Is It Time To Stop Animal Testing?
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
- Much of the animal testing we do isn’t necessary anymore, but we keep doing it. Why?
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** So why do we experiment on animals? **
For decades, many companies tested their products on animals to see if they were safe. Animal testing really took off in the 1930s after 17 women were blinded and 1 died from using a mascara. After that, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) started regulating cosmetics. And by 1962, animal testing was required for certain kinds of research beyond cosmetics and remains so to this day. It’s a touchy subject because many animal rights activists say that the animals are put through painful procedures without much regard for their welfare.
** So can we, like, NOT test on animals and still develop safe medicines? **
There are indeed alternatives to animal testing. Some of the most powerful are “organs-on-chips.” Scientists take human cells and grow them on little plastic chips to form tiny man-made organs. Basically, it’s living human tissue. This is huge, people! Like, you can understand how human lungs respond to a new drug without causing any pain to any animals! Another alternative to animal testing is to use computer algorithms that can analyze tons of data that we already have. For instance, recent research shows computer models of human heart cells can predict when drugs will have bad side effects better than animal tests. Researchers are excited about all of these alternatives for two big reasons: animal testing is expensive, and it’s just not very accurate. Plus, there are all kinds of new fancy personalized medicine and therapies now that are so specific to human biology that animal studies don’t work at all.
** So why haven’t we ditched animal testing entirely yet? **
The biggest challenge is always people. It’s convincing the people that work in the pharmaceutical industry to change the way they do things. It’s hard for people to take a risk. So, when it’s time to approve something for testing, fund some research, or publish some study, researchers and the institutions that they work for usually want to see animal tests, even when it’s not required.
SOURCES
www.humanesociety.org/resourc...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
www.understandinganimalresear...
www.fda.gov/cosmetics/product...
www.sciencedirect.com/topics/...
caat.jhsph.edu/principles/for...
www.congress.gov/bill/117th-c...
www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021...
www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:32 History of Animal Testing
2:14 State of Animal Testing Regulations in the U.S.
2:54 Alternatives to Animal Testing
5:31 Obstacles to Change
8:43 Summation & Outro
#animals
Do you think we are ready to replace animal testing in medical research?
Probably, but at what scope is beyond my knowledge. There are likely things that require testing that are low enough risk (severity/probability), because of circumstances like the substance being close enough to an existing substance used on/by/for humans, to skip animal testing. These are probably excellent candidates for the new methodology types covered in the video. What might help things to move faster would be something like preferential funding to studies that include new testing methodologies and a comparison of results to traditional methods. Maybe that is happening to some extent? I don't know.
Sort of
Stop animal testing please!!!!!
Nah. People WANT to kill and harm animals, regardless of whether they have to or not. Ask anybody who regularly kills animals and they'll tell you they enjoy it on some level.
YES!
A MUCH NEEDED VIDEO! I am a biomedical scientist and been working in labs that do test on animals over a decade. Most of these experiments are flawed by design, biased, and definitely not translatable to humans.
The problem is people expect the alternatives to animal testing to be perfect, while animal testing is far from being perfect. Results from animal testing are rarely reproducible, and often wrong. They never represent the genetic diversity of human population in an uncontrolled environment. For instance, lab mice are generally genetically homogeneous. Diseases in these animals are generally forcefully induced, so they often don't represent the same biology in humans at all!
We must fund and advocate for alternatives. If we did that 100 years ago, we would have been independent from animal testing by now! In less than 100 years we went from inventing cars to landing on the moon! Yet we've been testing on animals all along! This must change, for the sake of human safety and animals' welfare.
Btw nice touch on animal welfare act. It's a JOKE!
I reviewed organs on chips here:
ruclips.net/video/ek3UXUUZkXI/видео.html
Wow, never heard of organ chips. Sounds very promising, along with the computer models. Great video guys!
Seeing the photos in the labs makes my stomach turn. I do animal rescue and rehab, focusing on the little animals-- reptiles, rodents, small birds-- and they have just as much a capacity to feel as we do. Pain, joy, comfort, curiosity, fear, excitement.
Thinking about the rabbits I've cared for being put through the hell that is animal testing is just heartbreaking. All of them are equally as valuable and capable of experiencing the emotions the ones I've known have, but they never will- they will only know fear and pain. Humanity does not have the right to choose who is worth sacrificing in the name of our own progress.
