23 Rabbits Liberated from Massachusetts Laboratory

[Sevenseas]

As for the Holocaust comment: All I'll say is that the Jews weren't imprisoned for the sole reason that people wanted to conduct experiments on them.Well this would be irrelevant for the point of the concentration camp example, which was that it is not the moral obligation of others to come up with alternatives: it is the moral obligation of the experimenters to stop what they're doing.

But of course, finding alternatives might be the most effective way to reduce animal testing, so it could be an obligation to the animals to find alternatives.


Animal testing, on the other hand, doesn't happen for purely malicious reasons, so while you may disagree with it, others will find it acceptable from a teleological point of view.There are a lot of things you can accept from a "teleological" point of view (by which I assume you mean "ends justify the means" - teleology seems a somewhat confusing term here IMO) - like murdering researchers to reduce animal testing. Maybe there is something questionable in a teleological point of view.

[WonderRandy]

MOD NOTE:

Linking to sites that document the treatment of laboratory animals, and the efforts to liberate them is fine. But PLEASE warn people if you are linking to a site that contains graphic pictures of torture, abuse, experimentation, blood, etc...

thanks

[Snow White]

It'd have to be a cheaper method. Why would they spend more if they don't care about the animals?
That's what I was implying by saying "able to pay for it", since the reality of it is that some people in academic research settings work full time on half a salary.


Well this would be irrelevant for the point of the concentration camp example, which was that it is not the moral obligation of others to come up with alternatives: it is the moral obligation of the experimenters to stop what they're doing.

But of course, finding alternatives might be the most effective way to reduce animal testing, so it could be an obligation to the animals to find alternatives.
Maybe not, but it's a fallacious comparison nonetheless. Anyhow, if you insist on making an argument from deontology, it would be any rational person's duty to seek a solution. It's not as though it's inherently irreconcilable with a utilitarian approach, but someone needs to fill that gap if the mainstream guys won't do it because they have their own set of duties...

[Sevenseas]

Maybe not, but it's a fallacious comparison nonetheless.I guess we'd have to agree to disagree about that. There is often a tendency to find comparisons fallacious when they violate against our beloved speciesist worldview. (Not that there really was a direct comparison here.)


It's not as though it's inherently irreconcilable with a utilitarian approach,I don't know what you're referring to by this.

[Snow White]

I guess we'd have to agree to disagree about that. There is often a tendency to find comparisons fallacious when they violate against our beloved speciesist worldview. (Not that there really was a direct comparison here.)

I wasn't talking about anything remotely speciesist. Free people from a concentration camp and get them out of the country, and that would have been the end of any Endlösung-related activities. Free animals, and the company will go out and buy more.


I don't know what you're referring to by this.
Whoops, sorry... What I meant is that it may be possible to please both someone who sees it as their duty to protect animals and someone who is trying to, say, find a vaccine for HIV - which currently involves animals, but if someone were to find a way around that, their aims needn't necessarily be at odds.

One thing I forgot to mention: People who don't know how to design studies properly shouldn't be allowed near animals. Not sure how one would enforce that, but given the amount of studies that I've come across that shouldn't have gotten through the peer review stage, there's room for improvement...

[janie]

MOD NOTE:

Linking to sites that document the treatment of laboratory animals, and the efforts to liberate them is fine. But PLEASE warn people if you are linking to a site that contains graphic pictures of torture, abuse, experimentation, blood, etc...

thanks

I went back to look at the link, because I didn't know there were graphic pictures. Then I saw the ones at the end. I'm really sorry about that!!

[WonderRandy]

no worries... I just think people need to see those pictures when they are ready, not by accident... they can be very traumatic for some of our more sensitive members.

[DieselAmy]

Unfortunately, domestic rabbits have had most of the wildness bred out of them. All but one of mine don't even flinch when they hear the dogs bark. Domestic buns have lost their ability to differentiate toxic plants from non-toxic ones. The buns we know as domestic in the U.S. are not even indigenous to this country....they're bred from European rabbits.

I wonder, too, what will become of the bunnies they managed to secure. Rabbits are very delicate. They can easily die of stress. If suddenly put into a group they will fight, sometimes to the death. I appreciate the gesture made, and I understand that it was largely symbolic, but I wish more care would have been taken to ensure that the rabbits freed would have every chance of a good life.

Agreed. Probably the best we can hope for is that the released rabbits were all male (somewhat implied in the original post), so at least they might only die of starvation, weather, predators (including dogs and cats), cars, and disease, and not merely overpopulate the area such that they fight so badly with each other they all die a slow death from the untreated abscessing wounds. We see it happen all the time with colonies formed from domestic rabbits released to the wild.

Most lab animals are not even physically like their wild cousins. Being a big white rabbit makes you stand out/unable to hide from predators, assuming your instincts haven't been bred away so much that you even know to hide in the first place. Since they are not the same species as the wild cottontails in the U.S., though, they will not be able to breed with each other.

