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  1. #1

    Animal Testing and Ethics

    Pranams,

    Recently on another forum I opened this discussion with some western atheist who usually attach themselves to science. I have no problem with Atheism, in fact there is a good amount of integrity, but when ones world view is only based on science or empirical study then I feel the heart is in danger of becoming to hard with so much logic and trivial facts.

    I opened the question to see what the general opinion of atheists was on animal testing. Sadly I did not get any and I mean no empathy or compassion but was ridiculed as being a backward Theist, which I found odd because I did not bring religion into the equation.

    I said that animal testing is now very closely related to industry, so where profit is involved then it looses the ethic of science. I was told that science has no ethics. I was also told that in science animals are not considered sentient, I find this shocking. I was also ridiculed because I asked if there was any scientific research into we as humans as the superior species who has a natural right to exploit our environment, they say such a science is not existent because the very thought of that is a joke, it perplexes me. Science in many ways seems to be detaching us from nature, as if we are a separate entity.

    I am not anti science or anti research, but still there is a conscious ethic that the sadhaka has that perhaps the scientist is overlooking.

    Even though hurting any sentient being is akarma, negative action, perhaps some experimentation on animals serves a greater purpose, I am open but there does need to be a line which is not crossed and i feel that line has been crossed.

    Any thoughts or comments would be helpful.

    Ys

    md

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    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Namaste ji,

    The question of animal consciousness was definitively settled in science on 7 July 2012. Scientists from all over the world met together and concluded that all of the scientific evidence tells us that other creatures are also conscious (just as we've always known). They are aware of their environments and even "exhibit intentional behaviors." The document presenting their findings is known as "The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness." The Declaration can easily be found through google at reputable science and news websites. It was widely reported in the news at the time. Thus there is nothing controversial in saying that animals are sentient (conscious) among real scientists.

    As for the question of the morality of animal testing, I think it's worth observing that the Mahābhārata (in book 13) tells us to treat other creatures as we would like to be treated, to look upon them as if they were our own children, and to regard ahiṁsā (nonviolence) toward other beings as our highest duty. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa also says that it is right to treat animals as if they are our own children. There are many other passages similar to these. In my opinion, even though we might gain scientific knowledge by experimenting on human infants, it would be wrong to do so and I personally think that experimenting on animals is no different. Besides, there are a number of scientific and charitable organizations that are moving away from animal testing and using other methods of finding ways of curing diseases. I recently discovered that most breast cancer research organizations in the U.S. no longer fund animal testing. (I made a list of which ones don't fund animal testing and which ones do.)

    praṇām
    Last edited by anucarh; 07 September 2014 at 11:46 PM. Reason: changed "of" to "on"
    śrīmate nārāyaṇāya namaḥ

  3. #3

    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Pranams anucarh Prabhu ji,

    Thank you for your input, I found this

    http://fcmconference.org/img/Cambrid...sciousness.pdf

    For me this wraps up and more or less ends the debate that animals are sentient and have consciousness and its not exclusive to humans. Nothing different from what Guru, Sadhu and Shastra has been saying since the start.


    We do live in a very complicated society now and for all the solutions that science has made I do feel there has been some negative impact on our environment and our way of life.

    I sometimes offer conscious reflections to Atheists and who lean on Science to support their view, but there is a propaganda that science is allowed to make mistakes and use what ever resource available due to gaining scientific value of understanding. But as you say there are real scientists and then there are people who use science, the two may not be of the same cloth.

    I do feel now that Kali Yuga is gaining more momentum with the help of how science is being used. I do not want to sound anti science, but rather keep a view that ethics has to be the ground of science, but ethics and laws seem to becoming more and more relative, dharma in science has been left out.

    I read this recently from a science journal

    All the research which used animal testing in the EU was investigated recently. The investigators found that animal testing generally has a high scientific value, but that very few animal testing trials have a high medical benefit.
    So maybe scientific value needs to be looked at in some sort of scientific way. Do we really need so much wide scope in scientific value. Do we really need to tear the planet and all of phenomena apart to gain more scientific value and knowledge. The scientific value has five characteristics - accuracy, consistency, scope, simplicity, and fruitfulness. Can the same characteristics be directed towards the scientists who is conducting the experiments and research, and at what cost and detriment to our lives and environment is the scientific value burdening our planet.

