I hate to say this, but I dare say this matter is a bit simpler than everyone lets on. I am an animal lover myself. I have worked in zoo’s and animal shelters and written letters to the editor about animal rights. Despite this it remains a fact that using animals in research is unavoidable. The decision is not whether or not to use animals, but which ones. Should we experiment on mice and chimps or should we experiment on homosapiens. The only alternative to experimentation on ‘lower’ order animals, is to intoroduce drugs directly into the human population without doing such testing and therby making humans the experimental animals.

Computer models don’t even come close to simulating the comlpexity of a living organism. Not by a longshot. The mammalian immune systems, nervous systems, and numerous biochemical pathways are so complex they are not fully understood in isolation never mind how they interact with each other. Using a flatworm as a model is lightyears closer to simulating the human body than anything we can do on computers and still there are huge differences between the way a drug works in a worm and the way it works in a human.

We should certainly do all we can to minimize suffering on our study animals but we can’t eliminate it. You simply have to ask the question “Do you want to test the next drug on a dog or on your child?”. There is no viable aternative yet.

George - 17 April 2008 12:22 PM

The fight with diseases is the major drive of evolution. Most people (most of your ancestors) and other animals have died in the past due to diseases, such as TB, plague, diarrhea, etc. Until recently natural selection has been in charge and deciding who will make it to the next generation. Since the discovery of antibiotics, for example, we have been able to prevent many people dying from many diseases caused by bacteria. Sure, there is now a new TB strain spreading in South Africa, resistant to all antibiotics. But I am sure you are not willing to not take antibiotics next time you get infected by a bacteria in order to stop it from evolving. The reason why we are not capable of preventing new diseases to develop is simply: We don’t know what weapon to use to kill them until they appear. This is why you have to get a new flu shot every year. The snowball certainly doesn’t slide down, just like the evolution doesn’t climb a ladder. Things simply change.

I agree with everything you have said except that, a part of the problem is due to people refusing to take responsibility for their actions and behavior, short of watching them at the first place, as result, when a medical problem generates, they go look for a pill when the reasonable thing to do is modify the behavior that caused the condition at the first place. This create a nice demand for medication (research) and such, but does it fix the problem in the long run? I am not against research but I think it needs to be tightly policed. I love the line Robin Williams gave in “The Man of the year” at the presidential debate: “Vioox, headaches end, heart attacks begin” !!!! I can only imagine the research and energy that went into coming up with such medication. This is also part of the problem, and unless it gets honestly addressed, yes, it snowballs while increasing in size. I can also only imagine the suffering used animals have to put up with to develop a medication that ended up doing more harm than good. If the government does what it needs to do to educate lead the masses toward taking their health in charge the right way, not the pharmaceutical way, then I think this is not going to take away from the medical community as many would suspect but, instead it might shift its focus toward doing the researches needed to take mankind’s health to a higher level, that of superhealth, and animal testing will be somewhat justified there since they will enventually end up benefiting from it in the long run along with us. Where we are at, human health is where it was centuries ago or even worse considering that many eradicated diseases have simply been replaced by others.

Where we are at, human health is where it was centuries ago or even worse considering that many eradicated diseases have simply been replaced by others.

Yeah right, and it is just magic that the average lifespan has gone from the forties to the seventies in a little over a century! We KNOW science and medicine had nothing to do with this since human health is MUCH worse than it was centuries ago. One of the reasons women married so early (for example) 2 centuries ago was that there was no guarantee that they would be alive to survive the next bug that came down the pipeline. It was a rare middle aged man or woman who was married to their first spouse.

As far as eradicated diseases that have been replaced by others---well, haven’t you read Darwin? Bacteria and viruses (etc) evolve as well, and even AIDS and Ebola have not historically killed as many as the Plague and (even) diarrhea.
geo

Daisy,

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find I disagree with you strongly on the nature of disease and how best to manage it. The anecdote you offer about your own asthma is emotionally compelling to you, but it is completely useless in identifying the true causes of asthma, for all the reasons why anecdotal evidence is nearly useless that we’ve discussed here many times. We can go through all that again if we must, but the larger point is that you seem to think it illustrates why scientific medicine is a futile search for pills rather than the best method for understanding and treating disease ever developed. How you can make such an argument in the face of history boggles my mind.

