Bear kills cub then itself

[fangjian]

Bears are commonly exploited for their bile, which is an ingredient of Traditional Chinese Medicine. They endure a lifetime of torture for a chemical that is easily synthesized and readily available. An example of irrationality and its consequences.

-The active substance in bile (of bear and all other mammals) is ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), also known as Ursodiol, which is easily synthesized, and has been available for several decades. It is estimated that 100,000 kilos of synthetic UDCA are already being used each year in China, Japan, and South Korea, and that the total world consumption may double this figure.
Despite the availability and affordability of synthetic UDCA and suitable herbal alternatives, some practitioners obstinately continue to prescribe bear bile, which in turn drives up the market demand, and pressures the Chinese government to continue to allow the practice of bear farming.

The article about the bear and its cub.
http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest+News/Asia/Story/A1Story20110805-292947.html

Another article about Bear Bile
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/asian-bear-bile-remedies-barbarism-or-medicine/

The active chemical in bile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursodiol

 

[Razor]

Absolutely awful. And people say that Alternative "Medicines" don't cause any harm....

 

[Tez3]

Absolutely awful. And people say that Alternative "Medicines" don't cause any harm....

Yeah that will be all alternatives like acupunture for example, very cruel to animals that one. Scientific ones are so much better oh I forgot, vivisection and animal testing....

The link to the story about the bear and cub seems to be broken.

 

[Razor]

Yeah that will be all alternatives like acupunture for example, very cruel to animals that one. Scientific ones are so much better oh I forgot, vivisection and animal testing....

The link to the story about the bear and cub seems to be broken.

Unfortunately animal testing is necessary for real medicines. The difference is, they actually do something not just make people feel something has been done.

 

[Tez3]

Unfortunately animal testing is necessary for real medicines. The difference is, they actually do something not just make people feel something has been done.

Of course testing something on animals with different biological system to ours is always going to work, not. Thalidomide, now that was tested on animals and found to be perfectly safe...on animals, given to human females it resulted in thousands of deformed babies being born.

 

[fangjian]

Of course testing something on animals with different biological system to ours is always going to work, not. Thalidomide, now that was tested on animals and found to be perfectly safe...on animals, given to human females it resulted in thousands of deformed babies being born.

-always- Scientific hypotheses don't always work.

 

[Tez3]

-always- Scientific hypotheses don't always work.

I repeat ..."Of course testing something on animals with different biological system to ours is always going to work, not."

 

[Razor]

I repeat ..."Of course testing something on animals with different biological system to ours is always going to work, not."

Unless I have missed something, I don't think that anyone here suggested it would always work.

 

[Tez3]

Unless I have missed something, I don't think that anyone here suggested it would always work.

Why test on animals? It's not the way to do it, not just from a moral pont of view but from a practical point of view, the fact it rarely works seems to suggest it is also a very great waste of effort and money.

 

[fangjian]

I repeat ..."Of course testing something on animals with different biological system to ours is always going to work, not."

The point of you putting in the term 'always' was to obviously be sarcastic, and it seemed that you were criticizing the shortcomings of the scientific method in regard to testing.

Why test on animals? It's not the way to do it, not just from a moral pont of view but from a practical point of view, the fact it rarely works seems to suggest it is also a very great waste of effort and money.

And here, it seems I was correct. Which is why I wrote what I did. That's how you find out what is true in the world though in all areas of study. I don't know about moral implications, but 'it rarely works'?

 

[Razor]

Why test on animals? It's not the way to do it, not just from a moral pont of view but from a practical point of view, the fact it rarely works seems to suggest it is also a very great waste of effort and money.

On the face of it, from a moral point of view, I'm inclined to agree. I love animals, and hate animal testing, yet through a study of biological sciences, you begin to realise that it is a necessary evil. I don't know what you mean by it rarely works; it often warns us about potentially dangerous drugs and methods. Of course, most people would only hear about the ones that careful testing didn't catch.

From a practical point of view, it is necessary. There is no other way to test the effects of many things, other than human testing which is morally (and probably practically) worse, even in the case of volunteers. For example, experiments involving localising brain function would usually not be done on humans as they involving damaging certain brain regions to study the effects. The best we can do (and have done) is keep suffering at an absolute minimum and not waste any results. I feel the main exception is cosmetic testing; this is entirely unnecessary for most products.

