I wonder how long it will be before they find out that the dogs have begun killing and eating the brains of rabbits, and that the virus has mutated to infect homo sapiens!

Oops, wrong movie.

Ahahahha!

I wonder how many times the scientists doing that experiment stopped, looked at each other, and were all like: Dude, can you believe we're making zombie dogs?

this is disgusting. not necessarily more disgusting than what we do to mice and other animals every day, but still pretty sick. i wonder if any of these scientists would have been willing to do this experiment on a few homeless kids instead of a few dogs from the pound?

but, of course, dogs are inferior to humans, right? there's no scientific basis for that opinion--no logical basis, either--but we shouldn't let that worry us, should we? no, we should just keep on screwing with other lifeforms as much as it pleases us, and not worry about justifying it intellectually or ethically.

jesus. anyway, sorry about the rant. this was just too much.

Not to worry -- quite a lot of people feel the same way, I gather. I myself have a queasy relationship to the use of animals in scientific research: I agree that some forms of knowledge are a) desirable and valuable, yet b) cannot be acquired with animal and/or human experimentation, but I also have serious problems with the stuff that happens to animals that seem to have fairly advanced senses of pain, fear, self-awareness and whatnot. I don't think I have a well-thought-out, principled position on it, probably because I find it so hard to think about in the first place.

I think this is excellent research, seriously. I'm impressed.

(While research on animals one of those impossible-to-resolve issues, like abortion, if you can accept the tradeoff as a necessary one, this research is no worse than any other research that's been done over the past n years that do their best to keep animals from unduly suffering during the research.)

There's an interesting history to be had in the many scientists who've simply experimented on themselves, when it comes to judging the effects of certain nonlethal chemical compounds, etc .... since they wanted to get a quick feel for the behavior of a chemical, in advance of doing further testing.

It'll be interesting to see how they actually manage to get informed consent to make the leap from the theoretical possibility of survival "without brain damage" (I mean, just how discerning *were* the cognitive tests they performed on the necrohounds?) to actually taking some wounded dude, flushing out his blood with saline, stopping his heart, patching him up while he's dead, retransfusing him, rewarming him, and reanimating him.

They've been using cold as a preservative element in heart and brain surgery for some years now, and there are many instances of children submerged under freezing waters who are resuscitable an hour later. Still, many of those kids have residual brain damage, and the "save" isn't really a complete one.

While cringing at the problems faced by the poor dogs, I, too, think it's a pretty impressive step.

And Andrew Stern - we NEED a picture of that damn robot lobster!

Great point -- assuming the technique can be made to work well enough on dogs, chimps, or whatever other animals they experiment on, when time comes to use it on a critically wounded soldier, how do you explain what the hell you're about to do, to get consent?

As to the question of whether the dogs were sick or not aftewards -- the NY Post story quotes the scientist as saying that indeed, some of the dogs were pretty damaged afterwards.

Well, I understand why many people are conflicted about testing on animals, because it's not a very pleasant thing to ponder. But I think any honest person who looks carefully at the issue will conclude (religious cosiderations aside) that there is no logical justification for doing these tests. There are only emotional justifications.

The only logical justification would be if the lives of other animals were worth less than the lives of humans. But to rank species in order of worth you must first choose a criterion on which to base your rankings. And which criterion do you choose?

Animal-testing-apologists invariably choose one of two: intelligence, or the capacity to suffer. As you mentioned, Clive, more and more research is showing that even lab rats can suffer as much as we can. There is even good evidence to suggest that rats have a sense of humor and are able to 'fall in love'.

So that leaves intelligence. And obviously, if we say that the smartest animals are also the most valuable, then humans come out on top. But why choose intelligence as our criterion? Why not footspeed? Or body mass? Or spacial orientation skills? What inherent connection is there between an animal's intelligence and its value?

There is none, clearly. We choose intelligence as our criterion because it's the one thing we're best at. We're the ones doing the thought experiment, so we rig it to make sure that we come out the winners. (Indeed, if we were truly honest with ourselves, we would never use intelligence to determine worth, because the planet's most intelligent species are also the most destructive, and are therefore more like liabilities than assets.)