For all of human history we have faced parasites and disease. And for most of that time, most of us died in childhood, and few reached the maximum lifespan of our species. In barely a couple hundred years, we have eradicated many diseases, driven infant mortality to unprecedentedly low levels, and given more people longer and better lives than any time in human history. And we’ve done it through science and scientific medicine. People used the sort of storytelling you exemplify to explain disease and claim to treat it for all the centuries before scientific medicine. Casting out of spirits, bleeding, random and unsystematic experimentation with plants as medicines, religious rituals, diet, and so on. Many of the alternative therapies people still cling to, such as Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture, have been practiced for generations and have failed to provide anything even remotely like the real benefits of scientific medicine in the fight against disease. It is evident beyond any shred of doubt that the approach of science in general is the best we have.

Now one certainly can’t argue against the existence of side-effects to medication. I frequently tell people when taling about 100% safe and effective miracle cures peddled by quacks, that if it don’t have side-effects it’s because it ain’t doing anything! But to imply that “emerging” diseases exist largely as a result of modern medicine is utter nonsense. And to suggest that if we all just used our average-sized brains and made our own random alterations in our lifestyle disease would be less than if we followed scientific principles is just plain wrong. As George and Doug pointed out, the emergence of new diseases does not illustrate the failure of scientific medicine but the nature of disease itself. Perhaps as we progress in our knowledge, we’ll find better ways to address that problem, but not just by giving up and going back to intuition and trial and error.

We live in a time and place when we are so insulated from the ravages of infectious diseases our great-grandparents took for granted, that we can no longer see the revolution in our lives that has taken place. We complain about how toxic our environment is when we have cleaner water and safer food that at any time in history. We worry about the rise of cancer as a sign of how unhealthy our lifestyle is, not understanding that more of us are getting cancer because we aren’t dying young enough of the things we used to die of. And we place great importance on the areas where we have yet to find answers because we always seek perfection. Fair enough, things can always be better. But we’re spoiled. We’re healthier than any generation that has ever lived. HIV is probably the worst and most serious epidemic in the modern age. But the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of the people in all of Europe, and we’re not facing anything like that even in the poorest countries who get the least of modern medical help, not to mention the rich coutnries where we can apply all our knowledge.

I’m all for preventative lifestyle change. Much of the disease we send our time and money on in the developed world, we could avoid alltogether if we behaved differently. But that doesn’t tarnish the fruits of scientific medicine. Medical science tells us what we need to do, and it’s our fault if we don’t do it and wait until we get sick to look for intervention. Then, medicine helps us anyway, giving us relief and years of life we wouldn’t have had without it. Don’t mistake the cultural and human failings to use our knowledge wisely for the failings of the system of science that has generated real knowledge, real wisdom, and real help for us far better than any other ever has.

Erasmus,

Sorry, you asked an interesting and big question, and I haven’t really had time to do anything like justice to it. I work with dogs, cats, rabbits, and rodents mostly now. But I did my graduate research and professional work on environmental enrichment for primates, especially chimapnzees, before I became a vet. There is no question that the cognitive capacities of different kinds of animals differ in meaningful ways. There are, of course, major similarities as well. I can think of no mammal that doesn’t feel pain, or that doesn’t suffer if deprived of physical conditions suited to its kind. And many mammals have behavioral needs as pressing as physical ones (indeed, rooted as they are in the brain, they are physical needs, though we don’t tend to think of them that way).

The best way, though it is imperfect, to assess these needs and meet them is to look at the species-typical behaviors found in the species’ natural environment. If they live in groups in the wild, they’ll likely suffer, and develop detectable behavioral and physicological symptoms of this, if kept alone, or in the wrong kinds of groups (too many males, not enough, no babies, etc). Where it gets tricky is with the more cognitively sophisticated species, especially of course great apes, and likely cetaceans (though the later are harder to assess since their behavior and morphology is so different from our own that we have trouble seeing things as they do effectively). As you might expect, the more advanced the species is in cognitive terms, the more abstract their needs. Chimps will suffer if they lack challenging problems to solve, whereas a dog will not. On the other hand, chimps are, like humans, remarkably flexible in how they apply their abilities. So the challenges they need to be healthy don’t necessarily need to be superficially like those in the wild. Talking a human caretker out of treats with a symbol board can be just as satisfying as fishing for termites. Cognitively simpler animals, on the other hand, require a closer approximation of their natural environment to thrive.