 

[Tez3]

So, no one has answered why we are testing on animals whose biology is different from ours? Testing on animals proves the drugs work or don't work on animals, the drugs still have to be tested on humans before they are licensed so why test on animals?
http://www.safermedicines.org/

Animal testing rarely works, not my opinion but scientists and doctors, Safer medicines btw isn't a pro animal charity or campaigning group but a serious scientific one.
"Mouse xenograft models of cancer, understandably, have a terrible reputation. Although researchers and companies routinely use these human tumors in mice for preclinical drug testing, individual models poorly predict how drugs will act in the clinic. Retrospective reviews published by the National Cancer Institute in 2001 and the National Cancer Institute of Canada in 2003 came to the same conclusion: Drugs that work againstcancer in xenograft mice rarely work in people with the same tumor, with the exception of lung and possibly ovarian cancer. "There's this mantra: 'Xenografts don't predict for human effects,'" said Peter Houghton, Ph.D., a cancer researcher at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Ken Garber, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 30[SUP]th[/SUP] December.


We do trials in people because animal models do not predict what will happen in humans. Dr Sally Burtles, Cancer Research UK, Report of the Expert Scientific Group on phase one clinical trials, following the TGN1412 clinical trial disaster.
You really have to design the medicine for the species of interest…You'll find it very rare to find a medicine that will work in both…Patrick M. O'Connor, head of oncology research for Pfizer, quoted in The New York Times, 24 November.

In summary, mouse xenograft models should not be viewed as ideal models for cancer drug development. Altered, nonhuman host stroma, poor predictive value when applied in an empirical sense, and questionable relation to the naturally occurring human disease are but a few features, which temper enthusiasm for their use. Sausville & Burger, Cancer Research, 66, 3351-3354, April 1."

 

[Razor]

So, no one has answered why we are testing on animals whose biology is different from ours? Testing on animals proves the drugs work or don't work on animals, the drugs still have to be tested on humans before they are licensed so why test on animals?
http://www.safermedicines.org/

Animal testing rarely works, not my opinion but scientists and doctors, Safer medicines btw isn't a pro animal charity or campaigning group but a serious scientific one.

I'm not qualified to explain it to anyone, and I'm sure a proper professional would do a much better job and have better information, but the biology of the animals used for different types of testing is not vastly different from humans. For example many brain regions have identical function, digestive systems work in the same way, homeostasis works in a similar way etc. So, the idea is to work outwards from this to eventually test on humans. Of course cells are not the same as full organisms, animals aren't the same as humans and so on, but the testing is in gradual increments to try and cause the least harm to the people they will eventually get to. Also remember that research needs animal tests as well as drugs.

As for the website, that is an "argument from authority" so to speak, and they should not be considered right just because of the sprinkling of names of scientists/doctors. There are doctors who support homeopathy for example, probably scientists who claim the earth is flat etc. You should look at science in aggregate, and this shows that the majority of scientists (involved in biological sciences at least) must use animals to research and test. Even then they can be a bit suspect in some cases! The website essentially seem to be advocating the "Three Rs" which are already used in deciding animal testing. Even though animal testing has failed to protect people in some cases, this would be worse with fewer safeguards. If these mentioned "state of the art techniques" for accurate human testing are better than the current methods, I would wholeheartedly support them. I've never heard of anything better than the current methods (for most things) though, and if indeed these other methods can be used instead perhaps we can move towards far less harmful methods in the future, which will be great.

This campaign is really for the future of research though, rather than the present as some of these techniques are fairly recent inventions, or even things which are not fully developed yet. Some of this stuff would really be amazing in action in the future though. Some are a bit suspect like the computation modelling which isn't always great, but others do look very interesting.

 

[RandomPhantom700]

So, no one has answered why we are testing on animals whose biology is different from ours? Testing on animals proves the drugs work or don't work on animals, the drugs still have to be tested on humans before they are licensed so why test on animals?

All it would take would be one incident of human test subjects dying to an effect of a drug that animal testing could have prevented to answer that question. I'm all for keeping the similarities of the test animal to human physiology in mind (I think pigs are supposed to be similar to humans for drug testing purposes? last I read, anyway), but my understanding is that animal testing is still used as a first wash test run.

 

[Nomad]

Why test on animals? It's not the way to do it, not just from a moral pont of view but from a practical point of view, the fact it rarely works seems to suggest it is also a very great waste of effort and money.

Animal testing is a very very valuable tool in drug development. Mice share ~85% of human genes. As we attempt to target different pathways to intervene in disease, it is necessary to ensure that something that looks good in vitro (activating or shutting down a particular biomolecular cascade for instance) is relevant to the disease in question. A good way to tell is by testing on rodents to see if it the compound in question has an effect on the disease model in these species. If it doesn't, then the odds are very good that it won't work in humans.