The truth is that we value a dog less than a human because a dog isn't one of us. Just as some Americans are more concerned about the death of one American than the death of thousands of Sudanese. It's an understandable point of view, perhaps, but it's not logically defensible. It's a prejudice that comes out of pure, irrational emotion, and I wish that the defenders of animal testing would have the courage to admit it.

Have you read much of Peter Singer's philosophy? He takes the ethical question of the treatment of non-human species to some interesting limit cases.

I hate to further direct the topic of discussion away from the ulta-cool experiment, but I have to disagree with andrew's analysis.

I agree with his first point in part. I do believe that the researchers probably believe the lives of other animals to be worth less than those of humans. But to this I would say, what person doesn't? We're probably genetically pre-disposed to feel this way. And while it may be uncomfortable for many people to admit this, I'm sure all humans feel this way to a greater or lesser extent. Who do you pull out of a burning building, a total stranger, or a puppy?

I also agree that this is in part some of the motivation behind animal reserach. Imagine that we were to grant animals equal rights, no longer considering our selves "better" than animals, we would likely cease all research programs involving that type of reasearch, rather than subject humans to those kinds of research programmes. Because we grant special rights to humans, and currently, we feel that animals are somehow less than humans.

But this isn't the logical reason for researching on animals. It doesn't follow that if we're "better" than animals that we should neccesarily perform experiments on them, like the superior aliens probing our orifices.

The justification is reasonable gains vs costs. Are the gains of medical research sufficiently worthwhile to justify research on animals? The answer is a clear yes. Perhaps in the modern era, you could say we know enough to stop all animal research now. But where would we be without it, and what will we be missing out on should it stop. Cancer cures? Curing Parkinsons or ALS or heart disease or obesity? This research can't go on without the kind of work done on animals, unless we agree to do this kind of research on humans instead.

The criterion we choose to justify the discrepency is not intelligence per se, but probably CONSCIOUSNESS. Humans we accept to be conscious, willing, sentinent beings, whereas animals we believe not to be (or to be less-so). Some people thought believe this to be true of some animals, thus creating the arbitrary "line" between the expendable and the cute and cuddly.

INTERESTINGLY, (and back to the cool factor of this research), the experiment could help to explain what exactly it is that makes humans "conscious", and whether animals have it. I'm almost willing to volunteer to do this kind of thing myself, because I'm just DYING (no pun intended I swear) to find out what would happen to a person after 3 hours of death. Most conceptions of the "self" involve some metaphysical aspect, a "soul" or "energies", or something else. So what would happen to a person if they were dead for hours? Most religious types would probably say that after a person dies the soul goes on to a heaven or afterlife or another life or maybe it just floast around in the aether. So if John Doe is still John Doe after 3 hours of death, does this mean there is no metaphysical aspect to the self?

Maybe with this research we can answer these questions for both animals and humans, and if similarities are found between animals and humans, raise the status of those animals.

The point being though, that the research, although perhaps not the most noble feat of humans, is important. But you should always try to remember too, that research is done very carefully and tactfully these days to minimize the pain and suffering of animals caused by research. Humans may be hypocrites, but we're at least empathetic to pain and suffering.

NECROHOUNDS!

I think that the coolest band name ever has been born during this discussion thread.

Clive,

I've read some of Singer's stuff, and on most of the big topics I agree with him. His defense of humans having sex with animals... not so much. But that's a whole other topic!

Steve E.,

I see your points. But I think it's telling that in your discussion of gains vs. costs, all of the gains you mention are gains for humans. I agree: testing on animals does indeed help humans, but it comes at terrible costs to other species and the planet as a whole.

Looking beyond just the rats and other animals that we kill in these tests, we have to consider that many of these tests are designed to prolong human life, and therefore lead directly to overpopulation, which is swiftly making the earth uninhabitable. So I think if you do a gains vs. cost analysis from an objective (i.e., non-human) perspective, the costs of animal testing far outweight the gains.

