day that there may at last be a cure for emphysema, which must bring hope to thousands of sufferers from this as yet incurable lung disease. However, the testing is being done on mice. Like JOhn I'm opposed to animal experimentation for cosmetic testing but these little mice could just be the salvation of a lot of very ill people. Of course if they got emphysema through smoking, then my sympathy is somewhat stretched......

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Amos
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 12:29 PM

Arnie:

Stay indoors until you recover. You don't want to go out with stretched sympathies. Might cause a panic.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: fogie
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 01:00 PM

I would hope and expect there to be as much respect as possible in handling of the animals to avoid as much suffering as possible, I am not against animal research per se, but I would like to demand that no expense be spared to make a living creature's ruined life, and its death as comfortable as is possible, and the higher up the evolutionary ladder we are talking about, the more stringent the guidelines. I also think the same ought to be applied to the farm animals we breed for consumption.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 02:18 PM

"refresh [sensible comments only please]."

You go first John...

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: CarolC
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 02:57 PM

Sounds like a local issue to me, John.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: lady penelope
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 03:38 PM

Well thought out and well funded experiments can, indeed, reap major benefits and I may end being immensly grateful one day that these tests were carried out.

However, there is still a large amount of unecessary testing and worst of all, testing that renders the experiment void due to the incompetant performance by certain commercial testing labs.

I think the regulations for testing products need to be seriously taken apart and then brought up to date, as the regulations themselves promote unecessary and cruel tests. The uses of certain animals for the testing of chemical products to be later used in human consumption also need to be revised.

Other than that.....step forward human volunteers........................


TTFN Lady P.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 03:49 PM

Sounds like John has already volunteered....

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Roughyed
Date: 29 Dec 03 - 05:21 PM

Hm it depends on your ethical beliefs. I think there are severe ethical and practical objections to vivisection from my viewpoint. Firstly it is wrong to me to inflict suffering on one being for the advantage of another. It could be argued that animals are not like humans and therefore it is OK but if they are not like humans why are we extrapolating the results to humans? If you take the view that animals are different because they are less intelligent, would that make it OK to experiment on people with severe learning difficulties? The point at issue seems to me to be can they suffer and if so can I justify inflicting that suffering. There is a case that an animals suffering may be greater because it does not have the imagination to foresee the end of it's pain.

On practical terms the medical profession is at least split on the value of animal research. For instance guinea pigs die if you give them penicillin whereas dogs are indifferent to strynchnine. Thalidomid was subject to testing and retesting in animals before it was released and after it was suspected of causing damage to human foetuses. It only caused similar defects in one strain of laboratory rat. We may well be throwing away things that would help humans because they damage laboratory animal while letting substance dangerous to humans through.

A lot of research seems to be more about keeping researchers in jobs and drug companies in profit than actually improving health. How many cancer breakthroughs do you read about in the papers. It seems every week there is a major cancer cure - until you read somewhere buried in the article that it works in mice or rats. And that is usually the last you hear of it. The publicity helps to get a research grant, the 'cure' doesn't work in humans but the papers aren't going to print the news in a couple of years when it peters out because there will be another miracle cure in the headlines.

It's not an easy subject and it generates a lot more heat than light.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: harlowpoet
Date: 30 Dec 03 - 05:27 AM

I have been telling people for the last twelve years that vivisection is wrong and highly dangerous. The drugs companies do not work for the benefit of humans. They have a remit to produce as many drugs as possible, as they are a profit run industry. If they produced a cure for something rather than a 'treatment', and I don't personally credit the vivisectors with the intelligence to be able to do so, then they would make themselves obsolete.

This is why, if you look on the small print of pharmaceuticals, there is an endless list of the maladies they can cause, for which conveniently, the drugs companies have other treatments.

If you want to know what some doctors think, click on the following link.


