I've done programming work for some world-class academic neuroscience/biology labs, I've taken the mandatory animal ethics trainings, and I've seen how the sausage is made. For the most part I'm actually pretty impressed at the ethical oversight that is exercised on behalf of animals, this particular university going well beyond the mandatory legal requirements imposed by the government. But rats, or at least one specific breed of rats, are fair game, and it gets pretty horrific.
edit, for clarity: I think be have gone well beyond wherever the ethical line is, not below/beneath… for the first time I was confused by the downvotes, maybe that explains it?
That's not actually true; it causes birth defects in animals as well. Only limited animal testing was performed before it was approved for use in humans; more extensive animal testing, which did demonstrate birth defects, was performed only after it had been withdrawn due to causing human birth defects.
I think you inverted the meaning of the parent comment. They asked for exceptions where animal experiments do apply to humans, saying that the rule seems to be they don't.
Thalidomide was never approved for treating in nausea in pregnant women in the US. It was prescribed off label, but the FDA rejected it for that purpose.
Why did the FDA reject it if animal tests didn’t show deformities?
To be clear, that’s not a rhetorical question. I’ve heard rumors the FDA wasn’t convinced thalidomide would be effective - which is very different from worries over fetal abnormalities.
Do you know the background there?
Given the context that this experiment supposedly achieved something humans have wanted enough to risk their lives for, for quite some time, it seems like an astonishing accomplishment.
I, personally, would not trade these rats lives for a uterus, but I don't feel like I can decide for the rest of humanity.
There also must be an awful lot of research that's gone into fertility treatments in the past, was that justified, when it wasn't about the "unnatural" goal here?
Sentient beings do not want to be brutally experimented on. This self-selecting industry of sociopaths belongs in the 19th century.
This is obviously false, because transplanting a uterus to a genetic male was done on a human, voluntarily, long before this experiment.
I can't argue whether someone should be concerned about humans or rats and how much and what experiments are worth it. How you balance one creature's suffering with another. Nobody can or has ever answered that.
I meant to counter the idea that transplanting a uterus has to be without purpose and can only be attributed to idle cruelty.
They are, experimental animals have and should have bigger protections against the cruelty that can get directed to them, for warranted and unwarranted reasons.
A side point, but that Russian dog experimentation is so creepy. I remember watching a video of it on youtube I think, and even while knowing it was all genuine footage, was in absolute stunned disbelief at what I was watching - thinking that it had to be fake.