Equally important is comparison of similar compounds with subtle structural differences that may have different affinities to the target, or different physicochemical properties (affecting things like absorbance and metabolism). Testing in mice or rats often allows us to pick the best available candidates before going into higher species like dogs or monkeys (which have greater similarity to the human genome). To advance, a potential drug has to be safe (no overt toxicities or unacceptable side effect profiles in at least one higher species and in rats) and efficacious in the best available disease model for these species.

A typical drug program will test many thousands (or millions) of compounds against a specific drug target (most of these will be done on isolated fractions of cells or whole cell assays). Potentially up to a few hundred will go into rodents to test whether they can reach their target in the body, and to see if they do what we want them to inside a living system. Of these, a handful will go into a short-term (2 weeks worth of dosing is typical) toxicity study in rats. Signs of overt toxicity (eg. hair loss, vomiting, etc) generally ends the study early as we have no need to continue dosing if such a dramatic effect can be seen early. The compound(s) (likely 1-3) that look best will then go into a higher species for profiling and toxicity studies. Once the studies are complete and the compounds can be shown to have good efficacy in the animal disease model and no markers of unacceptable toxicity (of which there are many), the compound is then submitted with all data to the regulatory agencies who approve whether or not the potential new drug can go into people.

It is true that there are differences in animal and human biology, and this is often a reason why drugs fail during human clinical trials; either they are much less effective on the human disease state than in the model (failing to be efficacious in treating the disease), or they exhibit side effects or toxicities which were not observed in the animal models.

Mouse Xenograft models of cancer (as mentioned in your second post) are really a different argument; in these cases, mice are infected with specific human cancer cell types and drug candidates are tested for their efficacy in halting progression or causing regression in these tumors. The problem here is not with the animal testing, but rather with the fact that human carcinomas tend to be far more complex than the single cell-type xenograft; often compounds which have been optimized against the xenograft models fail in human clinical trials because they lack activity against more complicated cancers in people. Nonetheless, the xenograft models have aided in successful development of new anti-cancer agents in many cases.

Animal testing is a necessary evil. The alternative is to directly test materials on people with no idea whether or not they'll work or what side effects and toxicities can be expected. Obviously, this is completely unethical, and would cause great harm to untold numbers of people.

Animal testing will not uncover 100% of the problems associated with a new potential drug (however, neither do human clinical trials; there have been multiple instances when specific toxicities and problems were only seen years later when much much larger populations were treated, such as thalidomide), nor will it guarantee the drug will be effective in people.

Without animal testing, we'd still be suffering from Polio, AIDS would be a disease that always killed (instead of a condition that can lived with for many years), Insulin never would have been invented, and a whole host of other conditions would be death sentences that are now treatable and or curable.

The alternative to animal testing is to give up on the idea of intervening in human disease altogether.

 

[Tez3]

If you look at the website I cited you will find they say they aren't against animal testing but it has to be the correct type of testing not the blind testing everything on rats and saying it's fine, these aren't the 'homeopathic loving' doctors but scientists. Emotional arguments are just that emotional arguments, saying all alternative medicines don't work and all testing on animals is necessary is just generalising.
Nomad post is an excellent example of thoughtful and inciteful posting, that's the way to convince someone of something not one liners like 'and people say alternative medicines don't cause harm'.

 

[fangjian]

Emotional arguments are just that emotional arguments, saying all alternative medicines don't work and all testing on animals is necessary is just generalising.

Of course. If I remember correctly, I was checkin out the 'List of Alternative Medicines' type of link on wiki. Pretty much everything on there was laughable. However, I do remember therapies like 'Massage' being on there. Struck me as odd to see Massage right next to something like Psychic Surgery. lolz

 

[Razor]

If you look at the website I cited you will find they say they aren't against animal testing but it has to be the correct type of testing not the blind testing everything on rats and saying it's fine, these aren't the 'homeopathic loving' doctors but scientists. Emotional arguments are just that emotional arguments, saying all alternative medicines don't work and all testing on animals is necessary is just generalising.
Nomad post is an excellent example of thoughtful and inciteful posting, that's the way to convince someone of something not one liners like 'and people say alternative medicines don't cause harm'.

As I said, someone else can probably explain why a lot better than I can, which Nomad did. As I also said, they are basically advocating the 3 Rs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_animal_testing. Once again, as I also said, that was a criticism of argument from authority not those specific doctors. Generalising is better than picking one or two cases where it does not work and citing those as evidence; science is based on lots of data. It is better to conclude that animal testing is necessary in some cases than for me to list all cases where it is and is not necessary.

To be honest, I don't care whether or not you are convinced. This is a forum, and I'm contributing....I specifically said that someone could explain to you better than I can. Also, that doesn't make any sense...my first post was not to convince anyone of anything, but was a comment on disgusting animal cruelty for no good reason.