Doctors Against Vivisection

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Gene Burton
Date: 30 Dec 03 - 08:47 AM

In order to have rights, one must be capable of fulfilling reciprocal responsibilities to society. Animals have no such capacity, therefore vivisection, where it genuinely improves the human condition, is OK. This does not apply to people with learning disabilities, since society tends to place a higher value on them.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Roughyed
Date: 30 Dec 03 - 07:04 PM

Strange, I don't think anyone has mentioned rights in this thread so I'm not sure why you raised that issue but seeing as you have, let's explore it. People with learning difficulties, terminally ill people or even new born babies are to varying degrees incapable of fulfilling reciprocal resonsibilities to society so I think you can't argue for experimenting on animals alone on those grounds. I would in fact disagree with this utilitarian attitude to 'rights' in any case but I don't want to get dragged down a side alley as I'm not sure it's a useful concept in this area.

The question of whether society places a higher value on one set of beings than another cannot be an argument for inflicting suffering. In Nazi Germany, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Poles, and many other groups were considered of lesser value by that society - and were subjected to appalling experiments. In my own society upper and middle classes have a higher value placed on them than working class people. At various times it has been considered entirely acceptable to cause suffering to other races, religions, tribes etc by most societies so I think you are going to have to make a better case for what makes animals so different that you can cause suffering to them for other beings.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: harlowpoet
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 04:55 AM

Sorry, but everyone on this thread so far seems to assume animal experimentation has benefited human health. It hasn't.

I challenge anyone to name an experiment performed on animals, that has benefited humans. Please describe the experiment and exactly how it did so.

Was it the none honoured professor Colin Blakemores experiments, where he blinded kittens in the laboratory?

"The idea, as I understand it, is that fundamental truths are revealed in laboratory experimentation on lower animals and are then applied to the problems of the sick patient. Having been myself trained as a physiologist, I feel in a way competent to assess such a claim. It is plain nonsense." - Sir George Pickering, Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, BMJ, Dec 26, 1964.

"Those who don't hesitate to vivisect, will not hesitate to lie about it" - George Bernard Shaw

For information on the harmful effects of vivisection, click on the following.

British Anti Vivisection Association

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Gene Burton
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 07:12 AM

The reason I raised the issue of rights is because many (though not all) of the people who oppose vivisection do so on the premise of "animal rights"; which I think is a false premise for the reasons I outlined. You can see a similar line of argument used, among other things, to justify the banning of hunting.
People who call in the Holocaust to back their position are usually erecting a "straw man". Anybody could see that experimenting on animals for medical research is completely different to gassing the Jews/Poles/Gypsies/homosexuals; because the latter has the capacity to reason, create culture and differentiate between right and wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Roughyed
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 05:17 PM

Animal Rights is a relatively new theory put forward by Pete Singer which is interesting but still fairly controversial. Vivisection has been opposed since it started and most of the people who have opposed it over the centuries have either never heard of or do not necessarily subscribe to the concept. I then to think it is a bit of red herring in this debate as no-one had raised it except Gene and that was just to equate the whole anti vivisection argument with it and then oppose a fairly complex concept with a fairly simplistic objection.

I agree generally with the dangers of raising Nazi Germany as an example but as the question of learning disability had been raised along with the question of the value put on different groups of beings by society, i think it was fair and simply objecting to my mentioning it does not answer the argument I was making.

People with severe learning difficulties were experimented on in Nazi Germany. Some at least did not have the capacity to reason, make culture or differentiate between right and wrong. I don't see that the lack of any of these capacities give us the right to inflict suffering for our own ends on a sentient being.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 02 Jan 04 - 04:55 PM

I think it is OK. But only to be performed on Yorkshiremen.

Ducking for cover, west of the pennines...