I too agree that something needs to be done, but share similar concerns that this "freedom" isn't necessarily all that great of a prospect. Finding cheaper and more reliable scientific alternatives is probably the only thing that will speak loudly enough in the industry.

[Irizary]

Anxiety study

In this behavioral study, a large piece of hardware is sewn into the backs of young monkeys and a remote controlled glider is flown over their heads to induce stress while their heart rates are monitored. She claims this will teach us about children with depression and anxiety disorders. In defense of this project she asserts that it has shown that some monkeys are more timid than others. This particular study was featured on Good Morning America as part of a series "You Paid For It!" about the waste of tax dollars on ridiculous research.

Exercise study

Cameron claims to be learning about the link between exercise and brain function. Out of the group of monkeys being used for the study, some are regularly placed on treadmills and others are forced to remain sedentary in their cages. She then gives cognitive tests to both sets of monkeys to see if the monkeys that exercise perform better. At a talk at Lake Oswego High, she said that we know that people who exercise have better brain function. She said that other lifestyle factors of people who exercise might also be contributing to their brain health so we need to clarify the relationship between exercise and the brain. She said what she has discovered is that exercise improves brain function.
http://whitecoatwelfare.org/cameron.shtml

Clinical study with volunteers are a clear alternative to both of these.

[purrpelle]

just a question... what is the reasoning behind setting the animals loose rather than rehabbing and rehoming- or at the least, seeing they get medical care before being turned out?

[Sevenseas]

what is the reasoning behind setting the animals loose rather than rehabbing and rehomingProbably the unavailability of homes to rehome them to.

[Snow White]

http://whitecoatwelfare.org/cameron.shtml

Clinical study with volunteers are a clear alternative to both of these.

It's impossible to tell based on the descriptions on that page, since the methods aren't given in detail. For instance, we don't know whether the monkeys in the first example were inbred or whether they were just testing the animals and then genotyping them. The second example sounds as though it could have been done with volunteers, unless there's some key information missing.

From her site:

Her investigations, which involve immunocytochemistry, in situ hybridization and microarray gene analyses...
She's looking at gene expression, which means she's using some sort of tissue from the monkeys.

I was referring to things like in vitro pharmacology using brain slices from inbred rats to screen compounds though. I suppose some methods already involve using xenopus toad eggs transfected with receptor mRNA any maybe structural genomics and interactomics will reduce the number of compounds that turn out to be useless once they're screened.

[gaya]

It just occurred to me that that wasn't a great example, since cultured hybridoma cells are used to produce antibodies, although animal cells are still needed to start the initial culture. The problem with antibodies is that they're not directly encoded for in the genome and require gene rearrangements within the cells of the immune system, so you can't just take a sequence and put it in some bacteria without challenging some sort of immune system first. I don't know whether predicting the sequence you'd need to bind a certain protein, making synthetic DNA and using MOs to produce the protein is feasible both as far as technology and cost are concerned. We'll see where genome science goes.
I don't think it is a bad example. While my knowledge of immunology in general is pretty weak, I imagine the sacrifice of animals is great for any one given culture...of what, thousands? millions even?

[Irizary]

The second one, I understand the only thing she was really doing was keeping some monkeys sedentary alone in their cages (which they had been their whole lives anyway), vs. other ones who she was forcing to run on small treadmills (which they were freaked out about). Then she made them perform the cognitive tests. The reason for doing it on monkeys was so she could isolate the other lifestyle factors that humans have. But humans also don't have the extreme stress, depression, and frustration of isolation, force, abuse every minute of the day. They're unwilling victims at every step of the process - from sitting in the cages to wrangling them out of the cages by their necks. I just think it's a no-brainer that studies like this can and are being done on humans just fine. That fact is not making the monkey research less prevalent. Because the vivisectors have no ethical issue with using animals, there's no reason for them to do it any differently.

[Pescas]

I think that the bunnies were probably scared to death out in the "surrounding fields" and probably died pretty soon..They've never been outside before, right? But I guess they have some instincts..like mating.

[Irizary]

Pescas- it sounds as though the 23 were taken and homed, but a few more escaped? There was something in the thread about this.

I agree it would have been very scary. But I still think that the relatively quick death that probably awaited them outdoors was better than the lingering, torturous death in the lab. If you look at some pics and read what happens to rabbits in this or any lab, I believe that it's a fate worse than death.

Had they remained, their bodies would have been restrained in headlocks, their skin would have been shaved off so they could be injected with various compounds - and then when their experiments were concluded they would have been terminally bled, meaning they would be cut and left to bleed until death.

[Lord Hillyer]

I applaud the noble spirit of the liberators, but I also agree that such acts must be done intelligently and with forethought. Once the heroics are over, there is the more thankless and less glamourous duty to ensure that the animals are humanely treated and cared for, and that the local environment is respected.

[Pescas]

Yeah, I too think it was for the animals best.