    Is there any science or any attempt within science to address this issue. Apparently everything can be answered by science, this is something I cannot agree on.



    Ys

    Md

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    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Namaste,

    I have a rather ambivalent view of animal testing...on the one hand, I do agree with the sentiments here that being cruel towards other creatures for the sake of our own salvation is morally wrong. But then again, if I express such sentiments myself, I'd be a hypocrite, and I'll explain why.

    I'm a diabetic. Type II. Sadly, meat is one of the few things that doesn't send my blood sugar into low orbit (although I abstain from beef entirely, if that counts at all). Yes, I know it's possible to live life as a vegetarian even when one is a diabetic, but there's one more complication that makes it difficult to be diabetic and be cruelty-free towards animals - the need for insulin.

    It was animal testing on pigs that made the development of insulin possible. Back when it was developed, which is in the 1960's (if not earlier, I forget the exact dates), the computer simulations that are used by many labs today instead of animal testing weren't an option. And insulin makes the lives of many, many diabetics a lot easier and a lot less painful. I don't know how insulin is made these days - odds are pigs aren't used anymore - but the fact is pigs were used in the past to make life as a diabetic easier.

    Am I therefore wrong for using insulin, even though, as said before, pigs are most likely no longer used to make it? Would I still be considered to be supportive of animal testing if I use insulin? And be honest here: what's more valuable? My life, or the life or whatever pigs were used to develop insulin? I understand if you don't want to answer that question, but in my mind, if the animal testing is truly being beneficial for humanity, I can't really speak out against it because in my case it would be hypocrisy.

    However, if the animal testing is not absolutely beneficial for humanity - say, in the case of cosmetic testing - then absolutely I can and will condemn it. But can you really fault me for relying on a product that was developed to prolong my life, even if it was developed before the time of computer assistance?

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    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Quote Originally Posted by Webimpulse View Post
    Namaste,

    I have a rather ambivalent view of animal testing...on the one hand, I do agree with the sentiments here that being cruel towards other creatures for the sake of our own salvation is morally wrong. But then again, if I express such sentiments myself, I'd be a hypocrite, and I'll explain why.

    I'm a diabetic. Type II. Sadly, meat is one of the few things that doesn't send my blood sugar into low orbit (although I abstain from beef entirely, if that counts at all). Yes, I know it's possible to live life as a vegetarian even when one is a diabetic, but there's one more complication that makes it difficult to be diabetic and be cruelty-free towards animals - the need for insulin.

    It was animal testing on pigs that made the development of insulin possible. Back when it was developed, which is in the 1960's (if not earlier, I forget the exact dates), the computer simulations that are used by many labs today instead of animal testing weren't an option. And insulin makes the lives of many, many diabetics a lot easier and a lot less painful. I don't know how insulin is made these days - odds are pigs aren't used anymore - but the fact is pigs were used in the past to make life as a diabetic easier.

    Am I therefore wrong for using insulin, even though, as said before, pigs are most likely no longer used to make it? Would I still be considered to be supportive of animal testing if I use insulin? And be honest here: what's more valuable? My life, or the life or whatever pigs were used to develop insulin? I understand if you don't want to answer that question, but in my mind, if the animal testing is truly being beneficial for humanity, I can't really speak out against it because in my case it would be hypocrisy.

    However, if the animal testing is not absolutely beneficial for humanity - say, in the case of cosmetic testing - then absolutely I can and will condemn it. But can you really fault me for relying on a product that was developed to prolong my life, even if it was developed before the time of computer assistance?
    Namaste Webimpulse ji,

    You raise some interesting points. I can understand your ambivalence. I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective for your consideration and share some information that I have found.

    > I'm a diabetic. Type II. Sadly, meat is one of the few things that doesn't send my blood sugar into low orbit
    > (although I abstain from beef entirely, if that counts at all). Yes, I know it's possible to live life as a vegetarian
    > even when one is a diabetic...