I think where even the most cognitively complex species, like the chimp, differs from humans is in the capacity for abstraction. People may suffer if they feel unappreciated, existentially unfree, without a greater purpose, and so on. I can’t say from my own experiences, or the research evidence, that I think chimps feel anything like this. Of course, neither do human children, for the most part, until adolescence, so that doesn’t help a lot in deciding how we should treat them. I found the Great Ape Project (which I know you’re familiar with) an excellent set of discussions on this topic, and I agree with the bulk of the conclusions, though I do think soemtimes the authors stretch the data to concur with their intuitions. It’s really just about impossible to spend much time with a chimp and not feel that it is a person in a way qualitatively, though not quantitatively, like a person is. But we have to be careful about such intuitions. Gorillas are likely the equal of chimps in all mentally important ways, but they often do not appear intuitively as inteligent or “personlike” to many people because their natural behavior is much lower-key and less like ours. Likewise, as I mentioned above, the research suggest cetaceans may have much more complex behavioral capacity and needs than we might imagine based only on our intuition.

As for how all of this ties into the ethics of animal research, I think it’s mostly in terms of how we best meet the needs of animal we choose to do research on, so we can minimize their suffering. As I said originally, such research inevitaly entails causing suffering, and if we choose to pursue it for its benefits to us we have to face this. I thin understanding what particular species need behaviorally, as well as physically, is the best way to give them the best possible lives even once we’ve chosen to sacrifice their well-being to some extent for our own. Eac case has its own difficulties, and it’s impossible not to be uncomfortable with the whole business if you feel, as I do, that animal suffering maters. But I think there is a lot we can do, and in practice that we actually do, to make the best of the imperfect moral choice we face here.

mckenzievmd - 18 April 2008 07:26 PM

Daisy,

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find I disagree with you strongly on the nature of disease and how best to manage it. The anecdote you offer about your own asthma is emotionally compelling to you,

It’s funny how when one’s experience contradicts another’s views, it’s an anecdote but when it happens to be promoting it it’s somehow no longer an anecdote but rather an eye witness account. You use the word “emotionally, since I am the one (not you) who knows the state of mind in which I was when I wrote that I’d use PRACTICALLY. And the only reason you use it is because the related experience has been lived by someone who happens to be outside of your circle.

but it is completely useless in identifying the true causes of asthma,

for all the reasons why anecdotal evidence is nearly useless that we’ve discussed here many times. We can go through all that again if we must, but the larger point is that you seem to think it illustrates why scientific medicine is a futile search for pills rather than the best method for understanding and treating disease ever developed. How you can make such an argument in the face of history boggles my mind.

First, I have never made such an argument, second, I’d say pills are not the answer to every single health problem or symptom under the sun, we both know that.

People used the sort of storytelling you exemplify to explain disease and claim to treat it for all the centuries before scientific medicine. Casting out of spirits, bleeding, random and unsystematic experimentation with plants as medicines, religious rituals, diet, and so on.

Just who is talking about religious rituals, bleeding and casting out ot spirits here??? what I said is I looked up the symptoms I had, I didnt’ say how, now I am forced to point out that I did it through http://www.webMD.com !!!!it was not via religious rituals, or bleeding (whatever that means) or casting out of spirits. Casting out ot spirits does not have any reference of what SULFITE is as far as I know.  You mentioned diet as quacky method for a good health maintenance, diet plays a role in my life, if you don’t believe that it has any relevance in this domain, that is your problem not mine. Just cut out one of the main nutrients from one’s diet for a while and see how that’s going to affect the person’s over all health.

Many of the alternative therapies people still cling to, such as Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture, have been practiced for generations and have failed to provide anything even remotely like the real benefits of scientific medicine in the fight against disease. It is evident beyond any shred of doubt that the approach of science in general is the best we have.

Please quote me, when did I specifically ever say that science was not the best in resolving a problem, as a moderator, you should see that my posts clearly are pro not anti-science.

Now one certainly can’t argue against the existence of side-effects to medication. I frequently tell people when taling about 100% safe and effective miracle cures peddled by quacks, that if it don’t have side-effects it’s because it ain’t doing anything!

I am happy to insist that me quitting processed food for a while, not only had no side effects whatsoever, but it did indeed radically stop the throat tightenings I was having, and that http://www.webMD.com info links confirmed are known to be associated with the condition of ashma!!!!! This is anything but a miracle cure. It’s simply is called using one’s head, I am sure as a vet, you know what that means .

