Animal Testing

[wonderwiccan]

Products that were tested on animals are unethical, right? It seems clear to me only in the obvious cases. But I get confused the more obscure the example is. There are companies that don't test on animals, for either individual ingredients or the finished product. However, what if they are using products that they know are safe specifically

Comments

[stephenhatesyou]

if a 'vegan' ingredient happened to be tested on animals fifty years ago, i'd consider it done and okay. five years ago, i'd probably not, because there must be other options...whether the FDA approves it or not

[xchristinax]

We're more intelligent. That's not debatable thing. We USE our intelligence for bad things sometimes, but that doesn't make us NOT intelligent. Hitler was a genius. Doesn't mean he used it for good.

I think the concept you're looking for is 'innocent,' which we certainly aren't.

[stephenhatesyou]

oh, i never questioned our innocence. that's not debatable at all.

but i still don't feel we're MORE intelligent than other life forms. if you're going to say we can do math problems and other animals can't, well, then that's certainly true. but i don't measure intellgence by doing math problems.

[xchristinax]

How the hell do you measure intelligence? You can think intelligence doesn't MATTER and that all species are equal regardless, but you can't just say humans aren't more intelligent. Our brains are more advanced.

[stephenhatesyou]

intelligence isn't how much you know or what...it's how you use it. it's 'being intelligent'. which we pretty much suck at.

again, though...we can do calculus and shrimp probably can't. or at least choose not to.

[ushitomo]

heh, I'm imagining a calculator that calculates derivatives and integrals made up of a whole fucklot of shrimp brains.

[stephenhatesyou]

well, you know...maybe in the deepest of oceans...

[turil]

Intelligence is scientifically considered to be the ability to adapt to new situations and learn from experiences.

[vgnwtch]

That makes some of the most scientifically-minded people I've ever met deeply "unintelligent" - I've known people be absolute whizzes at physics and pure mathematics, yet freak when put in new situations and never learn from the mistakes in their personal lives. My understanding is that there's no real consensus on what constitutes "intelligence", and that the closer you come to defining it, the more slippery the concept gets.

~_~

[foreverquatre]

Humans have a different kind of intelligence than other animals, as far as we know. We think differently, but that doesn't make us the most intelligent or more advanced by default. We simply developed as was necessary due to environmental and social needs.

[wonderwiccan]

50 years ago is okay but not 5 years ago. This is where my confusion comes from. Where is the limit, for you? How do you "draw the line", so to speak?

the line"

[turil]

Well, for me, the line is drawn when the human testing has shown a drug to be safe. In other words, the first humans to have takes the drug had no idea if the testing on non-human animal models was translatable to the human body, so these first humans were, in effect, doing the drig testing on themselves. They may have felt less afraid of a harmful reaction because some other creature had been force fed the drug, but really the non-human testing was mostly superfluous, since it's not reliable.

So, me? I'd only take a drug that had been tested on humans for many, many years. And I generally avoid corporate-produced drugs as much as possible, since they tend to fudge test results and squash complaints from patients. Drugs that have been around for centuries are more my style (mostly drugs that come directly from plants and minerals and such).

Re: the "line"

[turil]

...way to early in my morning to be posting... Sorry about all the typos and gramatical errors!

Re: the line"

[invisibleheroes]

I like you! You have a sensible and useful outlook. Many years of testing is probably best, too -- look at vioxx, for example.

[stephenhatesyou]

five years ago we had too much technology to use other methods. i consider fifty years ago still pretty much in the dark ages.