But... it's medical testing. They have to test it on something that is alive. It's not like it's cosmetics. You just literally don't have a choice to observe the effect on a living organism. You can't really find a way to get an immune system to fight a threat if you don't have an affected immune system to work with...

then test it on humans sense it's for humans.

People would be having a conniption fit either way :/
Then you would see all the posting of, how dare they test on humans!
Unfortunately it goes either way x.x

It's really a lose lose kind of thing....

As a morality factor most human being would rather a small animal die than a fully formed human being. Testing medical things ie medication and then having a human being DIE would be on the front page of every newspaper 'don't get this treatment it kills people!!!!' And the company would be shut down forever. Rather than 'ok so this animal didnt react well. We will make changes." We would have gotten nowhere near where we are today with medical technology and cures if it were not for animal testing.

the problem here is that medical tests take advantage of the sick and the poor so either way you kinda lose.

The issue with that is humans react differently to most chemicals than animals do. So they might find a cure because it cured the recreated ALS in an animal but actually has complete different effects on a human.
It's utterly pointless to be torturing and killing these animals because they are biologically different from us

That's not really true...

Okay then tell me why we can eat chocolate and dogs can't

http://www.aavs.org/site/c.bkLTKfOS.....l_Research.htm

o.o That article sounds like a load of hooey. I'm studying animal behavior in college -shrug- Dun really feel like arguing though, you're welcome to your own opinion.

Seriously?
Do you really think every animal and human reacts to things the same?
There are reasons there are species specific illnesses. There are even differences in genders. Like how female rats can have citrus but male rats can't.

Howeveerrrr... you can say that, like above stated, you have your opinion.. but that can be said for the same thing with humans. Okay, so they do human testing.. but not all humans react to the same thing either. Again, it can go either way. XD

Never said they should do human testing. Just that animal testing isn't exactly accurate or very useful in most cases and a lot of animals suffer and die needlessly for things that ultimately are going to harm humans and be pulled off the shelves anyway.

We are the same species though. Most of our genes are VERY similar - if not, exact. No it won't react the same for everyone but it sure as hell wont react the same on a mouse as it would on us.

And i'm in college to become a veterinarian. How can you sit and say that this kind of stuff is helping us?

That is true though. All being react differently to different chemicals. Sometimes what may not react in an animal will react in humans and vice-versa.

I feel this is all a grave oversimplification of the use of animals in scientific testing -shrug-

Pretty much all organizations fund animal testing. Nothing much we can do.

Not every single organization funds animal testing.
I'd rather not donate to the ones that do though

Yeah, pretty sick stuff. And the only ones who claim otherwise (And I'm talking about the comments on this journal) are too scared to take off the blinders and actually see the pain that these animals are inflicted with. The truth hurts, but seriously, grow up folks. Stop being afraid and make a difference.

because drilling holes in animals heads helps us SO MUCH :/ a LOT of the "testing" they do is completely unnecessary and just plain evil

Volty, I'm with you on this one. Fuck animal-testing. I'm signal boosting wherever I can.

Scientists are testing on animals so they can understand how a treatment effects the body. Generally, they have a pretty decent prediction of what'll happen, but they want to be sure. They test it on animals so that, if it doesn't work, it kills a mouse and not someone's sister/brother/mother. From there, it'll be moved to human trials, where it still could hypothetically kill people if the drug interacts with the body differently than it did in animal trials. It's important to note that medical triels tend to draw in people who desperately need money (college students, the homeless or soon-to-be-homeless, single parents, etcetera). While the sickness and death of lab animals is extremely sad, it's not worth causing these individuals harm. We want to minimize suffering at any cost.

Why are we using animals to test while searching for a cure for ALS? We can model ALS in them and control many of the genetic variables. In animals with comparable genomes to humans, we can get an extremely good idea of what factors cause the disease, what treatments work/what side effects these treatments have, and what we can do to slow or halt the progression over time. This is a terrible, terrible, terrible disease and we need to find a cure. Animal testing is undeniably something that should be avoided if possible, but if it's going to save lives, then it's a very necessary evil. The information that we draw from it in clinical trials is absolutely invaluable and, should animal trials give us the information they're meant to give, the product will save millions of lives over time without ever being pulled from the shelves. For animal lovers, keep in mind that there are animal forms of ALS that could be treated with it as well.

If I had to choose between the life of some lab animal and my little brother, there wouldn't be even a second of hesitation. Human suffering isn't something that can be ignored any more than animal suffering.

((Also, biochemistry lesson, dogs can't eat chocolate because they metabolize theobromine, a toxin found in cacao, much slower than people do. Theobromine is actually poisonous to humans as well and there are many cases of theobromine poisoning in the elderly, whose metabolisms aren't as well equipped to handle it. For healthy individuals, the risk is negligible unless you eat a stupid amount of chocolate and chase it down with a ton of caffeinated beverages. So the as-in-animals-so-in-people actually applies here as well.))