But to imply that “emerging” diseases exist largely as a result of modern medicine is utter nonsense.

I was non-specific with the related statement I’ve made, if you chose to suggest that I meant it to “largely” be the problem, then you are wrong because I didnt’.

And to suggest that if we all just used our average-sized brains and made our own random alterations in our lifestyle disease would be less than if we followed scientific principles is just plain wrong.

I would hardly call what I’ve done “random”, it is very simple and basic in nature but it is not radom and you know it. Clearly you are the type of person who wishes to see every single person on the face of this planet on some kind of medication. to that I’d say make it MINUS ONE . Being healthy is not being on medication, medication is a medical solution to a health problem and not a way of life! you seem to be set to misconstrue everything I said into what it is not.  I believe that one can maintain a good health and prevent lots of related problems via simply using some common sense as well as responsiblity in the way they live.  Everybody or some at least know for example that a person who lives off a diet high on fat will end up with some kind of coronary disease sooner or later unless they take the steps to correct their diet and reverse the process if it’s not too late, we know that abuse of sugar attacks the immune system which will result in many anomalies one among which is type 2 diabetes, we know that smoking causes lung cancer, etc, etc, etc, and we also know what are the alternatives. This Brennen has nothing to do with bleeding, casting out of spirits or the practice of religious rituals. This in fact is almost mathematical.

As George and Doug pointed out, the emergence of new diseases does not illustrate the failure of scientific medicine but the nature of disease itself. Perhaps as we progress in our knowledge, we’ll find better ways to address that problem, but not just by giving up and going back to intuition and trial and error.

I never said we should. I think there are negatively biased scientists just like there are bad elements in every field, I think the sicentific community needs to police itself in order to preserve its integrity, again just like any other field, it is not above reproach.

We live in a time and place when we are so insulated from the ravages of infectious diseases our great-grandparents took for granted, that we can no longer see the revolution in our lives that has taken place. We complain about how toxic our environment is when we have cleaner water and safer food that at any time in history. We worry about the rise of cancer as a sign of how unhealthy our lifestyle is, not understanding that more of us are getting cancer because we aren’t dying young enough of the things we used to die of. And we place great importance on the areas where we have yet to find answers because we always seek perfection. Fair enough, things can always be better. But we’re spoiled. We’re healthier than any generation that has ever lived. HIV is probably the worst and most serious epidemic in the modern age. But the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of the people in all of Europe, and we’re not facing anything like that even in the poorest countries who get the least of modern medical help, not to mention the rich coutnries where we can apply all our knowledge.

I agree with all of this but on the other hand, we still currently are like millionaires who while paying off their outrageous debts are at the same time incurring new grave ones.

I’m all for preventative lifestyle change. Much of the disease we send our time and money on in the developed world, we could avoid alltogether if we behaved differently. But that doesn’t tarnish the fruits of scientific medicine. Medical science tells us what we need to do, and it’s our fault if we don’t do it and wait until we get sick to look for intervention. Then, medicine helps us anyway, giving us relief and years of life we wouldn’t have had without it. Don’t mistake the cultural and human failings to use our knowledge wisely for the failings of the system of science that has generated real knowledge, real wisdom, and real help for us far better than any other ever has.

I agree, on the other hand, Vioox examples are real not fiction.
I noticed you failed to see that “the alterations” I’ve mentioned have at the first place been made available by the work of previous scientific research, I didn’t pull them out of my pocket as you seem to imply (not that I don’t wish I have), and that is enough to confirm to you, that admit it or not, I am on your side not against it. The common use of scientific knowledge should be extended to every single individual and not just the specialized personnel. That’s a part of raising the general awareness on every level including that pertaining to how animals should be treated and the ethics and code of their handling should they be utilized in scientific research.

mckenzievmd - 18 April 2008 07:26 PM

Daisy,

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find I disagree with you strongly on the nature of disease and how best to manage it. The anecdote you offer about your own asthma is emotionally compelling to you, but it is completely useless in identifying the true causes of asthma, for all the reasons why anecdotal evidence is nearly useless that we’ve discussed here many times. We can go through all that again if we must, but the larger point is that you seem to think it illustrates why scientific medicine is a futile search for pills rather than the best method for understanding and treating disease ever developed. How you can make such an argument in the face of history boggles my mind.

