Preamble -- I am entering this late, but couldn't bear to not respond.
No, there aren't. And speaking out of you ass isn't going to make them anymore more viable.
Human cadavers? Are you misinformed, or just ignorant? How the fuck can a dead mass of tissue be utilized to test drugs and serums that are metabolized in a living system?
And computer modelling? Another fanciful hand waving talking point that neglects, no wait, fails to look at the current body of knowledge about the human system and it's interactions from the molecular scale (proteins and associated objects) to the macroscale distribution and concentrations of hormones and the like.
If we had a coherent and predictive model of the human body, with all the metabolic, epigenetic and genetic pathways and interactions, with factors included for local structural interactions as well as global (on the scale of the body) wide interactions, then it would be a fair argument to make that predicting untested and unknown concoctions in what might be considered a generalized model for humans.
But we don't.
The field of biophysics, for example, is such a field of study that attempts to further map out such. Research at UCLA, for example, includes the destructive protein crystallography project (mapping out complex protein structure to the atom) to work done on understanding the driven-damped construction of the inner ear.
There is work being done to understand further and allow for potential models to be constructed, but to think at this time it is viable to completely ignore an entire branch of testing is plain and utter madness, the type of madness expected from an ideologue.
When in dealing with human lives and the risk of new drugs, it is to be expected that every step would be taken to ensure the drug works before human testing. And yet you advocate moving to incomplete models.
What the fucking hell.
I'd accept your argument if the models were complete or considered mostly complete by the scientific community involved in medical research. I'd accept your argument if I saw paper after paper (peer reviewed) that demonstrated the efficacy of computer modeling in generalized scenarios.
That evidence does not exist.
Charities are nice. Research done into accurately modeling human systems is great.
But I need more than some silly charity. I require research, not platitudes.
To assume that current models are even close to being complete isn't just an assumption, it's an asinine one. It is one that fails to understand the benefits that such models, if they were medically viable for human testing, would advance medical research in every field by lightyears.
I am pointing out that the act of constructing such models requires a lot of understanding, a lot of work. Those models are tested and honed in such research.
They will never be ready for human testing until they've been verified through other fields. And I await, eagerly might I add, evidence pertaining to the latter.
If you wish to be a test subject, you must be alive and usually be afflicted with whatever disease that requires medical testing.
And it's not the "norm" -- it is a well established area of testing that attempts to cover all the bases in understanding the risk.
You like to understand risk, don't you?
(August 21, 2011 at 10:45 pm)Skeptic Wrote: There are alternatives to animal research, human cadavers are very useful I believe as well as computer modelling.
No, there aren't. And speaking out of you ass isn't going to make them anymore more viable.
Human cadavers? Are you misinformed, or just ignorant? How the fuck can a dead mass of tissue be utilized to test drugs and serums that are metabolized in a living system?
And computer modelling? Another fanciful hand waving talking point that neglects, no wait, fails to look at the current body of knowledge about the human system and it's interactions from the molecular scale (proteins and associated objects) to the macroscale distribution and concentrations of hormones and the like.
If we had a coherent and predictive model of the human body, with all the metabolic, epigenetic and genetic pathways and interactions, with factors included for local structural interactions as well as global (on the scale of the body) wide interactions, then it would be a fair argument to make that predicting untested and unknown concoctions in what might be considered a generalized model for humans.
But we don't.
The field of biophysics, for example, is such a field of study that attempts to further map out such. Research at UCLA, for example, includes the destructive protein crystallography project (mapping out complex protein structure to the atom) to work done on understanding the driven-damped construction of the inner ear.
There is work being done to understand further and allow for potential models to be constructed, but to think at this time it is viable to completely ignore an entire branch of testing is plain and utter madness, the type of madness expected from an ideologue.
When in dealing with human lives and the risk of new drugs, it is to be expected that every step would be taken to ensure the drug works before human testing. And yet you advocate moving to incomplete models.
What the fucking hell.
I'd accept your argument if the models were complete or considered mostly complete by the scientific community involved in medical research. I'd accept your argument if I saw paper after paper (peer reviewed) that demonstrated the efficacy of computer modeling in generalized scenarios.
That evidence does not exist.
(August 21, 2011 at 10:45 pm)Skeptic Wrote: There's a charity I support called Dr. Hadwen Trust that specialises in non animal research, they have some useful info on their website.
Charities are nice. Research done into accurately modeling human systems is great.
But I need more than some silly charity. I require research, not platitudes.
(August 21, 2011 at 10:45 pm)Skeptic Wrote: Of course, animal research isn't going to end instantly so there's plenty of time for transition to non animal based research. To assume that little Timmy's condition can't be solved without animal research or that it even would be solved with animal research is just an assumption.
To assume that current models are even close to being complete isn't just an assumption, it's an asinine one. It is one that fails to understand the benefits that such models, if they were medically viable for human testing, would advance medical research in every field by lightyears.
I am pointing out that the act of constructing such models requires a lot of understanding, a lot of work. Those models are tested and honed in such research.
They will never be ready for human testing until they've been verified through other fields. And I await, eagerly might I add, evidence pertaining to the latter.
(August 21, 2011 at 10:45 pm)Skeptic Wrote: Yeah, when I die, why not? As for further research, see above. Just because animal research has been the norm doesn't mean it's the only option.
If you wish to be a test subject, you must be alive and usually be afflicted with whatever disease that requires medical testing.
And it's not the "norm" -- it is a well established area of testing that attempts to cover all the bases in understanding the risk.
You like to understand risk, don't you?
