Cucumber Dildo

[Skeptic]

That's plainly untrue, slavery was immorality indulged in by many nations over the history of mankind but it is no way a necessary foundation without which modern society would not exist, unlike the use of animals, it was the use of animal products, especially early agriculture, than was responsible for the survival of our species.

What's your point here? I'm not trying to change history...

If the number of humans saved from suffering is larger than the number of animals who had to suffer then we can objectively say that the use of animal subjects minimized suffering.

Possibly, depends on the severity of the suffering involved for both parties. If it's a case of testing on one monkey will definitely save one humans life then I'd probably find that acceptable however it's not so cut and dry.

We can also compare the suffering of persons who uses animal tested products to persons who do not, see whom lives a longer and healthier life on average.

That makes no sense, since the damage has already been done what would be the point in my rejection of such medicines, I say again, I'm not trying to change history.

If you want a good example of how animals were necessary for the advancement of society - the difference between old world societies advancing SO far ahead of new world societies is...pack animals.

I am not trying to change history. I can see this is going to become a recurring theme.

For the better part of our existence as a species we did not exploit animals to reduce our own suffering. We could not. Interestingly our first attempt at distancing ourselves from the exploitation of animals was agriculture. Unfortunately for those early pioneers, a diet of grain and vegetables wasn't quite as nutritious as the hunter gatherer diet. Early farmers led shorter lives, suffered diseases specific to them, and just generally screwed themselves up all manner of ways compared to their hunter gatherer counterparts. We did eventually solve this problem....by exploiting animals for labor. We also spent much of our existence NOT using lab animals to test medicine. Need I list the fun things people were dying of? We don't do these things because we are cruel, or capricious, we do these things because they enable our very survival.

I have this copied to my clipboard now...

I am not trying to change history.

Domestication (for whatever purpose) isn't exactly a raw deal for the animal either. We provide them with food, shelter, and protection from predators (other than ourselves, and sometimes, even from ourselves as in the case of pets). There are cattle here, in this country, that lead better lives than many human denizens of third world countries. This is undeniable. If we released them, they would die. If we died, because we forbid ourselves the tools for example, to cure some disease, they would die.

I disagree, much of those lives wouldn't be here if it were not for us, I'd prefer animals not to be bred in huge numbers just for human palates. If you haven't been born you have no capacity to suffer.

I understand that you don't feel comfortable with this, but you do so from position of a person who very much takes advantage of all of the things that animal testing, and animal byproducts bring to the table. You cannot escape them. They're in the asphalt under your feet and the planes over your head. The machines that process your vegan diet, and grow your vegan crops depend upon them. etc etc etc.

What are you saying, that I shouldn't be allowed to walk on the pavement? That reducing suffering is pointless unless you can to it absolutely perfectly? I realise there's no way for me to remove all suffering from my life but I can do my best to reduce it as best I can.

It's okay to feel the way that you do. I feel the same way about cats and dogs (unless I was starving). What I object to is painting any of this as abject and purposeless cruelty to be avoided at all costs.

Well, that's just where we differ. I see the consumption of animal products as largely unnecessary (I realise there are exceptions) and for the most part in modern it's purely for want rather than need.

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.

Yes there are and being obnoxious doesn't make you any more right.

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.

You do realise that the whole world isn't going to stop animal testing instantly don't you? I do nothing to hinder animal testing but I choose to financially support alternatives to it so that in future there will be more alternatives. If you want to support animal testing charities then go right ahead, I never suggested that anyone should do otherwise, I merely voiced my own opinion.

There are alternatives to animal testing BTW, perhaps if you read the Dr. Hadwen Trust website you could learn about some of them. Here, I'll make it easy for you.

What are the alternatives to animal experiments?

There is a range of different methods that can be used to replace animal experiments. These include cell and tissue cultures, analytical technology, molecular research, post mortem studies, computer modelling, epidemiology (population studies), ethical clinical research with volunteer patients and healthy subjects, and the use of microbes such as bacteria.

Can alternatives actually replace animal experiments or are they used alongside?