For all of human history we have faced parasites and disease. And for most of that time, most of us died in childhood, and few reached the maximum lifespan of our species. In barely a couple hundred years, we have eradicated many diseases, driven infant mortality to unprecedentedly low levels, and given more people longer and better lives than any time in human history. And we’ve done it through science and scientific medicine. People used the sort of storytelling you exemplify to explain disease and claim to treat it for all the centuries before scientific medicine. Casting out of spirits, bleeding, random and unsystematic experimentation with plants as medicines, religious rituals, diet, and so on. Many of the alternative therapies people still cling to, such as Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture, have been practiced for generations and have failed to provide anything even remotely like the real benefits of scientific medicine in the fight against disease. It is evident beyond any shred of doubt that the approach of science in general is the best we have.

Now one certainly can’t argue against the existence of side-effects to medication. I frequently tell people when taling about 100% safe and effective miracle cures peddled by quacks, that if it don’t have side-effects it’s because it ain’t doing anything! But to imply that “emerging” diseases exist largely as a result of modern medicine is utter nonsense. And to suggest that if we all just used our average-sized brains and made our own random alterations in our lifestyle disease would be less than if we followed scientific principles is just plain wrong. As George and Doug pointed out, the emergence of new diseases does not illustrate the failure of scientific medicine but the nature of disease itself. Perhaps as we progress in our knowledge, we’ll find better ways to address that problem, but not just by giving up and going back to intuition and trial and error.


We live in a time and place when we are so insulated from the ravages of infectious diseases our great-grandparents took for granted, that we can no longer see the revolution in our lives that has taken place. We complain about how toxic our environment is when we have cleaner water and safer food that at any time in history. We worry about the rise of cancer as a sign of how unhealthy our lifestyle is, not understanding that more of us are getting cancer because we aren’t dying young enough of the things we used to die of. And we place great importance on the areas where we have yet to find answers because we always seek perfection. Fair enough, things can always be better. But we’re spoiled. We’re healthier than any generation that has ever lived. HIV is probably the worst and most serious epidemic in the modern age. But the Black Plague wiped out 1/3 to 1/2 of the people in all of Europe, and we’re not facing anything like that even in the poorest countries who get the least of modern medical help, not to mention the rich countries where we can apply all our knowledge.

I’m all for preventative lifestyle change. Much of the disease we send our time and money on in the developed world, we could avoid altogether if we behaved differently. But that doesn’t tarnish the fruits of scientific medicine. Medical science tells us what we need to do, and it’s our fault if we don’t do it and wait until we get sick to look for intervention. Then, medicine helps us anyway, giving us relief and years of life we wouldn’t have had without it. Don’t mistake the cultural and human failings to use our knowledge wisely for the failings of the system of science that has generated real knowledge, real wisdom, and real help for us far better than any other ever has.

McKenzieVMD-----I’d like to add the fact that we have very much become a global village in my (half century) lifetime. You can travel from one side of the world (with your deadly contagious disease incubating) in less that 24 hours. This is unprecedented in the history of our species. Also, we have more access to remote areas that have allowed rare and exotic (and perhaps deadly) diseases to migrate from their historic home. If the area has had no historic contact with the first world (or second world), they may have been succumbing for centuries in solitude. Many diseases, just because they are new to us, does not necessarily make it new to the population pool whence it came. Otherwise McKenzieVMD---I think I’m in LOVE!!!!!

Daisy,

I truly did not want to offend you, but the reason I began by acknowleding the emotional significance of your experience was precisely because I know that it will likely trump and evidence or argument I can provide. Clearly, an anecdote is just as useless when it supports my position as when it contradicts it, which is why I did not offer any personal anecdotes in my argument. You did, because you feel that it proves a point, and that I still dispute. The arguments for all the outdated therapies I mention were identical to the argument you make for your position, and I brought them up to illustrate that fact, not to suggest those were therapies you support. I suspected you would agree with me that they are nonsense, so I had hoped you might be interested in the fact that they have been, and often still are, defended by the use of testimonials and anecdotes. I repeat, such “evidence” is not meaningful in deciding what is true, however pursuasive it is to the one who has the experience.

You seem to be retreating from the anti-medical science tone of your first two posts. Good to hear, but a bit dishonest to say that you never meant to imply anything you implied. And, to be fair, you have previously argued on this site that prayer cured a medical condition of yours that science could not, and that you turned to prayer because of a “low level of trust I had in the medical establishment,” so the interpretation that you meant to disparage medical science and promote alternative, non-scientific approaches to healthcare is pretty well-founded.