    Personally, I think that it is impossible for most of us in the modern world to live in a way that leads to absolutely no harm at all for other creatures. Even many ordinary activities such as driving a car, walking in the grass, buying a new cell phone, or buying a new home actually involve harm. However, I do think that each of us can find ways to reduce the harm we participate in, if we have chosen to practice ahiṁsā (nonviolence). In my experience, reducing the harm I've been involved in has been a process and there is always more that I can do. Perfect harmlessness, as I see it, is not realistic for most of us right now. (Obviously, there are also instances in which harm may be justified, as when one is protecting the innocent or engaged in self-defense. Even gurus have made allowances for these sorts of instances.)

    Additionally, individual circumstances vary and these circumstances can shape and limit how we practice nonviolence. In certain environments, it might be difficult to obtain large quantities of fruits and vegetables, for example, although this is becoming less common in the modern world.

    Having said this, there are individuals who have successfully used a vegetarian or a vegan diet to treat (yes, actually treat) type 2 diabetes and countries where traditional diets have been high in certain plant foods and low in meats have seen a lower incidence of diabetes, which increases when they adopt a Western diet (see, for example, these articles: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/610S.full, http://www.pcrm.org/health/diabetes-...e-for-diabetes ). I say this not knowing your individual circumstances and leave it to you to decide what to do with this information.

    > It was animal testing on pigs that made the development of insulin possible.

    In my opinion, trying to reduce the harm that I'm directly or indirectly involved in now is different from choosing whether to use some tool, product, or technology that originally or once in the past involved harm. If I attempted to focus on avoiding everything that once involved harm at some point in the past, I think it would make life unnecessarily complicated, involve an enormous amount of unnecessary research, and neglect the important question (to me) of the actual harm I'm participating in today. One might look at it this way: people who choose to buy cosmetics that are no longer tested on animals and those that buy cosmetics currently tested on animals are making very different choices. They are not equivalent. Similarly, I've read that insulin is no longer made in ways that harm other creatures, so I don't see using insulin as participating in harm.

    That's how I see it.

    praṇām
    śrīmate nārāyaṇāya namaḥ

  6. #6

    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Pranams Webimpulse ,

    Thank you for your post and input. Have you ever researched and looked into hemp protein powders.

    Ys

    Md

  7. #7

    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Quote Originally Posted by markandeya 108 dasa View Post
    I said that animal testing is now very closely related to industry, so where profit is involved then it looses the ethic of science. I was told that science has no ethics.

    I was also told that in science animals are not considered sentient, I find this shocking.
    Namaste markandeya,

    As to the second claim, that is very funny because then these atheist base themselves on religious claims. It is the Bible that created the claim that only humans have consciousness because they are created in the image of God. That has never been a scientific claim. Tell the atheist that!

    Modern science is actually breaking down these claims. From the same religious beliefs came the idea that animals would not feel like humans. They would not feel pain. But scientists have come to conclusion that animals have the same feeling and emotions as they see the exact same reactions in their brains. Even more, scientists recently proved that for instance rats empathise with other rats in distress affecting their appetite, and also have remorse of a wrong action. Things previously considered only for Man.

    It is true that modern science has no ethics but this must be understood in the right way. It does not mean that scientists have no ethics. For instance doctors have strong ethics, they swear the Hippocratic oath. But when one conducts science one can not define goals in ethical, moral wording. Why? Because science demands that the words mean the same to everyone else. You can not test: Is the medicine good? Goodness can not be tested as everyone has his own idea about what is good. You can test the effect on hart rate or blood pressure or if people feel better after.

    That does not however mean that scientists will do as they like. They have their individual ethics and organizations and society create limitations on their conduct. Which is really no different from other groups like for instance farmers. Some scientists indeed behave like psychopaths towards animals. The good thing is that science now shows us that many of these people are indeed psychopaths. It is their lack of empathy that allows them to conduct in that unfeeling way. Recent studies show a higher presence of psychopaths in some occupations, for instance like surgeons, butchers, CEO's, etc..

    We may realize that it is up to us to defend animal rights, as animals can not speak for themselves. Luckily it is a cause that most people are sympathetic to if you do not tie it in with vegetarianism. For that makes it an attack on personal lifestyle, that people will reject. But most people do not want to see animals suffer. And that is why regulations to protect animals have become stricter. For some years In my country we now have the "Animal Party" who puts animal affairs on the agenda. And that makes a huge difference! The large parties do not want to be seen as openly animal unfriendly and this has led to improvements in may areas. Without such a party bringing it to attention, the big parties always let economics prevail.

