Animal Rights or Animal Welfare?

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Originally Posted by Sapphire7

Thats why I hate hypocrites. If I could rewind the ways of us people then I would, for the good of living things and the good of us.. we're just too evil nowadays... And do we have a choice to live how we do nowadays? I buy and wear, and use anything thats has not tested on animals... And my ancestors may not have known as much as I did now about how we should love all life in all sorts of forms, and I live my live well, and do good for life. And thats the best I can offer.. and Im sorry if its hypocritcal of me...

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I didn't mean to attack you as being a hypocrite. If you are truly trying to live life as bast you can, and make an effort to follow your own beliefs, then I give you a lot of credit; many can not do that.
I think that the worst thing about the world, is greed. I am all for people attaining their full potential; amassing wealth, getting compensated monetarily for their time, talent, and work. But there has to be a place to draw the line; otherwise we turn from parts of this ecosystem, to parasites on it.. and parasites always harm, if not kill, their host.. we need to find ways to be more symbiotic and less parasitic, if you know what I mean.

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Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls

Ah no.....we can't clone a kidney...or would you like to provide a reputable source of medical/scientific literature to support this?

and human cloning has not been substantiated as of yet. We can duplicate a segment of DNA......that's very different than what most people think of as cloning.

YouTube is NOT a reputable source.

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:2cent:


Indeed - you will probably get more accurate 'science' from an episode of Smallville or Buffy.

The only way at present to 'clone' a kidney is to clone an entire pig/goat/snake/human and remove a kidney from them. There has been some early work at getting cell cultures to form basic tissues but whole organs are decades if not longer away.

The ethics of animal research and animal welfare in general are close to my heart. You certainly *can* formulate a consistent moral argument against all animal research but most people just do so on a basic emotional level.

If Sapphire 7 is a vegetarian who wears no leather, does not buy anything containing animal products and does not himself use the products of animal research (antibiotics, painkillers etc) then I apologise to him for the slur.

I think we have to be more nuanced about this. Many animal experiments are totally unjustifiable eg: cosmetic testing. Others need to be carefully controlled and carried out to keep any suffering to an absolute minimum. I think it matters a great deal what the animal actually *is*. I am absolutely opposed to all invasive testing on primates for instance. A cockroach is not a rabbit is not a dog is not a macaque.

Generally speaking we should be far far more disgusted by the ways in which animals are raised for food than their use in the lab. The standards in which most animals are factory farmed for food in western countries are vile beyond belief. To decry the use of rats and rabbits in potentially life saving research whilst simultaneously turning a blind eye to the suffering of billions of battery farmed chickens grown to keep supermarket prices competitive is moral hypocrisy of the worst kind IMHO.

To return to the original question, I think it is the right of all animals to be kept to decent standards of welfare because that is the moral contract we enter into when we keep them - be it as pet, for food, wool or to test a new monoclonal antibody on. The other rights of an animal depend on the animal in question. A chimpanzee or gorilla for instance is the moral equivalent of a human child, whilst a sea urchin is clearly not. Cats, dogs and ball pythons fit in the middle of that spectrum.:2cent:

Animal Research also benefits veterinary care....the more we know about animals the better we are able to care for them.

To, um, get back to the original subject (sorry, I was the on that digressed.) I believe strongly in animal walfare; there are few things that upset me more than seeing a neglected or suffering animal that is in this state due to human delinquency. But rights.. I am not so sure about this. Granted, I do believe that there should be laws protecting animals against abuse; purpetrating humans should be punished for this. I see humans basically as mentally evolved animals; and after meeting more and more people through my job, who just want to shuck their responsibilities, I am not so sure we are all created equal after all; definately, humans are not all equal in the intelligence category! But there are a few things that bother me.. say, how abuse against a canine officer is considered as much of a crime, as abusing a human officer.. but then, killing a pig for human consumption is not akin to murdering a farmer, is it? People basically use animals as tools for their own advancement, and this creates a whole garden of topics that are ripe for debate; is it OK to consume cattle but then morally wrong to eat horses?
Humans have evolved into the most intelligent (at least most technologically so) creature on the planet; yet we are destroying the planet.. so who is the smartest animal here...?

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Originally Posted by Sapphire7

If we can clone a perfect lamb that live 2yrs before it died back in the early 1991 or 1992 than they can certainly clone a human by now... and they can test on that thing... Animal DNA is different than human DNA we cannot sufficiently test on them, and its just not right...

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I don't want to give the impression that I am picking on you so I apologise if it comes across that way but I think this important.

I'm not sure that you understand at all what cloning means. If you clone a human (and I agree I am sure 'they' can certainly do so, after enough tries) then you end up with a human embryo. There is no way to grow a kidney or liver form that embryo without developing it into a human foetus just like any other. The moral status of that is I think best left to a whole other area of the internet!

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Originally Posted by kurgan

I don't want to give the impression that I am pickign on you so I apoligise if it comes across that way but I think this important.

I'm not sure that you understand at all what cloning means. If you clone a human (and I agree I am sure 'they' can certainly do so, after enough tries) then you end up with a human embryo. There is no way to grow a kidney or liver form that embryo without developing it into a human foetus just like any other.!

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No way yet.....Advances in Therapeutic Cloning+Tissue Engineering may change that someday.

Basically the principle....

You take some somatic (body) cells remove the nucleus put it in an exnucleated egg (one without a nucleus), do some reprogramming, generate some embryonic stem (ES) cells

That's when the tissue engineering takes over.....using chemicals, biosynthetic scaffolds, etc. it may some day be able to grow a organ genetically identical to a person to prevent organ rejection.

Under this scheme, the ES cells wouldn't need to develop into a fetus that can sense pain or make a conscious thought.

It is a possibility......but even if this is accomplish it wont mean that we will not need animal research.

I think we are a long way off being able to grow an organ from those ESCs - if I was a betting man I'd day 20 years for a liver, 30 or 40 for a kidney or heart.

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Originally Posted by kurgan

I think we are a long way off being able to grow an organ from those ESCs - if I was a betting man I'd day 20 years for a liver, 30 or 40 for a kidney or heart.

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I Totally agree....but the idea has not been disproven...in fact it's only beginning to be explored.

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Originally Posted by Mendel's Balls

Do you support animal rights or animal welfare?

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Well, rights to a point. I mean, you wouldn't give an anaconda the right to vote or own property, would you? :P

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Originally Posted by JasonGranger

Well, rights to a point. I mean, you wouldn't give an anaconda the right to vote or own property, would you? :P

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Hey; I would definately rent an apartment if he agreed to pay the rent! He'd be doing better than some of the tenants we manage!
Now voting.. I don't know if they can read or not.