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 03 Jan 04 - 01:22 PM

I have always been of the mind that if tests are for the benefit of people's health then that's OK. I would not want to take anything that hadn't been tested first. However if the only reason for the tests is to produce cosmetics etc then I don't agree with it. I personally beleive that some tests on animals have been useful in finding cures for previously incurable ailments.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 30 Jun 04 - 11:42 PM

well said mrs duck.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 12:27 AM

The major difficulty is that there aren't enough Yorkshiremen to replace all the lab rats. If there were, this would be a non-issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 12:57 AM

oh.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 12:56 PM

I'm confused. to me "vivisection" is disecting of a conscious creature (no anethesia) - where most of this discussion seems to center around animal experimentation - which would seem to be a complete and total different subject.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 03:45 PM

In college, the lab instructor pithed a frog and dissected it for the whole class. With great respect, he demonstrated the movement of food by the cilica of the digestive tract, the beating of the heart, and many other things. Apart from puns ("Boy, I'll bet that frog's pithed!") the entire demonstration was received with great respect.

ONE animal, its brain destroyed, demonstrated to 30 students many of the wonders of the living body. Whether or not this was ethical -- I don't know. I do know that wasn't done gratuitiously, with deliberate cruelty, or frivolously.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 03:57 PM

I believe that vivisection is unneccesary. Cruelty to animals carries over into behavior toward humans, in my view.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:06 PM

Rapaire, that lab instructor is the last person who should be involved in education.

As previous guest said, this violence spills over into humans.

That 'instructor' would not be teaching my children.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:17 PM

Sorry Frank, for not referring to your name.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 05:59 PM

What I didn't say was that the lab instructor was a Franciscan priest, an old-fashioned botanist, and was the only person I ever met who held all life to be holy. He presented it as something he didn't want to do, but which he felt was necessary -- a true experience for us of the wonder that life is.

No, I did not deliberately withhold this information.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 01 Jul 04 - 06:42 PM

It's pretty ironic, that he was a Franciscan, as St Francis was a gentle saint who loved humans and animals alike.

Put it this way, if you were talking to someone in the street and they kicked their dog. Would you want to continue talking to them? I wouldn't. I might remonstrate with them.

Its the same with vivisectors. Though you can sometimes reason with the guy who kicks his dog.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 01:57 AM

There's an assumption here that all people who do "unpleasant" animal experiments are sadists. Some probably are. It's also said that many surgeons are sadists who like to see the blood flow. Surgeons do necessary work. Some animal researchers must do also. To insist that all "vivisectionists" or all surgeons are sadists is insane. Irrational, at the very least.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Ellenpoly
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:40 AM

Hmmmm. How about the idea of using humans for experiments on human diseases?

You might be interested in reading something about Peter Singer. His views are controversial but intriguing.


http://www.animal-lib.org.au/more_interviews/singer/


..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:42 AM

Whoops! I didn't mean to imply above that Singer agreed with my first sentence. That is what I've been thinking about lately...

PS-There is a wonderful novel, by Peter Dickinson, called "Eva". It was written for children, but having just finished it, I think it's a must-read for pretty much everyone. It takes on the whole idea of animal rights in a facinating way.

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Rapaire
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 09:28 AM

Actually, experimentation for human diseases IS done on humans. Ultimately, the drug trials and surgery and the rest HAS to be done on humans if humans are to be the "end user."

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Metchosin
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 10:37 AM

agreed Rapaire and a very goodly amount is conducted on 3rd world recipients, who have perhaps, theorectically, more rights than animals, but in practice, don't fare as well as most first world pets.

The general ideas regarding The Constant Gardner, as far as I can recall, had some basis in fact.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 11:56 AM

Neither for the prisoners who volunteer for experiments have many rights. And then there are those folks who volunteer because it might help their condition and, perhaps, the rest of us -- such as the patients at the National Cancer Institute, where you're not admitted unless you're diagnosed as terminal and most of whom don't come back out. Or the people who volunteer for medical trials at University med schools or at University hospitals, knowing that they might be getting the placebo.

Not all experimentation is done in the Third World, and, quite honestly, I don't think that it should be. It should be done in the country developing the technique or drug or whatever, and then under strict regulations (including informed consent).