    It the same with all ethical issues, if the public gets emotionally involved in this, the politicians will listen. But there have to be people that make it visible first. It is not about the numbers but the amount of attention in the news media that politicians are concerned about. I am not negative about this, we do make progress. We ourselves also tend to be led by the media. If the media write a lot of negativity from all over the world we tend to think things are going the wrong way. It is the exposure rather than the facts. According to scientific research man is average in aggression compared to other animals, and man's aggression has been steadily declining over the last few thousand years.

    I think research in psychopathy can do a lot of good. We are now more aware that psychopathy is something that can triggered in early youth by abuse, but it need not happen even if people are genetically disposed. Also that these people need different upbringing, making them feel, what they do to others, as the do not empathize naturally. Also we now understand that when these people develop gross antisocial behaviour they are incurable and best be locked away permanently. Only 1% of the people are psychopaths, and only small part of them become criminal, but that part is good for 50% of all crime. Recognizing psychopaths is important to limit their influence.

    I think we should not take a negative attitude towards science. Scientific thinking is deeply rooted in Nature Religion and thus Hinduism. It comes from the same curiosity towards nature. It is good to engage in it and important that we do not leave science entirely to people without conscience driven by ambition and ruthless companies.

    The biggest danger today does not lie in science or economics as such but in the big organizations. These big organizations are entities with their own consciousness, but one that lacks ethics. They become ruthless actors on the world stage. We see that with organisations like pharmaceutical companies and other large organizations, also government organizations like the Pentagon. To change that outside pressure is necessary to allow the right people in these organizations to gain momentum and change policy. I think the most important challenge for the coming decades is to get control over the behaviour of large organizations to prevent them from doing foolish things.

    It can help to realize that many notions are not as old we think they are. Before Christianity animals were held in high regard. The Egyptians mummified as many animals as people. In many cultures they were seen as messengers of the Gods, closer to the spirit world than Man. In Pagan Europe Cats were believed to have direct contact with the spirit world and give early warnings (that is why witches have cats). The Celt even had animal rights in their Laws. In Greek mythology Man was not considered a special being, nor of special importance. They said the Gods gave all the special qualities to animals, leaving nothing special for Man. And the ancient Greeks believed that the Goddess Diana, Goddess of hunt!, at the same time protected animals against wrong doing.

    But we have to see this apart from meat eating. For ancient people meat eating was natural, after all everything in Nature eats each other. Even if you die a natural death you are eaten by all kind creatures, from maggots to bacteria, fungi, etc. It is part of the circle of life. But ancient people did have all kinds of rituals to appease the spirits of the animals they slaughtered. They were very aware that the animal had a spirit as well. In Africa there are still tribes doing that. I personally think that kind of empathy is superior to simply abstaining from meat for a selfish intellectual argument.

    I think scientific knowledge is for the good. As science penetrates deeper in to the world, it creates deeper understanding that inevitably changes the way we interact with the world. We are here talking about animals, but scientists have discovered that plants talk to other plants and insects in a chemical language, influencing each other behaviour. This week I read that bacteria communicate with a common language and a special one for their own species. Science is again proving what all Nature Religions have said from the beginning: Everything in Nature has consciousness.
    Last edited by Avyaydya; 01 April 2015 at 09:30 PM.

  8. Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    The good news is that drug discovery and development is trying to involve less animals for drug testing and there is a report on this issue:

    A New Screening Platform Helps to Exempt the Application of Animal from Drug Tests
    Through several years’ design and trial, scientists from Singapore developed a new drug test tool which will involve less cost, while being more accurate and fast in getting result. The new platform applies human pluripotent stem cells and carries with an auto machine reporting toxic changes to achieve a fast detecting result of the drug toxicity.

    With the present platform, drug’s toxicity can be only checked at the later stage of drug development and some even after the drug has been marketed, thus to find a way that can test if the drug is toxic or not at the very early stage is a better choice for drug design and development. In addition, it has been argued for a long time that using animal for drug tests is cruel and disrespects the animal’s equal right for enjoying lives. In some areas it will be illegal to test cosmetics with animals. With these issues, scientists began the design for a more humane and reliable drug screening platform.