"The question is not, 'Can they reason?' nor, 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'" ― Jeremy Bentham
They can reason. They can talk. And they can suffer. You just have to listen.
I've never heard of organs on chips and I loooooove them, it's amazing that an objet so small can replicate the way a whole organ works. I just have one question, when doing research, the testing happens on different chips that have cells from a lot of humans, or, since it's kind of new research, it's the data still limited?
Currently animal testing is incredibly nessicary for the development of many life saving drugs all the way from covid vaccines to drugs to help treat and cure rare life threatening diseases. We are not able to just stop testing but eventually my hope is we will find a way to lessen the impact it has. This is coming from someone in field. Also scientists working on these tests are already constantly trying to find ways to replace animal models wherever they can.
Could not have said it better myself.
@Metal Fan you act like we aren't already. That's as much of a focus as the actual testing being done finding ways to reduce and eventually replace animal models
@@buttermepancake3613 how is it necessary!? Don't animals have lives!? Animals are suffering because of scientists using products on them!!! And you say it's necessary!? You want animals to suffer???
@@unseparablebffz I'm certain you or someone you know takes some sort of medication right? Or has pet that needs medication? That's why it's an absolute necessity. Those need to be regulated and tested before the fda can approve them and give them to people. We would have a crisis on our hands if these things didn't get tested first.
I am not talking about cosmetic testing either
I promise there are so many processes in place to make sure those animals lives are honored in addition to research while they are there to find a way to reduce the amount of animal models needed until we can replace it entirely. That is still quite a ways away however. For now we can respect the animals while there are in labs serving thier purpose.
@@buttermepancake3613 what I'm saying is there should be a different way that is actually necessary. Hurting animals isn't necessary when they could find a different way. Sorry this pisses me off 😅
Thank you Myles for this video! Offers some clarity about animal research. Unfortunately though, it's a bit inaccurate about U.S. regulations. The AWA is one law that protects research animals, but the Health Research Extension Act of 1985 also does too - this one mandates the Public Health Service (PHS) Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals.
Species excluded from the AWA have a good chunk of protection under the PHS Policy at NIH.
Thanks for watching and sharing this info. We will definitely look into it and make a correction on our Community Tab if it checks out!
Your concluding question is based in a false premise. You ask whether we'd be comfortable with a member of our family taking a drug that has only been tested on chips, but that question disregards the fact that clinical trials in humans follow the animal trials before new drugs are approved for general consumption. The approval given after animal/analogue trials only enables human _testing_ to begin, and the results of those human trials determine whether or not a drug can be sold.
I prioritize decreasing consumption of animal products and banning factory farms over this issue, to be honest. Like, vivisection is horrible but it pales in comparison with the horror houses where millions of cows, pigs, and chickens are tortured…you know? (And I say this as someone who used to cry at work because she was humanely killing animals for science)
Thanks for making this video though-I didn’t know about some of these innovations!
Just a heads up, China requires that pretty much everything be tested on animals, so if your favorite brand is also sold in China, it’s probably tested on animals. Look up your favorite products to see if they’re cruelty free. We like to think that animal testing for cosmetics and hygiene products is a thing of the past, but it’s not. It’s just much less common than it used to be.
What if a drug unexpectedly affects a different organ than the ones tested on chips and what if computer models used output data from tests on tissues and organs to compress larger simulations?
For your first point, it's a limitation of organ chips. But animal models have similar limitations. In fact all models have similar limitations. They are called models for that reason because they are a simplified approximation of a human that are necessary for the first stages of research. As similar as mice and rabbits are to humans, they are not humans and testing on animals is only one step of many before a drug or treatment is approved. After animal models (or organ chips if we're trying to replace animal models) then we move to clinical trials. Phase one usually starts with healthy people to find toxicity in humans. Then they move on to stage two and three. Sometimes the drug will not behave the same in humans as it did in the animal model and it can fail anywhere along the pipeline. Drug research has always been a balance between risks and costs and the benefits. Researchers that test on animals don't enjoy it. They want to find a replacement for animals just as anyone else.
8:57 Yes
More good stuff. An aside, there is a lot of bipartisan work done in Congress. You don’t tend to hear about it much because a) it is off brand for the parties these days so they don’t talk about it much, and b) stuff without conflict doesn’t sell well in news outlets, so it gets less media attention, and c) a lot of journalism is kinda lazy and just reports on things that the politicians tell them (especially if their is a fight involved).
