A vivisection thread

I figure I'll take a back seat here and see if anyone on the thread wants to talk about the topic. My views are known anyway.

NO!

I want a beagle. :(

Thanks for the last comment. I want a beagle too.

For the record though, the human strain of HIV does not exist in primates. They tried to inject chimps with it and it was negative, nothing happened. As a result, the barbarians formed a chimpanzee version of AIDS and started putting it into the primates especially. Check out Deborah Blum's The Monkey Wars for full details on this.

If you do give money to an AIDS charity make sure it is the Elton John one, Elton is against vivisection and his charity does not fund animal experiments.

Are we now to eschew them because of past practices? Should we encourage more testing on humans? (This is already done to an extent of course).

If we totally stopped ALL medical testing using animals, what then? I agree it isnt ideal - in some cases it seems downright bizarre (how is conducing cancer in a rat anything related to a human for eg) but yeah... what instead? Ed makes a good point - why havent we yet worked out better ways to do this?

Mouse - no other species has ever been so barbaric as to slit a cat's vocal cords, imprison it in a small cell and basically torture it for weeks. No other species cages up a young dog and injects it with weed killer until it dies. Your arguement is hugely flawed.

Furthermore, if we relied on animal experiments we would never have had aspirin, and remember that HIV and phalidimide were negative in animals yet the latter caused birth defects in children when used on human specimens.

It is estimated that thousands die every year through drugs deemed safe on an animal model. True human liberation begins with animal liberation... can anyone tell me the last medical breakthrough that came through the use of an animal?

I can't and yet we still kill and torture millions in labs every year. So where is the justification?

Human disease, human testing. There sure are a lot of useless bodies in the penal system more deserving of experiments than harmless animals.

I have never argued against human beings consuming meat. I do not follow the strong vegan line on this and come more from a speciest point of view. I'm strongly against factory farming but I would not afford a cat that eats meat more rights than a human being. As an animal it is up to the individual human whether they choose to eat meat or not and I see no problem with it. I only see a problem with factory farms which are barbaric.

As it stands I eat chicken as my meat, but not anything else.

Does one have to be a vegan to be concerned about vivisection/ the welfare of animals on factory farms? I do not understand the link.

Also, Roger are you quite serious? If so, damn there's a global population problem, come to think of it.

Humane is not vivisection, and the use of an animal as intelligent as a primate in lengthy, painful, pointless experiments is never justifiable. Nor is the conditions of factory farms.

Are you aware of the conditions, the torture, the length of experiments etc that goes on in your average toxicology lab? I am not even sure Bernard Matthew would approve of that.

As I said, I think taking a stance against eating meat is problematic, even in my current capacity. I believe in supporting the free range market - and feel quite strongly in this. Why would you afford a shark or a cat the right to eat another animal but not a human?

Vivisection is a whole different ball game because the cruelty involved is incomparable, the end result is usually pointless and serves no purpose but to line the pockets of drug companies with a bogus "safety" seal and the conditions are appalling.

Where is the big deal? You are trying to make a higher than thou link between opposing vivisection and opposing the consumption of meat whereas I am arguing that I simply do not see the link.

Mouse - your arguement still doesn't link or make any sense. The ends doesn't justify the means at all in the case of vivisection. The lengthy torture of any animal for any means - including food - doesn't justify the means. Furthermore, I'm against the bush meat trade - I don't eat primates - does that make me a hypocrit?

You seem to be saying that in order to make a stance against any form of animal cruelty you have to be 100% vegan which is ridiculous. As a vegetarian I presume you still use dairy products? Does that mean you have no right to be against vivisection?

Again - there is no link in this arguement. This is a thread about vivisection and you've turned it into a confusing discussion about the ethics of eating meat which is a whole other ball game and needs to be dealt with on a seperate thread IMO.

If your arguement is that you need to be a vegan to criticise any form of animal abuse then you're essentially painting a very dour picture of the future of animal welfare regulations.

And please note that this thread has never argued for animal rights which you - again - seem to be coming from the rigid view of.

Calum makes a good point, actually. Arguing that not eating meat is the best way to promote the humane treatment of the animals that you eat is absurd. It's like arguing that moving to Canada is the best way to influence US policy.

