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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (106213)	6/18/2005 2:59:16 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

Perhaps if you stopped debating how many conservatives hang out here, you would have time for the more serious article. I That is hardly a reasonable remark, as you will recognize if you think about it. You were the one who said that this thread was mostly dominated by conservatives (without any attribution, I might note); I spent about two minutes responding to what in my view was (and is) an inaccurate statemement. You have a penchant for putting forth a point of view, then when questioned about it putting up lengthy articles which, when I do go to look at them, sometimes (often?) turn out to be only marginally related to the issue, or in which any relevant information is buried deep in the articles. Then you criticize people for not reading them. I suggest that what you do is do some of the work yourself. Rather than just referring people to a website or lengthy article, take the effort to find and quote those passages which you think are relevant and cogent, then give the cite the the article so that people who wonder whether what is being quoted is in context and consistent with the overall article can go there and look if they wish. I suspect that if I put forth a position and referred you to a lengthy article or book on the net, you would choose not to read it, either. But it you want me to do that in future, I certainly can, with the surety that you will read all of the articles or sites I refer you to. Fair enough?

To: Grainne who wrote (106213)	6/18/2005 3:07:14 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

To answer your question, yes, I do believe that it is possible to produce safe and effective medicines to combat known and future diseases without any animal testing whatsoever. Well, we will differ. I don't believe it is possible. Citing disasters which arose despite animal testing is completely irrelevant to the question. (And I think the term 'disasters' in the article is very inaccurate, but I'll address that in a separate post.) I have not claimed, and don't, that animal testing is perfect. I'm perfectly prepared to believe that products can get through the screen of animal testing and still have negative side effects. The real question is this: are there any drugs that have looked very good in laboratory tests and through the whole development process, which if animal tests weren't performed would have no reason not to be put on the market, but which animal tests have shown to be tocic or to have damaging side effects which couln't have been detected without the animal tests? If there have been any such drugs, then my point is made. If there have been none such, then your point prevails. I don't know, not being a doctor or medical researcher, and you probably don't know either. The person who would know is Holly, who is very astute medically, but you have banned her from the thread so her knowledge and wisdom aren't available to clarify this point (unless she happens to read this post and sends me a relevant PM which I can quote here.)

To: Grainne who wrote (106213)	6/18/2005 3:19:54 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

But here is something to get the debate started, perhaps: Fifty Disasters of Animal Testing The authors of that article use disaster in a very different way from how I do. Just a few examples. I haven't read all 50, but have skimmed, so the fact that I don't mention any other specific cases is in no way an indication that I agree with them. For example, their #2, I wouldn't call the difficulty to detect smoking related cancers in mice a disaster; even if those tests had been successful, it wouldn't have stopped smoking, as we see today from the number of people who continue to smoke despite very clear evidence that causes many horrid diseases. And if animal testing hadn't been done at all, there's no evidence that people would have stopped smoking sooner than they did (if they did). It's clear that the tobacco companies knew that tobacco was carcinogenic long before the public got that information, whether or not they used animal studies. Their #7: I highly doubt that the absence of animal models showing a relationship between high cholesterol/high fat diets and heart disease affected the eating habits of very many, if indeed any, people. On #18, it may just mean that they used the wrong animals to test the drugs on. Similarly with other examples where animal testing failed to show up results that later showed up in humans. As I said in my other post, I don't claim that animal testing is perfect. The relevant question under discussion is whether we can create safe and effective drugs without any animal testing. None of these examples address that question. The only thing that will answer that question is to show that in NO case has animal testing kept off the market a drug which looked good in all its other tests and which, but for negative results shown by the animal testing, would have been put on the market and subsequently caused human deaths or dire consequences. If there were no such cases, I would agree with your position. But I believe that there are drugs that would have been released but for animal testing, and which if released would have caused significant disasters. That's the issue, not whether animal testing is perfect, which is what the "50 disasters" addresses and which is a claim I have never made and would never make.