Best Posts in Thread: Bioethics in Animal Research

The use of animals in research is fine depending on the value of the research, how much harm is done to the animals tested, and whether computerized models could be used in place of animals, in my opinion. On one side, animal research has led to vaccinations for debilitating diseases such as polio, rubella, and smallpox, as well as treatments for other disorders such as HIV and cancer, of which we could never have achieved without animal research without potential human sacrifice. These are all valuable research topics. However, if animals are being used to study something trivial just for the sake of knowledge instead of a great benefit to humans, like the effects of PTSD on eating behaviors in mice, I wouldn't support that kind of animal research. On the other hand, animals are subjected to internal damage and injections that may potentially poison them.

Honestly, I think the solution here is to invest in more computerized models and limit our animal research to important matters, instead of using animals for all kinds of research.

 

I believe that we’re all connected in nature and we all share the same energies so it’s not ethical to test chemicals on animals. To me, all life is super precious and worth protecting. If we don’t trust X chemical on humans, then we shouldn’t use animals as our test subjects either. Would you test something potentially life-endangering on your dog? Probably not. Obviously, we share emotional attachments with our pets so maybe you’d say that that’s a poor argument but listen: Would you test who-knows-what on a human that you have no emotional connection to? No. How is that any different than testing on an animal that you haven’t spent any time with? Animals are intelligent and feel things just like us. It’s cruel to abuse their innocence with testing for something that doesn’t have a 100% guarantee to work.

There aught to be other ways to figure out science things. If we can make synthetic solutions, we can make synthetic testing objects as well. There’s no need to test on animals now.

tl;dr I wont support the abuse of animals when there are alternative solutions that don’t harm a soul.

 

Well, we are mammals. We are more self-aware, but not necessarily dominant. I believe that we are one of the most intelligent species that walk the earth, but in that we have completely destroyed our environment, and our actions mostly derive from impulse. We're very selfish creatures, and don't really tend to think more than we have to. (That is a broad generalization of the species, definitely not all humans are that way.)