This is a complex ethical issue! Animal studies may be much more ethical than traditional food industry treatment of animals (this goes without saying I guess). One perspective I'd be interested to hear is on the psychological consequences of sacrificing animals on the lab personnel that actually carry it out. Their perspective may differ from that of eg a hunter or a child psychopath that abuse or kill animals. The methods of sacrificing the animals are grim but interesting--I've heard of Mouse Guillotines as one method but I would wager the more common method is some form of gas chamber. Thought provoking stuff! Above the Noise is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows!!
That would be really interesting to look into. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment! We’re glad you’re enjoying the channel!
I've done animal research only on mice. I can tell you that no one likes doing it but no one likes seeing their family die of diseases either. I've worked with mice in cancer research and ALS/lou gehrig's disease and those are really bad. I still had a really hard time with the animal research. My first job out of college was to get the primary neuronal cultures for our lab studying ALS. Neurons don't really divide under most circumstances so you can't just grow them in culture to get more. You have to get them fresh every time. I had to take a pregnant mouse once per week and sacrifice her by breaking her neck. Then I extracted the fetus mice and cut out their brains to put them in a petri dish so we could use the cells to understand how different types of brain cells, specifically neurons and astrocytes, interact. That was almost 15 years ago but I can still close my eyes and see the little fetus mice. All that being said, we tried to be as humane as possible. Tried to minimize suffering. All animal protocols are designed, have to be approved by review boards that are independent of the lab, and have to be strictly followed. They are frequently audited. Our lab didn't use guillotines. I think mice are too small for that. We also had a CO2 chamber for euthanizing the animals humanely but I didn't use that. We used that for the rats because they're too big. Mice are ferocious little things but the rats were really sweet and gentle. Oh, and the reason why I was hired by that lab was because the tech before me went crazy and released all the mice... but just opened their cages so they were released in the facility. A facility that was in the basement of a world class hospital.
Since when do people who kill animals for a living feel guilty about it? You don't see wolves having an existential crisis over ripping a deer's head off, nor have I ever heard of nature cameraman getting said over watching lions eat their own young.
Great video!
It’d be nice to imagine a future where one might 3d print entire organs or complex systems as a research medium to replace animal testing.
Until then, it seems kinda hard to have an unwavering faith on computer modeling or small tissue on chips to emulate effects on a complete mammal with huge complexity (+89% is crazy tho!) For drugs, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to me to keep animal testing as a secondary step before human trials, as long as the testing was done humanely.
This video perfectly explains the exciting changes in drug testing! Even better, scientists are now using human-derived cells, leading to more accurate testing that reflects how drugs interact with our own bodies! The 'organ on a chip' mentioned in the video is a miniaturized system with living human cells, replicating real-life conditions inside us. This is a game-changer for drug development!
of mice and men
poor animals, imagine how that would feel
They are here for us to use how we please.
No why do they do this
man i hope this is true
I would take medicines if it made me not sick
I’ve no issues with it
I don’t think it’s ok to be hurting any animal wether it is a sheep or a dog we need to stop eating the animals and abusing them who ever is reading this comment please remember these words
“Every life is worth saving”
-Mishka (Me)
Hard to take you seriously since you use animal products from livestock needlessly for entertainment.
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS SHOULD BE BANNED AND PROTECTED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW!
Then how will we get life saving medications? Cancer treatments? Medications for genetic disorders and epilepsy? Brain disorders? Or even medication for our beloved pets?
Just stop.
Animal want to lives too.
Давно пора!😈
we must stop animal research immediately
Then how will we get life saving medications? Cancer treatments? Medications for genetic disorders and epilepsy? Brain disorders? Or even medication for our beloved pets?
This is a bunch of BS.
Just test on criminals. And I mean serious types, after having being fully proven of doing those crimes. That way, human rights activists can't defend horrible criminals.
Um, no.
@@AboveTheNoise Just an opinion...
Society is measured by the way it treats its criminals.
@@NotHPotter Agreed, but there are levels of severity of crimes. I'm only talking about the ones who break limits of the highest levels..
@@mohammedmustafa7757 You're aware how many especially heinous crimes end up with convictions being overturned, right? How many innocent people are you willing to cause to suffer?