You asked me to quote you, so:

how those “diseases” continue to emerge in a world where science supposedly is in charge?

This statement seems to indicate that you doubt science is truly “in charge” since it cannot prevent the emergence of new diseases, and so scientific research is not the answer to learning how to prevent new diseases. Perhaps that’s not what you meant to imply, but it’s a pretty straightforward reading of what you said and of what some of us heard.

many serious medical conditions first EMERGE as side effects to the use of a medication not fully tested, short term side effects not immediately (as well as honestly) addressed turn into a long term side effects, and then revolve into a new serious medical condition for which a new medication has to be invented (and we know how that is likely to be done: via more research).

Again, here you imply that significant health threats emerge as a result of improperly tested medication, and then you go on to imply deliberate intent on the part of scientists to create more research opportunities for themselves by not addressing the side effects except by creating more medications to treat them. Inaccurate and offensive insinuation, and irrelevant since the major health threats faced, depending on the part of the wolrd one lives in, are infectious diseases, nutrition and sanitation related diseases, and aging and lifestyle diseases. The relative importance of drug therapies as a cause of “emerging” diseases is trivial, and a strawman for you to use to imply venal itent on the part of medical scientists.

those conditions are all preventable

Just so everyone understands, the “those” you refer to, from the link I gave Mriana on problems addressed through animal research, include asthma, HIV/AIDS, cancewr, birth defects, biowarfare agents, vaccine-prevented diseases (polio, measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, and pneumococcal meningitis), high blood pressure, and diseases treated with antibiotics and organ transplantation. Nonsesne to say these are all preventable and then to imply, by your subsequent anecdoete about your asthma, that they relate to unhealthy aspects of modern industrial lifestyle and that we could prevent them if we avoided modern medical research and just thought for ourselves.

A doctor dependant person would have run to one, get booked and probably for life with ashma ticket.  In other words, I didn’t need medication developped in a lab and tested on poor creatures for me to get better, I just used my relatively average brain. I do this all the time, and I think everybody else can.

So go to a doctor and get hooked for life (an addiction metaphor), or think for yourself (aka read up on the web) and avoid problems the safe and natural way? Again, I’m sorry if you’re really pro-science and this isn’t what you meant, but the implications are pretty clear, and you practically refer to doctors as drug pushers here. It’s not hard to read that as an antipathy to scientific medicine.

If the government does what it needs to do to educate lead the masses toward taking their health in charge the right way, not the pharmaceutical way,

How does the government know what to tell us to do? Yup, medical research. And again, this implies that people need to wrest their healthcare decisions away from drug-obsessed doctors who don’t have their interests at heart or have a warped and ultimately counterproductive idea about how to improve health. Sounds like the typical line of anti-science, alternative healthcare, which demonizes scientific medicine without real evidence to justify its claims. If that’s not where you stand, you should be careful of adopting the rhetoric associated with the position.

Where we are at, human health is where it was centuries ago or even worse considering that many eradicated diseases have simply been replaced by others.

This, finally, is a major point I was responding to in my post. Human health is orders of magnitude better than it was “centuries ago!” There is no golden age before modern industrial medicine began to poison us all. That’s a myth usually promoted by quacks with an ideological or financial axe to grind.

whether he[Jesus] exists or not, prayer healed me and that’s what remains....in order to make something happen one must believe it first. Without belief, everything is pure smoke, belief is the starting point.

Again, pretty clear examples that your notion of what constitutes proof or evidence is not scientific

If you truly think modern medical science and research does more harm than good, only pushes pills after the fact and has no interest in preventative healthcare or lifestyle modification, and that doctors and researchers wish to encourage suffering to further their own ends, than you are wildly mistaken. If you do not hold these beliefs, then I’m sorry I misunderstood you, but I think it was an easy mistake to make based on the statements cited above. Anyway, I have no interest in this being a personal dispute, so I hope you will take my remarks as directed at the content of your argument, not at you personally.

Asanta,

I’d like to add the fact that we have very much become a global village in my (half century) lifetime. You can travel from one side of the world (with your deadly contagious disease incubating) in less that 24 hours. This is unprecedented in the history of our species. Also, we have more access to remote areas that have allowed rare and exotic (and perhaps deadly) diseases to migrate from their historic home. If the area has had no historic contact with the first world (or second world), they may have been succumbing for centuries in solitude. Many diseases, just because they are new to us, does not necessarily make it new to the population pool whence it came.

