I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Exactly. Different people draw the line at different places, for different reasons.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say not many people here agree with PETA's stance, or whichever group wants to make a blanket ban on animal testing.
I like animals, sometimes more than people, but I see the value in animal experiments.
As for placebo controlled experiments, while it might seem bad, as far as my understanding goes, it's vitally important. Pay now, play later.
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Wanton cruelty is stupid. A little bit of clinical detachment can be a good thing.
Edit: Though again, only if it happens to other people
I just think it should be easier to draw the line between research that actually is being carefully considered and directed to save human lives with the minimum of suffering.
There's some grey I admit. But if your hypothesis reads like it was developed here,
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Depends a lot on what you're studying, too.
Let's say two research teams were preparing to run two similar experiments - one on HIV, the other on syphilis.
Syphilis has a cheap, safe, common cure; HIV does not. Consequently, animal research protocols (handed down from the US government and adopted by institutional animal care committees) are much more strict on the syphilis study than on the HIV study.
Similarly, let's say the two similar experiments were both on HIV drug candidates, but one drug has a much better chance of working. The protocols will demand for more ethically strict research on the more speculative drug candidate.
As a general rule, we're more willing to accept animal suffering and death when it's treating more dangerous diseases, and when the research is more likely to benefit humans.
These ethical decisions are made for every single animal research study that goes on in the US and there are comparable protocols in place in every country in the first world. There are granular differences from country to country and state to state, but the high-level takeaway here is that important people in research funding & approval do take these ethical problems very seriously.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I agree completely. That's why I said earlier the issue with animal cruelty is that it's purposeless. You shouldn't be letting animals suffer more then necessary to conduct your experiment.
As for placebo controlled experiments, while it might seem bad, as far as my understanding goes, it's vitally important. Pay now, play later.
Actually placebo controlled experiments are terribly bad science in this day and age. When you do a placebo controlled experiment you're finding the wrong data, since you're finding how much better your drug is as compared to nothing.
We don't care if your new painkiller is better than nothing, we care if its better than aspirin.
The only time you should be doing a placebo controlled experiment is if there is no other drug on the market for what you're treating.
There is a new wave of animal ethics that pushes for phasing out small animal protocols if you can. Basically, if you can run the same experiment in vitro or in silico and you don't actually need in vivo results, then don't run in vivo experiments. It is very cost effective (animal facilities and maintenance and the actual mice and dissections are really expensive) and reduces suffering. It turned out that a lot of researchers were doing in vivo work because they were trained to do only in vivo work or it was a strong lab tradition.
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Wanton cruelty is stupid. A little bit of clinical detachment can be a good thing.
Edit: Though again, only if it happens to other people
Well when would the experiment call for it? Pain and anxiety is also considered very different death where animals are concerned in terms of livelihood.
Animal experimentation guidelines have been getting stricter and stricter. For example it's basically impossible to do primate research these days, and doubly impossible to do invasive research on them - you can't just kill chimps and other members of the homo family. It's looser for the smaller monkeys.
A friend is currently doing animal studies on rabbits in my lab. Specifically she's looking at the elution of drugs from nanoparticles as a means of treating ocular diseases causing preventable blindness. Part of the requirements of research on the eyes of animals is that you're only allowed to work on 1 eye at a time, in case whatever you're doing causes blindness - its to prevent unnecessary cruelty. The process to get approval for this has involved ethical review by about a dozen people across 3 different departments.
As for placebo controlled experiments, while it might seem bad, as far as my understanding goes, it's vitally important. Pay now, play later.
Actually placebo controlled experiments are terribly bad science in this day and age. When you do a placebo controlled experiment you're finding the wrong data, since you're finding how much better your drug is as compared to nothing.
We don't care if your new painkiller is better than nothing, we care if its better than aspirin.
The only time you should be doing a placebo controlled experiment is if there is no other drug on the market for what you're treating.
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Wanton cruelty is stupid. A little bit of clinical detachment can be a good thing.
Edit: Though again, only if it happens to other people
Well when would the experiment call for it? Pain and anxiety is also considered very different death where animals are concerned in terms of livelihood.
Animal experimentation guidelines have been getting stricter and stricter. For example it's basically impossible to do primate research these days, and doubly impossible to do invasive research on them - you can't just kill chimps and other members of the homo family. It's looser for the smaller monkeys.
