Thanks for providing this link.Originally Posted by slartibartfast
I must admit at first I was very skeptical.
I am always very skeptical of undercover animal rights activists-Primarily because of the "undercover exposure" of allegedly poor care in the Silver Springs Monkeys that was made by Alex Pacheco during the political conception of PETA. For further information see
http://www.animalrights.net/archives...00/000035.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw...0402100912.asp
That being said--from the reviews that I have read of this documentary, etc. this does look like a genuine exposure of neglect and animal torture. Note: I haven't seen the actual footage yet and I don't get HBO currently.
And this wasn't PETA...it was a different group.
A couple of points to consider:
(1) This wasn’t at a lab...this was at a kennel before they go to the lab. Universities lab are constantly inspected.
(2) The universities that continued to buy from this kennel after allegations surfaced did a grave disservice to all biomedical research. Note none of these universities involved (University of Missouri at Columbia, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, and Oregon State University) were top notch receivers of NIH funding.
(3) I don’t see anything suggesting this is a widespread problem-maybe it was mentioned in the documentary. This is like going into the worse public school documenting the problems and suggesting all public schools are bad. Or uncovering bad reptile care and saying that all herps should never be keep as pets. While they did uncover animal torture and abuse, their was a phenomenon going on in this part of Missouri that was well-known and rip for investigation—animals had been disappearing for awhile in this state so much so that it had been nick-named the “Steal Me State” by animal welfare groups.
(4) Dogs are not used that much in biomedical research—rodents are by far the most used model organism in research. However, one reason Dogs are useful though because they have kidneys that function similar to ours while rodents do not. An important part of science is argumentation-or the justification of a model system for the in-depth study a phenomenon.
(5) Model organisms-from yeast to monkeys-will be needed for quite some time in research. People who say things like “experiment on the convicts” really have no idea about how modern biomedical sciences progress. You can’t make a convict with knock-out gene with current technology in an ethical way. You’d be making a knock-out son or daughter of a convict. But it is practically feasible to make a knock-out or transgenic mouse to study a cell signaling pathway. You wouldn’t have the advantage of large numbers in humans.
In vitro research is useful, but not all questions can be addressed in vitro.
Computer simulations are only as good as the info you put into them- you get that info by doing research on cells and organisms.
This basic research is important for developing the models that allow pre-clinical and clinical science to investigate fruitful leads. I will take evidence-based western medicine over quack medicine any day (even if it is expensive!)
(6) Ideally, one would hope even the animal rights extremists would serve a purpose in achieving some sort of “compassionate balance” by keeping researchers honest in their welfare practices and considerate in using animals. To a certain extent this is true. Generally, our county seems to work well when both sides have some say and work together for a compromise. This group seems to genuinely uncover a real abuse and weakness in the current system and should be commended.
Other groups are so extreme--they are not rationale and they are willing to murder for their agenda. Some of these groups fund or are terrorists. I’ve heard that Homeland Security puts Eco-terrorism and animal liberation groups as a larger risk than Islamic extremist groups (maybe not in scale of attack, but certainly in frequency of attacks). These extremists serve no greater good in my opinion.
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