Alternative methods are regularly replacing animal experiments and have already saved the lives of millions of animals worldwide. For example, cell cultures have replaced the use of monkeys in polio vaccine production; pregnancy tests are now conducted in test-tubes instead of in rabbits; batches of insulin are analysed chemically and not by tests in mice; and cell culture methods have replaced the use of thousands of live mice, sheep, rabbits, goats and pigs in the production of monoclonal antibodies. Alternative techniques have the potential to replace more animal experiments and offer more humane and better quality research.

How can whole-organism level research be done without using animals?

Non-animal research rarely simply replaces like for like. Instead a different approach is used in order to replicate the whole body scenario, replacing each type of animal experiment with a whole range of non-animal techniques that are used in combination.

In medical research and testing the ‘whole organism’ of interest is the human body. Increasingly, safe and ethical studies of healthy and patient volunteers can be conducted using techniques such as neuroimaging, iontophoresis, ultrasound, stable isotope methods, microdosing, microdialysis, and genetic and other analyses of tissue samples.

The system (as the body is referred to) may be ‘de-constructed’ into its component parts, studied at the molecular, cellular or tissue levels, and then ‘re-constructed’. An example is the prediction of absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion (ADME) characteristics of a novel drug. Using drug-specific physicochemical and in vitro data, combined with human species-specific standard physiological information, physiologically-based pharmacokinetic computer simulations can replace some animal studies.

A paradigm shift or novel technology may allow a new perspective in answering a question. For example, parenteral medicines used to be tested for bacterial contamination by measuring a systemic fever response in rabbits. Today, in vitro assays based on the key step – the activation of monocytes – are replacing rabbit tests.

All I have to say about animal rights is this: They don't have any bloody rights! In order to have rights, you have to have obligations and responsibilities, and animals haven't got those, now do they? I'm not going to listen to some urban hippie yapping on about animal rights, who even haven't been to a farm and lived in a city for the whole of his/her life. No, on the other hand it's our responsibility as humans to treat domesticated (and wild) animals with care and give them life withouth suffering.

I think you'll find animals do have rights, at least here in England if you mistreat certain animals you go to jail. As for living in the city my whole life, not that it should make any difference but I have only lived in a city for about a year, before that my whole life was spent living in the countryside.

I totally agree with you that it's our responsibility to treat animals with care and without suffering though, that's all I'm trying to do.

But that is my point!! Why attack farmers who do care for their livestock. Why attack slaughter houses that slaughter in a humane (aka quick as posible death) fashion?? Why attack the only food source available to a significant number of humans (where crops won't grow...thinking of the Masai here).

If you are going to kill something then kill it quick...don't get all soppy about it and only do half a job leaving it suffering.

I take it that's not directed at me since I don't do those things.

And don't think that domesticated animals fare better in the wild. Fur animals can devastate whole eco-systems, cows would freak out, poultry would fatten up the local foxes quite fast etc. Activists could learn a thing or two about the animals they're trying to "save".

My take on this is that we don't release all the domesticated animals in to the wild but that a gradual shift in society towards eating less animal products would result in the slow decline of the mass breeding of these animals until there's no longer a need to breed them on mass.

The point is; What moral right do vegans have to command people not to use animal by-products? If the answer is 'none' which I believe it is then vegans have every right to try and persuade people not to consume animal products or test products on animals, but they have no moral "high ground", it's simply their own subjective values and no matter how self-righteous they feel about it their own values are nothing but piss in the wind to me.

Try make an objective case for animal freedom and I might pay you some attention, but otherwise you'll get no such response.

I'm a vegan and I've not commanded you to do anything, nor have I tried to persuade you to do anything. If anything it's the other way around, I've merely responded to questions regarding my view points whereas others have tried to convince me that I'm somehow wrong to want to reduce suffering.

If you're referring to Peta then say peta, not all vegans support peta, I don't and of the 50+ others I know I think only 1 or 2 might support them.

BTW; These days I don't eat meat very much and would be guilt free if I went on a vegetarian (not vegan) diet.

There is a lot of suffering in the dairy and egg industries, which is why I don't consume them.



That took ages...