A friend is currently doing animal studies on rabbits in my lab. Specifically she's looking at the elution of drugs from nanoparticles as a means of treating ocular diseases causing preventable blindness. Part of the requirements of research on the eyes of animals is that you're only allowed to work on 1 eye at a time, in case whatever you're doing causes blindness - its to prevent unnecessary cruelty. The process to get approval for this has involved ethical review by about a dozen people across 3 different departments.
And heavily monitored by a vet facility.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I just think it should be easier to draw the line between research that actually is being carefully considered and directed to save human lives with the minimum of suffering.
There's some grey I admit. But if your hypothesis reads like it was developed here,
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Wanton cruelty is stupid. A little bit of clinical detachment can be a good thing.
Edit: Though again, only if it happens to other people
Well when would the experiment call for it? Pain and anxiety is also considered very different death where animals are concerned in terms of livelihood.
Animal experimentation guidelines have been getting stricter and stricter. For example it's basically impossible to do primate research these days, and doubly impossible to do invasive research on them - you can't just kill chimps and other members of the homo family. It's looser for the smaller monkeys.
A friend is currently doing animal studies on rabbits in my lab. Specifically she's looking at the elution of drugs from nanoparticles as a means of treating ocular diseases causing preventable blindness. Part of the requirements of research on the eyes of animals is that you're only allowed to work on 1 eye at a time, in case whatever you're doing causes blindness - its to prevent unnecessary cruelty. The process to get approval for this has involved ethical review by about a dozen people across 3 different departments.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
I suppose it's good to laugh. It's better than dwelling on the alternative.
Partly, I just wanted to talk it out a little because I was genuinely disturbing reading this stuff. What I thought at first were horrible photoshops were actually real pictures. I wish Youtube would censor some of this stuff, because it does not do good things for me. I just wanted tactics on dealing with zombie dogs, not a sideshow of horrible medical procedures.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Actually placebo controlled experiments are terribly bad science in this day and age. When you do a placebo controlled experiment you're finding the wrong data, since you're finding how much better your drug is as compared to nothing.
We don't care if your new painkiller is better than nothing, we care if its better than aspirin.
Somewhat true, yeah. Depends on the drug and the disease and the population.
A lot painkiller trials are done in comparison to existing NSAIDs for that very reason.
And when we're talking about diseases that are life-threatening, or infectious diseases where there's a risk of your control group communicating the disease to the general population, yeah the guiding practice is to use an existing therapy as your control group.
This is why you can't do placebo-controlled HIV experiments in the US, for instance.
But in situations where there isn't a wealth of options available to patients and the risks of undermedicating are minor (as with erectile dysfunction), it can be beneficial to do a placebo trial. If all you ever perform are tests against existing drugs, then you might not catch situations where an entire class of drugs turns out to be less beneficial than you thought (as with SSRIs and mild depression). If there's a rare population that can't take existing drugs due to a contraindication or side-effects, then it can be beneficial to do a placebo trial. Or where the disease is poorly understood and the existing drugs have wide-ranging side effects (as with fibromyalgia).
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Yeah, it's like, do we need to transplant this monkey's still living head onto another body while it tries to snarl and bite and fight for its life? Really? When your experiments sound like classic super villain science, you should probably be put into a padded room somewhere for a while.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Are those the experiments where they were testing the effects of isolation on monkeys? I remember reading about those in an article on the effects of solitary confinement on humans.
I thought they, at least initially, produced some useful results though.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Are those the experiments where they were testing the effects of isolation on monkeys? I remember reading about those in an article on the effects of solitary confinement on humans.
I thought they, at least initially, produced some useful results though.
Initially they were studying maternal bonding, but then they went on to do depression studies. The problem was that they were just horrific - i.e. they weren't learning anything we couldn't have inferred by other means, and it just straight up wasn't important enough to justify it.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Are those the experiments where they were testing the effects of isolation on monkeys? I remember reading about those in an article on the effects of solitary confinement on humans.
I thought they, at least initially, produced some useful results though.
Initially they were studying maternal bonding, but then they went on to do depression studies. The problem was that they were just horrific - i.e. they weren't learning anything we couldn't have inferred by other means, and it just straight up wasn't important enough to justify it.