But let me be clear: I'm not saying we should stop all animal testing. I think that we should continue to test on animals if the test meets two criteria: 1) it's of life-or-death importance (so no cosmetics testing, for example, or testing for non-life-threatening diseases); and 2) it's conclusively shown that the animal's physiology is close enough to ours to make the results of the test useful.

But my justification for this isn't logical--it isn't ethically defensible. It's simply that I would rather see a lab rat die if it meant that my wife or my father could be cured of a terminal illness. So I would rather save a stranger than a puppy from a burning building. But that's a purely emotional justification, and I wish people would admit it. Only if we're honest with ourselves can we then sort out the ethics of the situation.

I could quarrel with your claim that animal testing is very humane and empathetic these days. I would argue that most of it is needless and some of it is simply cruel. But I think I've already taken up too much of Clive's space with my preaching!

Nah, I love the debate here -- it's more interesting than the original post! Good points all around.

Though personally, I think Erik made the best point of all: Necrohounds is an awesome band name.

Steve, I agree, this research opens up a truly fascinating area of metaphysical inquiry: What is death, and what does death mean, if we can simulate it perfectly but then bring someone back to life? I haven't read modern religious philosophers enough to know, but I suspect there are some who've tackled this question, simply because modern medecine has already enjoyed spectular success in bringing people back from states of seeming death, i.e. after car accidents, plunged into icy waters, etc. The freaktastic thing here is the suggestion that we could intentionally impose a "death state" in someone so they could see how it changes them.

This was, of course, the plot of the 1990 B movie Flatliners. Keifer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin die, bring themselves back, and thenceforth are plagued by some totally messed-up hallucinations.

Andrew,

I tend to agree with you. Gains are invariable anthro-centric. And our decisions are emotional, and not really logical. Though whether or not such things are ethical I suppose depends on how you view ethics. WWKD? (What would Kant do?)

Clive, I'm not familiar with the modern religious philosophers, but there are some cool neuroscience/philosophy of mind people (eg., Patricia and Paul Churchland) who probably have some cool things to say about it.

I forgot about that Flatliners movie. I was too young to see it when it came out, but I would probably really dig it now. It reminds me of Vonnegut's book God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian. Vonnegut is a reporter, interviewing people in heaven with the help of Dr. Kevorkian's supervised deaths.

http://www.radio-gehacktes.de/reviewsd.htm

The name has been used in a satiric review of a German metal band named "Damnation." The author sets up the fictional "Necrohounds" as the object of the nostalgic metal practiced by the real band. Dig the names. FYI: "Übungsverstärker" is practice amp and "schreddert" is present tense, 3rd person German verb for "shred."

"Im Juli 1984. Die Underground Thrash- Black- Death- Whatsoever-Band "Necrohounds" will heute ihr erstes Demo einspielen. Drummer Necrobeast Hellslaughter, 15, hat sich bereits warm gespielt. Die Bassdrum bewegt sich immer von ihm weg, die Snare baumelt an einem ehemaligen Gewinde herunter. Gitarrist Demonic Witch Desecrator, 16, hätte eigentlich heute den Rasen seiner Oma mähen sollen. Stattdessen stöpselt er seine altersschwache Klampfe in den 1,7 Watt Übungsverstärker und schreddert los. Sänger Lord Poserkiller ist wieder einmal zu spät. Als er endlich erscheint, wirft er zur Begrüßung seinen Mofahelm in die Ecke und murmelt dabei etwas wie: "...Krümmer abgefallen, Scheiß Bullen...". Bevor Poserkiller sein Mikrofon erreicht, schlägt er erst einmal der Länge nach hin - sein Patronengurt ist, in Ermangelung eines Arsches, zwischen die Springerstiefel gerutscht und hat den Lord zu Fall gebracht. Dann endlich geht es los, das Effektgerät mit dem Hall wird aufgerissen, der Vierspur-Recorder angeworfen, jeder gibt sein Bestes und eine dreiviertel Stunde später ist alles im Kasten. Und das Ergebnis dieser Bemühungen hört ihr auf "Destructo Evangelia"