[belorn]

We do have an alternative to animal testing. We can use humans who are desperate enough to volunteer to a medical experiment knowing that it might not work and could potentially make things worse. The purpose of animal testing in situations like this is to catch early problems before the final human testing. Computer simulation can do a lot to minimize the need for animal testing, but I don't think we are there yet where we can go directly from a simulation to human testing.

I do not however like to view it as medical utilitarianism. The testing will happen regardless if the test subject are human or mice, because people do still want the medical cures. People are however less sad if an experiment accidentally killed a bunch of mice than if a bunch of human test subjects died. Historically people tend to use military service men as test subjects, which is why much of medical knowledge is based on test subjects of a specific gender (male) and age group (20-35). Not that long ago (~1950) people also used people with mental disabilities and orphans. Going just a decade earlier and people used prisoners and war and people deemed unwanted. Hopefully computers will one day replace the need for testing.

[rlpb]

> We do have an alternative to animal testing. We can use humans who are desperate enough to volunteer...

This situation would presumably only arise because somebody else previously made the decision not to perform that experiment on an animal, but instead wait until a human suffers enough to become desperate enough to volunteer. That decision resulted in human suffering (albeit in the form of the trolley problem). Was that decision acceptable? How much human suffering, and/or how many humans suffering, is equivalent to one animal? Does sapience make a difference to this calculation?

I'm not saying this makes animal testing OK. My point is just that testing only on human volunteers isn't a magical solution to this ethical problem.

[belorn]

I agree, its not a magical solution. Some might even call it exploiting to use people when they are at their most desperate point in their lives, and for pediatric research it would basically involve a situation where its the parents that agrees to the medical experiment.

Its a difficult decision to make, experimenting on either animals or people.

[Evidlo]

At least with animal subjects, you can ensure that the health, age, and severity of the 'injury' is exactly the same with all subjects.

You'll never get that with humans even if you have plenty of volunteers.