Obviously we can't make logical inferences that pouring sulfuric acid in someone's eye will burn it to cinders, we have to find out for real. For science.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Are those the experiments where they were testing the effects of isolation on monkeys? I remember reading about those in an article on the effects of solitary confinement on humans.
I thought they, at least initially, produced some useful results though.
Initially they were studying maternal bonding, but then they went on to do depression studies. The problem was that they were just horrific - i.e. they weren't learning anything we couldn't have inferred by other means, and it just straight up wasn't important enough to justify it.
What would those other means would be though?
Flipping through the wiki article, most of the quotes along this line of thinking are just appeals to "common sense".
It would seem like the reactions of social animals to isolation would be of a great deal of interest. Shit, I first learned about this through articles on solitary confinement. And most of the horrible effects of that we know (afaik) from what basically amounts to impromptu human experimentation.
There are plenty of actual cases of people being in confinement that could be studied. Sure, it's not a controlled environment, but it would be a hell of a lot more humane to collect data from unfortunate cases which we're trying to work on, rather then creating a whole bunch of them.
Ironically enough, based on what happened to the head researcher it's probably one of the best examples of why torture is a really bad idea.
This brand of utilitarianism is incredibly problematic once you start applying it widely. It suggests that it is best to tear apart healthy men to replace the organs of the sick, because multiple people can make use of the organs of one person.
I believe that it is never right to sacrifice those who did society no harm for society's sake. I might be able to get on board with people put on death row being used this way.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
There are plenty of actual cases of people being in confinement that could be studied. Sure, it's not a controlled environment, but it would be a hell of a lot more humane to collect data from unfortunate cases which we're trying to work on, rather then creating a whole bunch of them.
Ironically enough, based on what happened to the head researcher it's probably one of the best examples of why torture is a really bad idea.
That dude was just f-ed in the head, who uses the term iron maiden and rape rack in any sort of serious science? And likely he was well paid for his 'contributions'.
There are plenty of actual cases of people being in confinement that could be studied. Sure, it's not a controlled environment, but it would be a hell of a lot more humane to collect data from unfortunate cases which we're trying to work on, rather then creating a whole bunch of them.
I think it'd be better to be getting results on why it's so bad without having to have people suffering for it.
It seems like something we'd still want to be able to understand the effects of after we (here's hoping) eliminate the horrible practice of solitary confinement.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
That's sort of reasoning-from-cuteness is often brought up as a foil in these sorts of conversations. The best arguments against animal experimentation do not use any such appeals, however; rather, they appeal to alleged parallels between animals and low-functioning humans like babies and the severely retarded who we, one supposes, would not countenance any such experiments on. This is just a straightforward appeal to consistency, and has nothing to do with how adorable anything is.
I'd rather be curing cancer then coddling some people's feelings for animals that are fuzzy.
Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
That's such a consistent thread of thought, and it has always been insipid. It's why we argued over whether the US should torture people, and then said sure yeah. Because doing bad things makes stuff faster, but more dangerous. But we're tough and good and can handle the danger.
It's reasoning like Boromir.
Also, OP: The Milgram experiment wasn't unethical! It was a bad idea, it would be rejected today because we know it's a bad idea, but it wasn't goddamn mad science. Based on the knowledge available, it was not thought likely to produce harm in the people being tested. Feel free to shit on Zimbardo, he's a hack, but Milgram did and okay job.
That said I will say I think I probably could have figured out making people believe they'd murdered someone would mess with their heads. But we have IRBs to do that for us now. I need 3 layers of approval to test people's memory much less make them believe they've killed their mothers.
I'm not saying Milgram is quite in the same league as some of these other guys, and his desire to uncover some of the burning truths of the holocaust were understandable, but it's one of the more widely known cases that provoked a need for reform. Aside from Mengele and the Tuskegee experiment, it was one of the few cases I was aware of before today.
But like I said, in my view a lot of this stuff is just inexcusable in any circumstance, and if anything I have even less sympathy for scientists whining for looser restrictions now. It's just... when things go bad, they go really bad.
99.9% are good folks who just want to learn stuff I'm sure. But at the risk of sounding trite that road to hell is paved with plenty of good intentions.
