here's my responses to some moron's rant about why animal research can't translate to humans. All in quotations are his statements.
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"The fact must come to bear is that, like humans, most animals are sentient beings as well. They are capable of experiencing pain and suffering and are conscious of the fact that this pain and suffering is occurring to them (i.e. self-aware). Because it is wrong for us to be used in the aforementioned ways, it is also wrong to use other animals in many of the same ways; tortured and beaten, made to perform demeaning tasks, used as research, killed for organs, used for product testing, raised for food and otherwise have everything natural denied to them."
If you stopped the testing of animals, medical research would come to a screeching halt. MILLIONS of people who depend on medications derived from animals and from that research would die. Do you know any diabetics? Cancer patients? Alzheimers patients? Try telling the family of a cardiac patient that the pig's heart valve that could have saved their life wasn't used because the pig was still using it. I assume you've had shots and vaccinations....those most likely were ALL derived from animal research.
"I do not take any shots or vaccinations, I have not used ANY western chemical medicine in 10 years and have not seen the inside of a doctors consultation room during all that time."
You must not have gone to school in the US then because they require multiple vaccinations. Many people do not go see doctors due to other reasons, but they may be setting themselves up for problems down the road. Something that may have been caught earlier (ex. breast cancer, hypertension) may go unnoticed and can be fatal.
"how can you in good faith promote the wholesale abuse and torture of sentient beings by an unscrupulous, profit-driven industry?"
Research animals are not abused or tortured. I thought my sources made that clear in my last post. I promote the use of animal research because it saves human lives on a daily basis. And as for a profit-driven industry, medications are often so expensive because of the time and work needed to develope them. Lots of drugs take years and years of careful research and testing to develope and ensure their safety to the public.
" ..Nothing more than the ability to perform primitive invasive surgery and sell narcotics to consumers. AFTER THE BILLIONS SPENT ON RESEARCH THE STILL CANT CURE THE COMMON COLD."
primitive...??? LOL you obviously have never seen a surgery before. Narcotics are a God send to people who are in horrible pain. Drug addiction is rare in patients taking the medications as prescribed for pain. Developing a higher tolerance for a drug and becoming physically dependent on the drug for pain relief does not mean that the patient is addicted. It is impossible to make a cure for the common cold because there is no COMMON cold. There are over 200 strains and more are always mutating and producing new strains. Influenza type B does not change much over time, but type A can mutate rapidly. Therefore, a new form of the flu vaccine must be developed each year to protect people for the exact strain that is expected to be most prevalent.
"It is not in the best interest of the medical industry to see healthy people. You don't chase your own customers away....It makes more sense to keep them hooked on a steady stream of "medical care".
There will ALWAYS be sick people, why in the world would anyone want to not help an ill person get better? There's a nursing shortage for a reason. Especially in this country, there is a seriously growing need for medical professionals to help treat the ever increasing number of patients. It doesn't make any sense for the medical industry to try to keep anyone from getting better. In fact, it would drive people away if they are not getting the help they need.
"Carrie, it is a common misconception that medical research relies on animals. This is simply not true. In fact, there has been many cases where animal research actually hampered the finding of a cure. We are simply not physiologically similar enough for something to be tested on an animal and then to be declared safe for human consumption."
My sources address that in my previous post, but I'll humor you. For example, rhesus monkeys have visual systems identical to those of humans except those of monkeys develop four times faster. Research animals provide scientists with complex living systems consisting of cells, tissues and organs. Animal models can interact and react to stimuli, giving researchers a picture of a compound moving through a living system and an idea of how that stimuli might react in a human being. Animals are biologically similar to humans in many ways and they are vulnerable to over 200 of the same health problems. This makes them an effective model for researchers to study. Testing on people does not take place until scientists have spent YEARS working on it.
Animal research played a vital role in scientists' discovery of leukotrienes, the principal cause of the symptoms of allergic conditions. Studies in Guinea pigs and primates led to the development of leukotriene-receptor antagonists, approved in 1998 as the first new type of asthma treatment in 20 years that is effective against both mild and severe forms of asthma.
"The human immune system will violently reject implanted animal organs. Since the tissue comes from an entirely different species, the rejection is much more severe than any human organ transplant would evoke. "
Pig organs have been transplanted to humans several times in the last few years. In 1992, two women received pig liver transplants as "bridges" to hold them over until human transplants were found. In one patient, the liver was kept outside the body in a plastic bag and hooked up to her main liver arteries. She survived long enough to receive a human liver. You lose.
"Animals are forced to withstand the abuse and torture of being experimented on. Granted, we can convince some people with money but very few will sit through the ordeal of having their skin burnt off without anesthetic, or having the top half of their skull removed, but selfish humans would never go through the same treatment we put the animals thorough."
Where the heck did this come from?? If you are refering to research animals, they are NOT treated like that. READ MY SOURCES
"We abuse our power. This is exactly what the Nazis did with Jewish "subjects" in the concentration camps."
According to the Nuremburg Code, drawn up after World War II as a result of Nazi atrocities, any experiments on humans "should be designed and based on the results of animal experimentation." The Nazis had outlawed animal experimentation but allowed experiments on Jews and "asocial persons." The Declaration of Helsinki, adopted in 1964 by the 18th World Medical Assembly and revised in 1975, also states that medical research on human subjects "should be based on adequately performed laboratory and animal experimentation. Which means that people could only be tested after an animal has gone through that same testing. THE FUCKING NAZI'S wrote that.
I will end with this expert qoutation which I think says it all:
"There is simply no way that we are even within decades of being able to replace the complexity of a living organism with a tissue culture dish or a silicon chip," says Robert Rich, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine. "I can't conceive of medical research that does not involve animals."
here's MY sources:
National Library of Medicine and NIH - influenza vaccine
[link]National Institute of Health - common cold
[link]National Cancer Institute - narcotics and drug abuse
[link]Emory University
[link]American Association for Laboratory Animal Science
[link] 
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