I find it obscene that whole aisles of the stores in the US (and elsewhere!) are dedicated to nothing but food for animals. I find it obscene that in the "First World" animals often eat better than humans -- and I mean humans in the "First World." I found, and find, it obscene that cans of tuna are fed to pet cats when it could better be used for hungry kids. (And don't tell me about "animal by-products" being in the pet food -- because YOU won't eat it doesn't negate either its food value or the fact that somewhere someone else very well might.)

Sorry for the rant.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: EBarnacle
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:02 PM

When I first went to Drexel [then] Tech, I took part in the team which worked on adapting Russian tissue stapling machines to American redesign. The tests of the redesigned staplers were done with large dogs. These same staplers are what your doctor now uses on you when you have surgery and there is no worry about cosmetic issues.

Ethical or not?

After all, we could have just used the Soviet design.

Testing cosmetics is important, even though it is vulnerable to a lot of argument. Would you rather find yourself with an intractible rash or let another organism experience it first.

Research is often unpleasant. Sometimes it is important. Of course, we could simply stop doing anything that is potentially dangerous.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:23 PM

EBarnacle

So if you experimented on ten human babies, in order to save a thousand babies, that would be OK would it? It would to you, after all, they'd only be organisms.

What planet are you on? I wish it wasn't mine.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:49 PM

What would you propose, Guest (london)? Things can only be tested and designed to a point, and then it has to "go live." The computer is an excellent tool, but it cannot simulate everything.

IF you are going to use cosmetics or anything else it has to be tested before you use it, and even then the variability between people can still cause a reaction. Penicillin, for instance, is an excellent antibiotic, but there are still people who are allergic to it -- and if I were going to get a reaction to a drug (still using an example) I rather have it as part of a study than otherwise.

Some things don't need to be tested for lethality -- I don't see why we would need to find the LD50 on lead arsenate, for example. But when the toxicity of a product IS established, I don't see the need for additional testing (unless circumstances require it).

As for experimenting on 10 babies to save 1,000 -- why, yes, I would, if the conditions demanded it. Moreover, I would let one of my children be part of the experimentation IF the conditions demanded it. I'm assuming, of course, that you are talking about conditions like MVSD, infantile AIDS, or a hydrocephalic shunt and not about something trivial.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 05:59 PM

(Rapaire)?

I'm sure Dr Mengele would have agreed with you completely on that one, though I can't say whether he'd have sacrificed his own children

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 06:20 PM

Thank you for bringing a discussion back to an argumentum ad hominem. Ta, then.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,london
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 06:34 PM

I don't believe, for a moment you would put your childs life (if you have any kids) at risk Rapaire, despite what what was said in the previous posts.

This argument does get a bit heated, when you are trying to make a point.

I stand by everything I've said regarding vivisection.

Though sorry for my last post Rapaire.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 08:46 PM

I have always been stunned by the the profundity of human arrogance and egocentricity.

We are human and therefore, undeniably "better"(?) and more important than anything else there is.

The enormous ammount of suffering we have inflicted on animals and humans alike (prisoners, Jews etc.) has resulted in what? More people dying more slowly and more painfully than ever before, of new diseases, many of them created by human frigging around.

Causing suffering does not relieve suffering, it only broardens it and deepens it.
We create monsters. That's what we're good at.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: akenaton
Date: 02 Jul 04 - 08:54 PM

Agree with you absolutely John.
Our arrogance and stupidity know no bounds.
But never fear Mother Nature is a patient mistress and will have done with us shortly...Ake

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST,Ellenpoly
Date: 03 Jul 04 - 05:36 AM

I agree, John

..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jul 04 - 11:42 AM

The last time I flushed, I could not honestly say that, "No animal was harmed during this production." I could not say the same the last time I viewed the kitty litter box either, nor the last time I flushed the contents of a poop and scoop bag.

Subject: RE: BS: Vivisection-Your Views?
From: Metchosin
Date: 03 Jul 04 - 12:17 PM

Guest 11:42 was me and despite not having a cookie, I produced cyber effluent too. LOL