Also we both like Marathon, so bro fists there.
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
Two more examples to look up if you feel like being even more depressed by humanity: Tuskegee syphilis study, and Robber's Cave.
I'll post more substantially later today.
I looked up Robber's cave on wikipedia (seemed to be an experiment to understand conflict resolution) and....I don't really understand what was horrible about it? I mean, I kinda skimmed over it, but nothing stood out to me as horrible. Did I miss something?
Having a "supervised" version of Lord of the Flies seems rather sketchy. Especially since at one point the kids were planning on bashing each other with rocks. I would have loved to have seen that in the report.
Robber's Cave is the sort of thing we'd do now with like, a computer game.
But yeah, restrictions are fine. Frankly, I don't think scientific progress is remotely impeded by ethical restrictions. At least in my field, there's such a surfeit of unanswered questions and processes without models it's just silly to think that oh if only we could abuse people we'd totally understand the things we're barely even able to describe at the moment.
Having a "supervised" version of Lord of the Flies seems rather sketchy. Especially since at one point the kids were planning on bashing each other with rocks. I would have loved to have seen that in the report.
Yeah, when I first started reading about it I was getting a lord of the flies vibe as well, but the rest of the article didn't seem so bad. It did not mention plans for physical violence so I didn't see that. It just seemed to me that they set up two groups to compete competitively against each other and then brought them together again at the end. Almost like high school rivalries and such. I guess there wasn't enough info just in the wiki.
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
This brand of utilitarianism is incredibly problematic once you start applying it widely. It suggests that it is best to tear apart healthy men to replace the organs of the sick, because multiple people can make use of the organs of one person.
I believe that it is never right to sacrifice those who did society no harm for society's sake. I might be able to get on board with people put on death row being used this way.
You don't really want an incentive to put people on death row. That tends to lead to icky things.
"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible." - T.E. Lawrence
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
From the wiki:
"Snowdon was appalled by the design of the vertical chambers. He asked Suomi why they were using them, and Harlow replied, "Because that's how it feels when you're depressed."
That's some powerful stuff.
As for the experiment, I'm sure we got lots of useful data from it. Even the change in direction after the wife's death probably got some decent papers out of it.
It did go too far, and there might have been better ways to go about it. But that doesn't mean blanket bans, or that we should never even try to do things like this.
Edit: Also, his naming convention leaves a bit to be desired.
Having a "supervised" version of Lord of the Flies seems rather sketchy. Especially since at one point the kids were planning on bashing each other with rocks. I would have loved to have seen that in the report.
Yeah, when I first started reading about it I was getting a lord of the flies vibe as well, but the rest of the article didn't seem so bad. It did not mention plans for physical violence so I didn't see that. It just seemed to me that they set up two groups to compete competitively against each other and then brought them together again at the end. Almost like high school rivalries and such. I guess there wasn't enough info just in the wiki.
Yeah the wiki gives zero "Lord of the Flies" type stuff at all.
They took 2 groups, forged in-group bonds, then put those 2 groups in competition with each other, which led to conflict and animosity. Then they gave them tasks that required working together and everyone got along just fine.
So like I said, I don't know very much on this subject, so what safeguards are in place, in general, to prevent scientific abuse? Obviously, there's not going to be universal enforcement across different countries, but I'd like to leave this conversation knowing my DNA won't be scrambled like an egg at some point to build a better Easy Bake Oven. I've seen folks mention the Institutional Review Board, are there any types of government oversight? I realize how crazy that sounds since most of the worst offenses were committed by governments, but I guess you have to start somewhere.
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
It did go too far, and there might have been better ways to go about it. But that doesn't mean blanket bans, or that we should never even try to do things like this.
If it went too far in the first place, why shouldn't we try to prevent it from happening again?
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MortiousThe Nightmare BeginsMove to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
That's sort of reasoning-from-cuteness is often brought up as a foil in these sorts of conversations. The best arguments against animal experimentation do not use any such appeals, however; rather, they appeal to alleged parallels between animals and low-functioning humans like babies and the severely retarded who we, one supposes, would not countenance any such experiments on. This is just a straightforward appeal to consistency, and has nothing to do with how adorable anything is.