Absoltuely, point well taken.

Otherwise McKenzieVMD---I think I’m in LOVE!!!!!

Aww, shucks!

Considering how often I have this discussion with people who passionately disagree with me, it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who sees things this way!

Daisy - 20 April 2008 03:03 PM

It’s funny how when one’s experience contradicts another’s views, it’s an anecdote but when it happens to be promoting it it’s somehow no longer an anecdote but rather an eye witness account. You use the word “emotionally, since I am the one (not you) who knows the state of mind in which I was when I wrote that I’d use PRACTICALLY. And the only reason you use it is because the related experience has been lived by someone who happens to be outside of your circle.

Yeah but Daisy ... you also believed that Jesus cured some illness of yours if I remember correctly. That doesn’t exactly testify to your ability to assess your own state of mind does it?

Kyu

Kyuuketsuki UK - 21 April 2008 01:46 AM

Daisy - 20 April 2008 03:03 PM

It’s funny how when one’s experience contradicts another’s views, it’s an anecdote but when it happens to be promoting it it’s somehow no longer an anecdote but rather an eye witness account. You use the word “emotionally, since I am the one (not you) who knows the state of mind in which I was when I wrote that I’d use PRACTICALLY. And the only reason you use it is because the related experience has been lived by someone who happens to be outside of your circle.

Yeah but Daisy ... you also believed that Jesus cured some illness of yours if I remember correctly. That doesn’t exactly testify to your ability to assess your own state of mind does it?

Kyu

Speaking about my or your ability to assess any situation darling, if I remember correctly, you were kind of chatty with me (meaning you didn’t mind talking to me the ‘couple of times’ you have) up until the point were I threw in something along the lines of “ex-muslim”, and then suddenly I’ve became invisible. That doesn’t say something rational about how you see thing either in how you tend to judge others based mainly on their ethnic origin (as if they have anything to do with choosing it) and not by the code of their ethics or what they have to contribute, does it? as to Jesus, those experiences still have to be rationally explained, and I have yet to hear an explaination that I can honestly consider as the one.

also, I am sure, just like many you are in love with bush? well, how about pointing out that he is christian? in your view, does that fact alone mean that he has to be removed from office? if the answer is yes, then what is he still doing there? if the answer is no then I, also, as “a christian” (or whatever is left of my christianity), am entitled to be innocent of what you are accusing me of. At the very least he is responsible of driving 4000 vibrant precious and irreplacable solidiers to their death so he could make some money sucking oil that is not his. 

Brennen,

I take back what I said, you didn’t correct anything, you just accused me of more nonsense since I’ve never said for example “science must be avoided”. Apparently, out of the 2 of us, you are the emotional one based on your last post to me, and this only because I brought up the Vioox example and that probably is one of your sour spots. The Vioox example is A statistical reality, love it or hate it. I am not its creator and it is wrong of your to work to demonize me for daring to state it. I either have to go along with your accusations in regard to me practicing bleeding, casting out the devil and what not, playing on your baseless biases or I am this or that.  As a moderator your are supposed to stay on topic while remaining detached in the process (if you’re lost in this area, you might want to get your Q’s from Doug). If you want to quote me, you need to also quote my ---at least--- relevant posts as in the following:

Skeptics opened my eyes to numerous vital facts about religion, science and human existence in general. I owe them BIG. I still continue to learn from them, I would like to keep my stand at this for the moment. Of course science is prone to making errors, but they are minimal compared to those made by its opponents. At least it has the guts to self correct when it needs to (something religion will never be capable of doing since in its own tiny brain, it is infaillible), and that is what elevates it above all else. Science is genuiness and authenticity, anybody who works to discredit it in any way is the hoax.

or this:

Yep, science Plus my more than fine regenerative abilities make us the ultimate A Team   !!!

or this one:

In the above instance, Science took care of me no questions asked, but if I were to go to church with such injury, I’d probably be told I must’ve sinned and and the all mighty god has punished me for “what I’ve done”   . Now based on this, tell me, who really is righteous (and by that I mean an effective problem solver) here, Christianity or Science?!… In all honesty I say Science.