I don't have an ingrained fear of ickyness at all - I don't know (still) what your point is. I'll state it again though in the most simplistic manner possible: I am fully opposed to putting animals in small cages and torturing them to death.

Does any of this make sense now?

BINGO. Zarr OTfuckin'M

That doesnt, however, undo the fact that I bet we all still need, from time to time, to take pharmaceuticals to live or at least live without pain/ill health. What are we supposed to do?

Are there, for example, ethical pharmacueutical companies that dont indulge in price fixing, experiments, etc?

Do some people really believe, as another alternative, they can maintain health/beat cancer/wtfever using only natural/herbal remedies etc?

I dont have a position here btw, I'm just throwing out genuine questions.

prolly not.

Ok, like what? Roger's Nazi prison idea?

Also check out the writings of some of the many doctors against vivisection and who write extensively about some of the alternativess available and some that need larger amounts of funding. Doctor Greek is quite famous in this area, but a browse at your local library will bring up many.

My own point of view is that it is ethically wrong, regardless of the circumstances and based upon the fact that no medical breakthroughs in God knows how long have come through animal research anyway.

Hm, you know I've often thought that our prisons could stand to be just a tad more Turkish.

i'm conflicted about the whole issue. i wish we could be ethical and not harm animals, but on the other hand my brother is a neurosurgeon and has told me about benefits we've gained from testing (he has done some himself, unfortunately).

x post. I don't care if Roger wants to vivisect prisoners. But he might be unwise to. Human beings are a lot more able to fight back than are dogs.

The above 'quote' is nonsense - how often is it discovered that repeat offenders and admitted murderers were somehow 'innocent all alaong? Who's working THOSE cases? Come on, man. Somebody's reading too many Mumia books methinks.

in the 4 years I lived in Illinois, 13 men were released from death row based on new evidence/dna testing that did not come up or was not available at trial.

INNOCENT PEOPLE ARE ON DEATH ROW AND HAVE BEEN EXECUTED:

* More than 114 people have been exonerated from death row since 1972, including 23 from the state of Florida alone. (Death Penalty Information Center)
* The system of capital punishment is flawed at both the state and federal level. On the federal level, 3.5% of persons whom the Attorney General has attempted to execute have been innocent. In one example of state-level problems, Illinois (prior to Governor Ryan’s blanket commutation) had an error rate of at least 4.5%. (American Civil Liberties Union)
* A study identified 23 instances in the last century in which a person with an extraordinarily strong case of innocence had been executed by the government. (H. Bedeau & M. Radelet, “Miscarriages of Justice in Potentially Capital Cases” Stanford Law Review, 1987) Since 1987 8 cases have been reported.

RECENT CASES OF MISTAKEN EXECUTION:

* Texas executed Gary Graham on July 22, 2000 despite claims that he was innocent. Graham was 17 when he was charged with the 1981 robbery and shooting of Bobby Lambert outside a Houston supermarket. He was convicted primarily on the testimony of one witness, Bernadine Skillern, who said she saw the killer's face for a few seconds through her car windshield, from a distance of 30 -40 feet away. Two other witnesses, both who worked at the grocery store and said they got a good look at the assailant, said Graham was not the killer but were never interviewed by Graham's court appointed attorney, Ronald Mock, and were not called to testify at trial. Three of the jurors who voted to convict Graham signed affidavits saying they would have voted differently had all of the evidence been available. (www.deathpenaltyinfo.org)
* Florida convicted Leo Jones on March 28,1998 - Jones was convicted of murdering a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida. Jones signed a confession after several hours of police interrogation, but he later claimed the confession was coerced. In the mid-1980s, the policeman who arrested Jones and the detective who took his confession were forced out of uniform for ethical violations. The policeman was later identified by a fellow officer as an "enforcer" who had used torture. Many witnesses came forward pointing to another suspect in the case.
* Texas convicted David Spence on April 3, 1997. Spence was charged with murdering three teenagers in 1982. He was allegedly hired by a convenience store owner to kill another girl, and killed these victims by mistake. The convenience store owner, Muneer Deeb, was originally convicted and sentenced to death, but then was acquitted at a re-trial. The police lieutenant who supervised the investigation of Spence, Marvin Horton, later concluded: "I do not think David Spence committed this crime." Ramon Salinas, the homicide detective who actually conducted the investigation, said: "My opinion is that David Spence was innocent. Nothing from the investigation ever led us to any evidence that he was involved." No physical evidence connected Spence to the crime. The case against Spence was pursued by a zealous narcotics cop who relied on testimony of prison inmates who were granted favors in return for testimony.
* Virginia executed Joseph O'Dell on July 23, 1997 despite the existence of DNA evidence that could have proved O'Dell's innocence. The courts refused to consider this new evidence because Virginia law says that any evidence found after 21 days is inadmissible in proving the innocence of a convicted person.
* Texas executed Jesse Jacobs on January 4, 1995 despite the prosecution’s admission that arguments they made at Jacobs’ trial were false. Jacobs was convicted after the state introduced evidence that he, rather than his co-defendant, pulled the trigger on the day of the murder. At the subsequent trial of the co-defendant, the state reversed its story and said it was the co-defendant, not Jacobs, who pulled the trigger. The prosecution vouched for the credibility of Jacobs' testimony that he did not commit the shooting and did not even know that his co-defendant had a gun. Jacobs’ co-defendant was also convicted, though he was not sentenced to death.
* Texas executed Robert Nelson Drew on August 2, 1994 after refusing to give him a new hearing after another man signed an affidavit in which he confessed to the murder, thereby exonerating Drew.
* Texas executed Leonel Herrera in 1993 despite compelling evidence of his innocence. A former Texas judge submitted an affidavit stating that another man had confessed to the crime for which Herrera was facing execution. Numerous other pieces of new evidence also threw doubt on his conviction. According to the Supreme Court, however, that proof was not sufficient to stop his execution because of the late stage of his appeal.
* Virginia executed Roger Keith Coleman in 1992. Coleman's appellate attorneys misread the statute governing the time frame for submitting an appeal and filed their brief one day too late. The Virginia state courts held that the one-day-late filing was the equivalent of no filing at all and refused to review his issues. The federal courts subsequently held that Coleman could not raise a federal claim because he had waived his state review. Finally, the Supreme Court determined that Coleman could not complain that it was his attorneys who erred because he was not entitled to an attorney in the first place. No court ever fully reviewed the evidence of his innocence prior to his execution.

CAPITAL CASES INVOLVE A HEIGHTENED RISK OF ERROR:

* The death penalty has become a politicized issue that is commonly used in campaigns for judges and district attorneys who are elected to their positions. Those judges and prosecutors are motivated to sentence as many defendants to death as they possibly can to maintain a record of being “tough on crime.”
* Due to the high emotions surrounding murder cases, there is great pressure on law enforcement officials to solve homicides quickly. Such pressure may lead to misconduct by the investigators and prosecutors.
* Murders frequently lack eyewitnesses, forcing the prosecutors to use less reliable sources for evidence, such as jailhouse snitches, accomplices looking for reduced sentences and coerced confessions from defendants.
* During the jury selection process, any person opposed to capital punishment is dismissed by the prosecutors. Not only do these “death-qualified” juries exclude an extremely large proportion of the population, but they are also more likely to convict during the guilt/innocence phase of the trial. (S. Gross, “The Risks of Death: Why Erroneous Convictions are Common in Capital Cases,” 1996)
* Due to the scarce resources of a criminal defendant’s attorneys, they often must decide whether it would be better to risk the client's conviction, yet save his life, by spending more time preparing for the sentencing phase. If this preparation occurs at the expense of an investigation that could yield evidence that would produce an acquittal, it heightens the risk of a wrongful conviction. (R. Dieter, “Innocence and the Death Penalty: The Increasing Danger of Execution the Innocent,” Death Penalty Information Center, 1997).

how often is it discovered that repeat offenders and admitted murderers were somehow 'innocent all alaong?

So we only do this to the *really bad* criminals. So it's not a human rights issue anymore.

This really is idiocy.

Another answer is -- once they're dead, not near often enough. Few people have the time and resources to investigate the cases of dead people.

and yeah, if you think the US hasn't tortured any a-rabs since the dumbass 'war on terror' began, i think you're fairly deluded. Hell, right here at home we hear about gumshoes torturing two-bit criminals.

