Medical Testing??

[tvrodents]

This subject has been glossed over on occasions in other debates but never really covered in any detail. I am not starting it to cause offence or argument, I am starting it purely out of curiousity.
When I talk about medical testing I mean exactly that - testing to further our knowledge of the treatments of certain diseases etc. I am NOT talking about cosmetic vivisection.

So...

Medical testing.... Right or Wrong? Why?

Personally in a nut shell I am not against medical testing so long as it is on what some people may consider to be 'lesser' species such as rodents rather than primates or cats and dogs. It would be hugely hypocritical of me to be anti-testing as I have several medical problems that require me to take daily medication to keep me upright.
So before you all go BAD!!! consider how often you have ever taken a paracetamol, worn a plastercast, had an operation... you owe this to animals.

Your opinions please!

Kat

[DragonSpirit]

Hmmm... I am against it and not. I'm sorta neutral. I believe that giving some things to animals that have completely different anatomys and reactions than us shouldn't be done.
Now say maybe a mouse has cancer or something and they are trying out a new healing method. Well its benefiting to 2 things. 1) They're trying to heal the mouse and 2) it could be the medicine that gets rid of cancer. That I can agree with.

Usually to me, it depends on what they're doing to the animal. If its like some mad scientist trying to figure out if human brains can explode to overheat (just an example, Ihave no clue if that can really happen) and they're using a horse or something, then I don't think it should be done because a horses body has many different reactions to different things than humans do.

Thats what I think.

[tvrodents]

good points. I Largely aggree with you. Something else often forgotten about medical testing on animals is that more often than not the findings will be relevent to veterinary medicine too. We all take out animals to the vets if they need one yet many pet owners will scream merry hell at the thought of medical testing. Thankfully, most of what those 'mad scientists' might do is highly illegal and EVERY project involving animal testing requires licencing from the government. Every indivual project has to get its own licence, a company cannot just buy an annual season ticket or something... thank god!!

Kat

[bruises]

Well, in short, my (not very popular) opinion would be that Earth is way overpopulated as it is.

Also, points I wanna mention but don't feel like explaining right now; they purposefully breed that mouse to have cancer; animals != humans; many criminals would likely give consent to being test subjects; computer programs can be used for some things; I think it's stupid to not use medication that already exist just cause of previous animal testing; I also think that's a stupid argument to bring up; I think there's no real need for new animal tests to be done; I do think there's a need for some Darwinism in this world.

[Rachy1412]

I sit on the fence, I only judge things that I know about. However not using the drugs and things like plasters isn't going to stop them testing on animals, they've already been tested and tried and your not going to improve anything my boycotting the product.

I have seen some nasty videos of how they treat the animals but as with anything there is always going to be people who treat them badly. Also testing on animals doesn't always help us, you won't get the same results as testing on animals as humans!