You are completely wrong here, when you say “certainty promised by Christianity” you mean that “god has plan”??? what kind of certainty is that? I don’t know much about science but just from my daily layperson experiences, I can say that it is methodical, systematic, disciplined, precise, rigorous with itself etc, etc, etc. and that if anything, makes it certain and leading to certainty. What the clergy ignoringly ‘packages’ as god or god’s ‘bs’, scientists actually roll up their sleeves, go out, demonstrate and prove the good old fashion way, as in getting off one’s rear end and get to work, not blow smoke at the masses faces. If it wasn’t for science and scientists, we’d still be living in the woods, probably waiting for another messaiah that the clergy would have invented since this is all they are good at.

I don’t have the time that you seem to to endlessly dig through different posts as you do but I remember one time I compared science to a holy ghost of a sort and I said that if it were to be pulled out of our lives in vacuum type of motion, our existence will instantaneously turn to A Hellish Kayos. 

Just how what you said I meant compute with the above as well as with my last post that you didn’t answer????

Clearly if you’ve read through my posts you’d realize that the comments you brought up were mainly directed at the crooks as there are in every field.  If you think you and your field are immaculate, then I’d answer to that god and religion think they are too.

I still insist that resorting to medication as a first solution teaches people to be lazy, irresponsible about maintaining their health. In saying that I am not being anti-science nor am I asserting science must be avoided. When one commits errors that over time generate serious medical problems, the healthiest and most [reason]able way, will be for them to go back and do some trouble shooting to determine the behavior/action that caused the problem at the first place. conditioning the population and pressuring them to adopt the “pills are nutritious food” mentality is not resolving the problem but making it worse ..., for them.  This will cause the initiating behavior to go out of control generating more problems for them to come over and give as offerings to you if this is your goal in life. I know this translates into more money to be made for you but what about your ethics, and what about the well being of those people? There are extreme cases that can’t do without a Dr. or a pharmacist and I am not talking about them, I am talking about the common men here.  To claim that a Dr. must be called the minute one sneezes as the absolute true solution to the sneezing serves somebody but not necessarly the sneezer.

And if you really care about animals as you claim you do, you should know that excessive research causes more un-needed animal torturing and killing, not less, since the more researches are out there the more animals will be needed for them to be conducted.

Daisy - 21 April 2008 11:59 AM

Speaking about my or your ability to assess any situation darling, if I remember correctly, you were kind of chatty with me (meaning you didn’t mind talking to me the ‘couple of times’ you have) up until the point were I threw in something along the lines of “ex-muslim”, and then suddenly I’ve became invisible. That doesn’t say something rational about how you see thing either in how you tend to judge others based mainly on their ethnic origin (as if they have anything to do choosing it) and not by the code of their ethics or what they have to contribute, does it? as to Jesus, those experiences still have to be rationally explained, and I have yet to hear an explaination that I can honestly consider as the one.

Chip on shoulder much sweetie? I had no idea you were ex-Muslim and it never factored into my evaluation of your character or my recent comments criticising your ability to self-evaluate and I believe I arrived here and began to take part not too far from the time you were claiming Jesus cured this, that and everything else (could be wrong though).

It’s interesting that you rail against that observation so much as I’ve met someone else online like you who likewise claimed she was able to properly self-evaluate her visions which, of course, she said were “real” ... personally I don’t see the problem in accepting that self-evaluations are inherently flawed, objectivity (if possible) is the name of the game and putting evaluations in the hands of (assumed neutral) others is a step towards that.

Kyu

I am sickened by the animal cruelty that exists for “the sake of science”. We have the technology and the dignity to use other methods.

peppermint - 12 May 2008 04:11 PM

I am sickened by the animal cruelty that exists for “the sake of science”. We have the technology and the dignity to use other methods.

As far as having the the technology to use other methods - no we don’t. While there are many shortcomings with animal models there are no computer, mechanical, or tissue models that can even come close to replacing them when testing drugs prior to human experimentation. If you’ve heard otherwise, you’ve heard wrong. There is a fair amount of propaganda out there from the PETA and similar organizations. Their goal is to prevent the needless suffering of animals and that is surely admirable, but if we were to eliminate animal testing we would be forced to replace that with more human testing at an early stage of drug development. This would inevitably lead to more human suffering.

We can debate the ethics of causing more suffering in animals to prevent suffering in humans, but ultimately that is the choice you have. In the absence of accurate non animal models ( and there are none), there is no choice where you get to lessen the suffering of animals AND humans.