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Comment by Insanity | Hacker News Reader

This assumes that what is harmful to animals is harmful to humans. If you determine whether chocolate or strawberries are edible by their effects on dogs, none of us would be eating those :)

This is _sometimes_ true, but we will also miss opportunities by not trusting a substance that would be fine for humans but not for mice.

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There are cases of substance that are fine for animals and bad for humans. The fists trials use very small groups and thy have rules like waiting 15 minutes or 1 hour between subjects. There was a very bad disaster a few years ago where the experimenter got lazy and injected everyone almost at the same time and two or tree died and a few had severe health problems.

> miss opportunities

It's totally possible, but if it already killed 50/50 rats, 15/15 dogs and 5/5 monkeys, and they offer me to be the fist human subject, I'd run away faster than Forest Gump.

I imagine there are exceptions. For example, we understand very well why ivermectine kills a lot of invertebrates but not (most) vertebrates and is a very good horse and human dewormer. There may be something that kills everything except humans, and we may understand why theoretically, but I'd not like to be the first to try it.

you are taking few bad examples as a summary of an entire field, and also do not put forward a feasible alternative. count all the human lives saves by medicines developed succesfully through this method.

its not perfect, but the alternatives is forcing it on humans. are you going to voluenteer? you'll be the only one in that queue.

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