Anyway, the 8th amendment says we won't be seeing Roger's proposal put into action any time soon anyway unless we see an amendment passed. Somehow I don't see that happening, so I think everyone can relax.

i am favor of the death penalty depending on the circumstances. For instance, when they catch these white supremacist slugs that offed the federal judge's family. I'm pretty glad that law is on the books actually.

Florida convicted Leo Jones on March 28,1998 - Jones was convicted of murdering a police officer in Jacksonville, Florida. Jones signed a confession after several hours of police interrogation, but he later claimed the confession was coerced. In the mid-1980s, the policeman who arrested Jones and the detective who took his confession were forced out of uniform for ethical violations. The policeman was later identified by a fellow officer as an "enforcer" who had used torture. Many witnesses came forward pointing to another suspect in the case.

I am against the death penalty but that's another thread so I'll quit talking about it on this one.

What? I didn't say that and wouldn't say that. But I'm dead against it, dontcha know.

This is more interesting to me, and I think the heart of the matter. Do animals have as much of a right to live as humans do? What gives humans the right to kill animals in order to save ourselves? Let's forget flaws in the system, and forget any unnecessary experiments. Lets say that each and every animal that has died in the lab has saved a human life, just for the sake of argument.

Can we justify that? I think we certainly can, just on the grounds of the natural instinct for self preservation. Would I sacrifice my cats to save my mother's life? You betcha. Would I sacrifice your cats? I'd certainly try. This is my mother we're talking about!

But that negates the whole point of medicine!

the point of medicine is to heal the sick, not to prolong life, esp. if it makes that life not worth living anyway.

I fail to see the practical difference.

I am talking more about today's modern health care, where we have prolonged life for the elderly but not necessarily made it quality.

Is it permissible, morally or ethically or whatever, to kill an animal in order to save human life? Yea or nay?

Is it permissible, morally or ethically or whatever, to kill an animal in order to save human life? Yea or nay?

depends on the situation! if an animal is attacking a human, sure! otherwise, no.

hstencil, so you believe that all animal testing is wrong regardless? I didn't get that impression from your talk about your brother.

not unless it actually proves something. if its superfluous, then no.

I understand there are complexities, but there's no way to work them out unless there's some kind of ground to stand on. I say, testing on animals is okay, but the way in which it's done is often deplorable.

I said it depends on the situation! tho personally I see no need for either.

kenan, sometimes issues are complex and can't be divided into black-and-white. you should be thankful not everyone thinks that way (our president surely does!).

I suspect that no one is saying that killing monkeys is okay because no one believes, empirically, that killing a monkey *will* lead to a cure for AIDS. There's grey area, and grey area should never be filled with cruelty, and I understand that POV.

OTOH, we need to know. We need to know because we are who we are. We're humans, and we are made human by, among other things, our need to know. It's not just animal inquisitiveness -- we need it. We need to explain our world to ourselves and each other, every aspect of it, through science or religion or whatever else we come up with.

Our need to care is up there too, but I believe our need to care about animals is superceded by our need to care about each other. Or it should be. I find all this talk about "when it's your time" and "when you're old enough" a bit horrifying. These are people we're talking about, not cats or dogs or monkeys or any other animal that we tend to project human qualities on that don't actually have human qualities. People. Ours. Mine and your families. Old or young, quality life or shitty life, I don't see how that matters. People are more important, because they're people, and we're all people, and that matters supremely.

We have these big-ass brains, and every one of us has trouble navigating them. We all have to draw lines to make sense of things. I'm not dogmatic about religious ideas or even scientific ideas (not to mention any of the far stupider things that people get dogmatic about, like music or movies), but I feel it's fair to be dogmatic about the fact that people are the most important things on the planet.

I feel some of you balk at that. Why? We're the only creatures that have evolved from this planet that are capable of ruining it, and we have to deal with that. But we're also the only creatures capable of using and caring for and stewarding it intelligently. We're it, folks -- the concrescense of evolution. We're the big dogs. We rule. We decide what happens, because we're the only things capable of deciding anything at all.

So. Do we take animal life to preserve human life? Of course we do. We always have. It's a bit like asking, "Do we exchange money for goods and services?" You can argue that we shouldn't, but it's futile and foolish to do so.

