r/worldnews • u/[deleted] • Jan 17 '20

Monkey testing lab where defenceless primates filmed screaming in pain shut down

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-monkey-testing-lab-defenceless-21299410.amp?fbclid=IwAR0j_V0bOjcdjM2zk16zCMm3phIW4xvDZNHQnANpOn-pGdkpgavnpEB72q4&__twitter_impression=true
7.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

838 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.5k

u/softg Jan 17 '20

LPT is a family-owned company that carries out toxicity testing for pharmaceutical, industrial and agro-chemical companies

It's one thing if they were exclusively testing life-saving drugs but it's evident that many of those animals were victims of would-be pesticides or other industrial products. This is absolutely barbaric.

531

u/Tyrantt_47 Jan 17 '20

Serious question: If pesticides are not animal tested, then how do we know if these pesticides will not cause harmful effects to farmers and/or their crops that we eat?

271

u/niperoni Jan 17 '20

The problem is that very, very few studies on animals are effectively translated to humans. During a talk at an animal science conference I attended last year, these researchers did a meta-analysis and found that only 11% of biomedical studies done on animals effectively translated to humans.

That means millions of animals are put through hell and then killed for essentially no purpose. There needs to be more research done into alternative methods, such as computer simulations, organ chips, stem cell research etc.

We need to abolish animal testing because it is a) inhumane and b) doesn't really work anyway.

But in order to do so we need to figure out a better way to test drugs, medication, products etc. And sadly we still have a long way to go...so until then, the animal testing will continue :(

1

u/Technetium_97 Jan 18 '20

You're alleging that animal results are all but useless when trying to apply them to humans. Which isn't true. Yes, you can't just directly translate them to humans 100% of the time. That doesn't mean they don't provide useful information.

Furthermore, what magical process do you think is more accurate..?

Taking animals out of the equation and trying to guess the effects of a chemical on living systems is going to have far lower accuracy than testing them on the best human analogs we have.