    Kidney is the main victim organ of toxicity and it will present the toxicity of drug to a great degree, thus it becomes an ideal target for the detection and scientists choose to develop kidney cells with the human pluripotent stem cells. What out of the expectation of the researchers is that the pluripotent stem cells induced kidney cells can be gained at a high purity. Before this success, acquiring the target cells at a high level of purity was one of the hardest issues during the whole process as the research team previously used other stem cells to produce the cells.

    Another shinning point of the newly developed system is that the machine can automatically spy on the injury mechanism and give a result by collecting and analyzing the data it gets, which is the reason that why this new platform can be more fast in giving tests accurate results.

    The new platform can be used in various aspects like food and cosmetic industry. And it may help to exempt the hot issue argued all the time-animal right. Moreover the screening platforms can be taken advantage of in the field of reducing water pollution caused by drugs by eliminating the toxicity of them-a new area that the same research team is working on at present.

    With the successful practical application of the new screening platform, it may bring a revolution in the field and BOC Sciences will also consider renewing our present screening platform with it for its all benefits.

    The paper was published in the journal of Scientific Report and titled as Prediction of drug-induced nephrotoxicity and injury mechanisms with human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cells and machine learning methods with the DOI number being 10.1038/srep12337.

    Source from BOC Sciences

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    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Namaste,

    Welcome to the forum Mandy and thank you for giving us a synopsis of the latest advances in scientific research related to the testing of new drugs on animals. Missing from the write-up is the source of pluripotent stem cells - are they harvested from aborted fetuses?

    Also any screening platform is as smart as the people designing the hardware and the software that goes with it plus the proficiency of the operators. It is encouraging to know that the target kidney cells for toxicity tests can be produced with a high level of purity. Many animals will be spared the pain and suffering that they go through for validation of new drugs and cosmetics. What will still be left will be changing the mindset of the same set of scientific researchers to eliminate meat from their diet. Otherwise, the animals will be spared being the subject of drug tests and sent to the slaughterhouse for processing for human consumption. Their suffering will not end.

    Pranam.

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    Re: Animal Testing and Ethics

    Quote Originally Posted by Believer View Post
    Missing from the write-up is the source of pluripotent stem cells - are they harvested from aborted fetuses?
    Namaste Mandy and Believerji,

    The title given for the article specifies 'induced pluripotent stem cells", so no, they're not harvested from fetuses, aborted or otherwise. They're 'induced' to step backwards genetically from differentiated tissues or tissue stem cells and become "pluripotent" stem cells again.

    A good question is where do these cells come from? Usually patients who have given blood for any medical test, gotten biopsies or had tissues removed for any reason. Because you didn't think they threw the excess tissues away, did you? Heck no. And they don't need to consent you to keep your body parts as "cell lines" and test on them for however long they like. This is called "Biobanking".

    Interesting read if anyone wants to: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks".
    This is still common. More than just the ethics questioned in the book, there needs to be a deeper consideration of ethics I think, for the people whose bodies the cell lines come from and their beliefs regarding disposal of the body and if there can still be some connection to the soul once the life of the greater body is ended but cells and their DNA survive.

    There is a problem with experiments in this direction as well, in that induced stem cells are not yet possible without essentially making the cell line a cancer cell line. Which makes it useless for a lot of drug development testing, which is a major area these cell lines are targeted for - not cosmetics. If we could successfully grow non-cancerous pluripotent stem cells, we would be growing or printing organs for patients who desperately need them from their own cells and transplanting those with no worries about rejection syndrome.

    These cell lines also are extremely limited when it comes to testing across complex systems of tissues, especially as we don't understand all the pathways involved between them. So trivial tissue toxicity testing, assuming a viable non-cancerous line could be established and maintained, would really be the tip of the iceberg.

    A better and more promising line of inquiry is lab-on-a-chip and system interaction simulations - both are also up and coming along with precision medicine and gene therapy solutions.

    ~Pranam
    ~~~~~
    What has Learning profited a man, if it has not led him to worship the good feet of Him who is pure knowledge itself?
    They alone dispel the mind's distress, who take refuge at the feet of the incomparable one.
    ~~Tirukural 2, 7

    Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam

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