Okay wow, that's a little bit long for me to read just now, so I apologise if I miss something.
I'm not sure than an appeal to human-like level of brain function is a valid tactic. Especially when your baseline is babies. (I'm starting to think I have an issue with children)
If you use brain function as a comparison between potential test subjects, sure. e.g. Rats vs Chimps, where both would give comparable results, use rats. But if you need chimps for your alzheimer curing smart drug, then use chimps.
Having a "supervised" version of Lord of the Flies seems rather sketchy. Especially since at one point the kids were planning on bashing each other with rocks. I would have loved to have seen that in the report.
Yeah, when I first started reading about it I was getting a lord of the flies vibe as well, but the rest of the article didn't seem so bad. It did not mention plans for physical violence so I didn't see that. It just seemed to me that they set up two groups to compete competitively against each other and then brought them together again at the end. Almost like high school rivalries and such. I guess there wasn't enough info just in the wiki.
Yeah the wiki gives zero "Lord of the Flies" type stuff at all.
They took 2 groups, forged in-group bonds, then put those 2 groups in competition with each other, which led to conflict and animosity. Then they gave them tasks that required working together and everyone got along just fine.
Well, wikis don't always tell the whole story.
Tensions increased further when the Eagles won the second tug-of-war through a strategy of sitting down and digging in their heels. Judging this unfair, the Rattlers launched a commando style raid on the Eagles' cabin that night. The following morning, the Eagles took revenge on the Rattlers' cabin; then, fearing reprisals, they began to store rocks to stone their new enemies. Once again, the staff intervened.
They put the kids in a situation where they were likely to harm each other without supervision. That's pretty freaking bad man.
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Ethical guidelines for animal experimentation exist to ensure good science is done as much as to prevent unnecessary suffering. When you let people carry out cruelty in a routine fashion, it leads to waste and poor planning. Animals which are stressed, in poor health or any number of other conditions are not going to provide remotely suitable datasets.
To some extent this is an attitude I kind of want to blame of paganistic morality plays: the assumption being that if we do something wrong, it must produce results more quickly. That's not how it works.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say not many people here agree with PETA's stance, or whichever group wants to make a blanket ban on animal testing.
I like animals, sometimes more than people, but I see the value in animal experiments.
As for placebo controlled experiments, while it might seem bad, as far as my understanding goes, it's vitally important. Pay now, play later.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
I'm all for that, but it still allows the animal to undergo pain and/or death if the experiment calls for it? Assuming it's well planned, and an alternative isn't available, or wont have the same results?
Wanton cruelty is stupid. A little bit of clinical detachment can be a good thing.
Edit: Though again, only if it happens to other people
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
There's some grey I admit. But if your hypothesis reads like it was developed here,
You may want to rethink your priorities.
Depends a lot on what you're studying, too.
Let's say two research teams were preparing to run two similar experiments - one on HIV, the other on syphilis.
Syphilis has a cheap, safe, common cure; HIV does not. Consequently, animal research protocols (handed down from the US government and adopted by institutional animal care committees) are much more strict on the syphilis study than on the HIV study.
Similarly, let's say the two similar experiments were both on HIV drug candidates, but one drug has a much better chance of working. The protocols will demand for more ethically strict research on the more speculative drug candidate.
As a general rule, we're more willing to accept animal suffering and death when it's treating more dangerous diseases, and when the research is more likely to benefit humans.
These ethical decisions are made for every single animal research study that goes on in the US and there are comparable protocols in place in every country in the first world. There are granular differences from country to country and state to state, but the high-level takeaway here is that important people in research funding & approval do take these ethical problems very seriously.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I agree completely. That's why I said earlier the issue with animal cruelty is that it's purposeless. You shouldn't be letting animals suffer more then necessary to conduct your experiment.
Actually placebo controlled experiments are terribly bad science in this day and age. When you do a placebo controlled experiment you're finding the wrong data, since you're finding how much better your drug is as compared to nothing.
We don't care if your new painkiller is better than nothing, we care if its better than aspirin.
The only time you should be doing a placebo controlled experiment is if there is no other drug on the market for what you're treating.
Well when would the experiment call for it? Pain and anxiety is also considered very different death where animals are concerned in terms of livelihood.
