[ping_pong]

I'm pretty desensitized to stuff, but this study is a horrifying. They basically mutiliated a rat by connecting it to another rat's circulatory system, implanted a uterus and then impregnanted it. It feels like this has crossed some boundaries of ethics. It's like that Russian experiment that decapitated a dog, connected it so that blood was recirculating through its brain, and then let it wake up. It's horrifying to think we can allow this in the name of science.

[kibwen]

I don't want to belittle your response, but this does not seem especially beyond the pale for the sort of thing rats get subjected to.

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.

[Fezzik]

Is there any evidence that this type of -entirely inhumane- testing has ever yielded results that a person could argue justifies the cruelty? I feel like all I ever hear is that rat/mice testing is effectively inapplicable to humans… I don’t even know where the line is, but I feel like we’re nowhere near it, if it even exists at all.

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?

[sploitable]

In fact there are many counter examples. Thalidomide had no negative effects on non-human animals, but created notoriously deformed children in humans. Similary, I think it was paracetamol which when tested on some non-human animal is 100% lethal, and had they tested on those species then this common, essential medicine would never have progressed to the human trial stage. A classic case is the link between lung cancer and smoking. Millions of dollars of public money went to the big tobacco companies in the name of "cancer research". Dispite being able to induce lung cancer in dogs by restraining them and forcing the to chain smoke for hours on end, these were not the results they wanted. IIIRC, it took research with human volunteers before the scientific consensus that we have today came about because the "animal models" did not represent human physiology.

[skissane]

> Thalidomide had no negative effects on non-human animals, but created notoriously deformed children in humans

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.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12677202/

[pyuser583]

> Thalidomide had no negative effects on non-human animals, but created notoriously deformed children in humans.

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?

[wombatpm]

I believe the studies were done with a single isomer, which was safe and is still available. The racemic mixture was sold commercially but never tested until later. IIRC the bench top process produced a single isomer, but the scaled up process messed with the chirality producing the racemic mixture.

[lychrel]

Yeah this was the real problem with Thalidomide. It pops up as an example of "things to consider" in DD textbooks.

[perl4ever]

>In fact there are many counter examples

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.

[perl4ever]

Transplanting a uterus to a genetic male was done many years ago, to a human, voluntarily, and of course it didn't work. This was prior to modern gender reassignment surgery.

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?

[perl4ever]

As I recall, there are some lab animals that are regulated, and some are not. And I don't remember exactly which, but it seemed kind of arbitrary.

[sploitable]

According to the pre-print, these researchers are based at "Naval Medical University, Shanghai, China" - a country with a terrible record of human rights violations and an even worse record when it comes to animal rights. Of 3,000 people surveyed in China, approximately 2,000 hadn't heard of the concept of "animal welfare". I'd be surprised if regulation on non-human animal experiements even existed in their jurisdiction.

[skissane]

Sometimes I wonder if Chinese scientists are going to make scientific advances that Western scientists won't, due to weaker ethical constraints enabling them to perform experiments that Western scientists can't, or lesser regulations enabling them to get the same experiments done faster and cheaper.

[haihaibye]

If only they had accelarated a COVID-19 vaccine by a few months via human challenge trials.

[perl4ever]

Yes, I'm saying, in the US, where we may pride ourselves on having standards, there are some lab animals that are exempt, and so I think there's a blind spot, where nobody (in the sense of the lay public) thinks about what's happening to them.

[DangitBobby]

The most troublesome part of the article is that any mention of ethics focuses on how this will affect humans and little is mentioned about the cruelty of treating the rats this way. I don't understand how people can be so calloused. I guess they are all fairly confident that karma is not real.

[cm2187]

I am not for pointless animal cruelty (and I can't justify this study) but still keeping in mind that when the city calls in pest exterminators, the rats will have a fairly bad time. Why are those lab rats more special?

[DangitBobby]

Well they are special mainly because of the excessive cruelty they experienced.

[type0]

> Why are those lab rats more special?

They are, experimental animals have and should have bigger protections against the cruelty that can get directed to them, for warranted and unwarranted reasons.

[nerdponx]

It's not that at all. The question is whether the cruelty can be justified in service of a greater good, or if it's just plain cruelty to satisfy aimless curiosity.

[goatlover]

Why would that reasoning apply only to certain animals and not others? If it's okay to be cruel to rats for the service of the greater good, then why not dogs, apes or dolphins? Why not humans? Where and how do you draw the line?

[throwaway675309]

I'm not going to defend this study, but we already have a line between humans and nonhumans, particularly when legally speaking. For example, the sentences handed down for killing another human are far more severe than killing an animal. These lines already exist.

[cm2187]

Well there is a line. I don't think twice using insecticide when confronted to a mosquito.

[paopoi]

Killing a mosquito is an act of self preservation, as valid now as it was 10.000 years ago. Many of us live an existence pretty removed from the threats of the wild, but we we’re not totally detached from the need to “protect” ourselves. :)

[sploitable]

The greater good is the slipperiest slope in the history of slippery slopes. Plus, this only "applies" if you are a utilitarian. The same rationale was used by the Nazi Scientists and the Japanese Unit 751 during WWII to justify psychopathically sadistic human experiements on POWs.

Sentient beings do not want to be brutally experimented on. This self-selecting industry of sociopaths belongs in the 19th century.

[perl4ever]

>Sentient beings do not want to be brutally experimented on

This is obviously false, because transplanting a uterus to a genetic male was done on a human, voluntarily, long before this experiment.

[DangitBobby]

Well, they were capable of consent and consented. I also doubt that they had their circulatory system fused with another female human by surgically splicing them together. I imagine they would have declined if that were the case.

[perl4ever]

How her suffering and death (in 1931) compared with the rats is irrelevant to my point which is just about the value of the research to humans.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lili_Elbe

[wruza]

Is there any evidence that karma is real and/or isn’t made up concept to cope with naturally unjust world? Or is world not unjust? (Not joking. I don’t mutilate animals, neither do things that someone could call really unethical, but ethics itself always felt so synthetic to me. Nature is not ethical, it is very unceremonious for no “good” reason.)

[DangitBobby]

I see no evidence for karma being real either. But I certainly wish people would have a fear of karmic justice.

[arvinsim]

Evil people get away with stuff all the time.

[BoiledCabbage]

> It's like that Russian experiment that decapitated a dog, connected it so that blood was recirculating through its brain, and then let it wake up.

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.

[heavyset_go]

I think if more people knew about the realities of animal testing and experimentation, they would be slightly less barbaric.

[rblatz]

I just can’t imagine how this made it past IRB approval. It doesn’t really prove anything and it seems unnecessarily cruel.