But just like there's a responsible way to run a business, there's also a responsible way to test drugs on animals. We aren't always practicing it, and cruelty happens, but jumping to the conclusion that animals have the same rights as we do is jumping to a large, faraway, and uninformed conclusion. It's denying our humanity, in a way. If animals are as important as we are, then what are we but animals?

Call me a romantic, but I do not fancy myself an animal. Not your garden-variety sort, anyway. I'm the most special goddamn animal EVER, and so are you. And while there's no reason to kill an animal just to make a buck by putting some useless drug on the market, there's also no reason to *not* kill that monkey when it may well do some good. There are good people doing animal research, you know. People that genuinely want to further science and save human life, and they should be respected, not demonized.

Human beings produce enough food every year to feed every human being alive and plenty plenty more. Unfortunately, certain sections of human society (yes, including me) insist on guzzling a ridiculous share of it and binning another ridiculous share. Bullshit overpopulation theories are a fast track to eugenics, as far as I can see. Animal Rights advocates are best served by arguments that leave out hysterical misanthropy, Calum's views on this actually seem reasonable and balanced to me.

When Malthus did his pioneering work on population, British society ended up with no concept of unemployment for over 50 years. Rather than look at the unemployed as being victims of a badly organised economic system, the chattering classes just tutted about there being too many of them. Plus ca change, eh?

Regardless of the rights and wrongs, and yr "passion on this subject" the smackdown you received from ally on the manic street preachers and er anarchist/protest threads represents the heights/depths of pizwnag3 on this board, easily.

FWIW, I kind of agrree w/you that vivisection is wrong, but have found in the past (not on this thread, from what I've read of it) that the way you express yr feelings abt this to occasionally veer a little close to the animal rights = human rights, vivisection = nazi holocaust wing of bonkers animal rights dogma for my tastes.

I come from a speciest point of view. I accept that we are the most evolved of all animals. However, in saying this, I would also say that true evolution comes from compassion. I am not sure how we are quite as evolved from other animals as we like to assume we are.

Oh sure, we're inventors/ communicators/ doctors.... but we are also pollutors/ torturers/ war mongerers. How evolved is THAT? Do we see apes taking their kin and locking them up and torturing them for days on end? For PLEASURE?

I do accept that the world is over crowded. Or at least parts of it.

I feel that in the case of vivisection compassion should win out. We, as human beings, should accept that animals deserve to be treated with the compassion that we CAN afford to them as this evolved being. We should also accept that there is no arguing with pain.

All mammals feel the same pain as us. It is that simple. So torturing a beagle puppy by forcing it to digest weed killer for weeks on end in a toxicology experiment... well to me that dog is feeling the same sort of reaction and pain that we ourselves would.

And when you consider that billions of primates, dogs, cats etc have died to try and find a cure for cancer or HIV - well that is bull shit in my opinion. How many more? We nearly had India's primates extinct until the country slapped a ban on us exporting their wildlife to medical labs. That is how uncaring the West is.

As I said, charities such as Lord Dowling have made forward steps in medical research without the use of animals and that charity argues that cancer research can be done without animal models. However, some practioners have either not moved with the times or simply want the cheaper option. A dog VS stem cell research on a computer...

I don't want to live to 120 because a lot of apes were tortured for me, or for anyone else. I really don't accept that. My father died of cancer, if having him back meant the slaughter of another 100 apes in painful, horrific experiments I would not be interested.

Testing things of humans is not such a bad idea providing it is the final product. I'll try a possible cancer curing pill, sure.

We don't need to inject humans for weeks on end with weed killer, that would be barbaric.

I am also against the death penalty.

We, as human beings, should accept that animals deserve to be treated with the compassion that we CAN afford to them as this evolved being. We should also accept that there is no arguing with pain.

given that humans have enough trouble treating each other with compassion etc.

and there's no arguing with the inevitability of pain in life, though that may seem at odds with the idea that people shouldn't seek to consciously inflict serious pain on anyone or any animal for ANY reason (other than out of retribution though this too is in some doubt), which is a belief i'm sure the vast majority of people would ULTIMATELY support when listening to reason.