Animal experimentation guidelines have been getting stricter and stricter. For example it's basically impossible to do primate research these days, and doubly impossible to do invasive research on them - you can't just kill chimps and other members of the homo family. It's looser for the smaller monkeys.
A friend is currently doing animal studies on rabbits in my lab. Specifically she's looking at the elution of drugs from nanoparticles as a means of treating ocular diseases causing preventable blindness. Part of the requirements of research on the eyes of animals is that you're only allowed to work on 1 eye at a time, in case whatever you're doing causes blindness - its to prevent unnecessary cruelty. The process to get approval for this has involved ethical review by about a dozen people across 3 different departments.
They did cure death though!
mostly
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Painkillers was mentioned above, so controlled pain/pain relief for instance.
Does the ban on primate research hamper our advancement of science? Also, what's the reason for it? If it's "we can get the same results for less harm", cool, go for it. If its "wook at his wittle face" then the reasoning gets wonky for me.
Now I like the eye example on the rabbits. It still allows vital research, and decreases harm. I'm down for doing more things like that.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Partly, I just wanted to talk it out a little because I was genuinely disturbing reading this stuff. What I thought at first were horrible photoshops were actually real pictures. I wish Youtube would censor some of this stuff, because it does not do good things for me. I just wanted tactics on dealing with zombie dogs, not a sideshow of horrible medical procedures.
The funny thing about painkiller research is that, as I understand it, we mostly do it on people anyway since pain is a highly subjective experience. You do animal trials to confirm the drug isn't toxic, or have weird whole organism side-effects, but the only real way to know if it works is to give it to people and see if they report reduced symptoms.
Primate research isn't banned, but you have to have a very good justification for it. The classic case would be something like Ebola research where the only real way to know if the vaccine is working is to find an animal the disease infects, and see if they survive it. That can be a whole range of things, but the nearest you get to humans is chimps (and they do catch it in the wild anyway). But - that's last hurdle type stuff. And pretty self-limiting anyway since handling the Ebola virus is amazingly dangerous.
A bad justification these days would be stuff like the Pit of Despair. That whole series of experiments (hell, that 1 guy really) is more or less the reason you can't do stuff like that anymore, and also a pretty good example of what I mean about the dangers of allowing humans to commit wanton animal cruelty.
Somewhat true, yeah. Depends on the drug and the disease and the population.
A lot painkiller trials are done in comparison to existing NSAIDs for that very reason.
And when we're talking about diseases that are life-threatening, or infectious diseases where there's a risk of your control group communicating the disease to the general population, yeah the guiding practice is to use an existing therapy as your control group.
This is why you can't do placebo-controlled HIV experiments in the US, for instance.
But in situations where there isn't a wealth of options available to patients and the risks of undermedicating are minor (as with erectile dysfunction), it can be beneficial to do a placebo trial. If all you ever perform are tests against existing drugs, then you might not catch situations where an entire class of drugs turns out to be less beneficial than you thought (as with SSRIs and mild depression). If there's a rare population that can't take existing drugs due to a contraindication or side-effects, then it can be beneficial to do a placebo trial. Or where the disease is poorly understood and the existing drugs have wide-ranging side effects (as with fibromyalgia).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Are those the experiments where they were testing the effects of isolation on monkeys? I remember reading about those in an article on the effects of solitary confinement on humans.
I thought they, at least initially, produced some useful results though.
Initially they were studying maternal bonding, but then they went on to do depression studies. The problem was that they were just horrific - i.e. they weren't learning anything we couldn't have inferred by other means, and it just straight up wasn't important enough to justify it.
Obviously we can't make logical inferences that pouring sulfuric acid in someone's eye will burn it to cinders, we have to find out for real. For science.
What would those other means would be though?
Flipping through the wiki article, most of the quotes along this line of thinking are just appeals to "common sense".
It would seem like the reactions of social animals to isolation would be of a great deal of interest. Shit, I first learned about this through articles on solitary confinement. And most of the horrible effects of that we know (afaik) from what basically amounts to impromptu human experimentation.
Ironically enough, based on what happened to the head researcher it's probably one of the best examples of why torture is a really bad idea.
I believe that it is never right to sacrifice those who did society no harm for society's sake. I might be able to get on board with people put on death row being used this way.
That dude was just f-ed in the head, who uses the term iron maiden and rape rack in any sort of serious science? And likely he was well paid for his 'contributions'.
I think it'd be better to be getting results on why it's so bad without having to have people suffering for it.
It seems like something we'd still want to be able to understand the effects of after we (here's hoping) eliminate the horrible practice of solitary confinement.
That's sort of reasoning-from-cuteness is often brought up as a foil in these sorts of conversations. The best arguments against animal experimentation do not use any such appeals, however; rather, they appeal to alleged parallels between animals and low-functioning humans like babies and the severely retarded who we, one supposes, would not countenance any such experiments on. This is just a straightforward appeal to consistency, and has nothing to do with how adorable anything is.
That's such a consistent thread of thought, and it has always been insipid. It's why we argued over whether the US should torture people, and then said sure yeah. Because doing bad things makes stuff faster, but more dangerous. But we're tough and good and can handle the danger.
It's reasoning like Boromir.
Also, OP: The Milgram experiment wasn't unethical! It was a bad idea, it would be rejected today because we know it's a bad idea, but it wasn't goddamn mad science. Based on the knowledge available, it was not thought likely to produce harm in the people being tested. Feel free to shit on Zimbardo, he's a hack, but Milgram did and okay job.
That said I will say I think I probably could have figured out making people believe they'd murdered someone would mess with their heads. But we have IRBs to do that for us now. I need 3 layers of approval to test people's memory much less make them believe they've killed their mothers.
But like I said, in my view a lot of this stuff is just inexcusable in any circumstance, and if anything I have even less sympathy for scientists whining for looser restrictions now. It's just... when things go bad, they go really bad.
99.9% are good folks who just want to learn stuff I'm sure. But at the risk of sounding trite that road to hell is paved with plenty of good intentions.
Also we both like Marathon, so bro fists there.
I looked up Robber's cave on wikipedia (seemed to be an experiment to understand conflict resolution) and....I don't really understand what was horrible about it? I mean, I kinda skimmed over it, but nothing stood out to me as horrible. Did I miss something?
But yeah, restrictions are fine. Frankly, I don't think scientific progress is remotely impeded by ethical restrictions. At least in my field, there's such a surfeit of unanswered questions and processes without models it's just silly to think that oh if only we could abuse people we'd totally understand the things we're barely even able to describe at the moment.
Yeah, when I first started reading about it I was getting a lord of the flies vibe as well, but the rest of the article didn't seem so bad. It did not mention plans for physical violence so I didn't see that. It just seemed to me that they set up two groups to compete competitively against each other and then brought them together again at the end. Almost like high school rivalries and such. I guess there wasn't enough info just in the wiki.
You don't really want an incentive to put people on death row. That tends to lead to icky things.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
From the wiki:
"Snowdon was appalled by the design of the vertical chambers. He asked Suomi why they were using them, and Harlow replied, "Because that's how it feels when you're depressed."
That's some powerful stuff.
As for the experiment, I'm sure we got lots of useful data from it. Even the change in direction after the wife's death probably got some decent papers out of it.
It did go too far, and there might have been better ways to go about it. But that doesn't mean blanket bans, or that we should never even try to do things like this.
Edit: Also, his naming convention leaves a bit to be desired.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Yeah the wiki gives zero "Lord of the Flies" type stuff at all.
They took 2 groups, forged in-group bonds, then put those 2 groups in competition with each other, which led to conflict and animosity. Then they gave them tasks that required working together and everyone got along just fine.
If it went too far in the first place, why shouldn't we try to prevent it from happening again?
Okay wow, that's a little bit long for me to read just now, so I apologise if I miss something.
I'm not sure than an appeal to human-like level of brain function is a valid tactic. Especially when your baseline is babies. (I'm starting to think I have an issue with children)
If you use brain function as a comparison between potential test subjects, sure. e.g. Rats vs Chimps, where both would give comparable results, use rats. But if you need chimps for your alzheimer curing smart drug, then use chimps.
It’s not a very important country most of the time
http://steamcommunity.com/id/mortious
Well, wikis don't always tell the whole story.
They put the kids in a situation where they were likely to harm each other without supervision. That's pretty freaking bad man.