HIV Cure/Vaccine?

So I heard something briefly the other night on the news about this.. And now just found this...

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2008-08/2008-08-01-voa59.cfm?CFID=66283561&CFTOKEN=38980539

Interesting!

Thoughts?

I have a friend who is HIV positive and this just sounds too good to be true!

One thing that bothered me in that article was the animal testing!
Does HIV affect animals the same way it affects humans?
These animals are injected with this, aren't they?

I understand if it weren't for these "animals" this would not be possible but it is STILL VERY cruel



S xx

You would rather we test, with potentially fatal consequences on HUMANS? Or would you rather we just not test at all, and flag the whole thing, and let the millions of HIV+ people around the world just carry on dying? Honestly

Maybe figure out another testing method? If the smarts are there to create the cures in the first place then they are definitely there to create another form of testing?

Breakthroughs for aids/cancer are claimed all the time.

You mean spend billions of dollars researching the possibility of creating a perfect working model of the human body, avoiding the ethical pitfalls of whether this would constitute 'life' (and it would), instead of using a few lab rats? Really?

Yaksha? Did you ACTUALLY read that!?


S xx

Cruelty is about INTENT, not outcome. Cruelty is sticking a firecracker in a cat's ear because you think it'll be funny. Experimenting on rats with the intent of curing a disease which has killed MILLIONS of humans across the planet is not cruel. It is cruel NOT to do that if you have the power to.

ffs cruelty can be done in the name of bigger things and still be cruel.

Her original statement is how most people in the world think and it is perfectly valid.

Yaksha, you're full of shit!



S xx

Yes, really. Why not.. OR they could just test on you Yaksha?

Fall in line Yaksha! :p

Really?! Maybe I am out of touch with reality then. That is fucking depressing to me. MOST people in the world would think it's cruel to potentially save millions of lives, at the expense of a few rats. In fact, no, I'm calling bullshit. Surely people cannot be that retarded

Yaksha, do you have pets?


S xx

Here we go again.


FFS yourself Bob, Yakshas comments are perfectly valid as well. Stop jumping on him for who you perceive him to be and actually examine what's being said.

dude, how long you been on planet earth?

There is a case just come of late recently where the testing IS being done on humans. Is that cruel too?

In this case it is a bone marrow transplant that has worked. The patient has since been declared HIV free and the boffins think they finally have a workable cure.

Purely laymens terms but it is due to a genetic difference some people have in their cells which stop HIV being able to enter and spread. IIRC, they lack a certain protein on the outside of the cell walls which is the backdoor that HIV enters through.

I have pets S! Two grey russian blue kitties.. they are so cute! Do you?

Argh please put your penises away!
No sword fights in here thanks!

Dalai his comments were absurd, I understood the repercussions of not testing on animals it does not change the fact it is cruel!

He twisted what I said for a feeble argument!

We all know Yak is good at that!

Gracious, please stick to the topic and answer my questions, dammit!


S xx

Oh I can't WAIT to see where this one is going to go

Yes, I have pets. Please tell me you have something more than "ZOMG would you want YOUR pets being tested on?!"

This is entirely irrelevant.



ffs, can people please just reason their way through this debate instead of succumbing to their feelings about cute puppies and kittens?

Huh? I directly responded to this. It DOES change the fact that it is cruel. As I said, cruelty is a function of intent/purpose. The purpose of saving human lives is not frivolous, so any experiment to that end is NOT cruel! If they are testing merely for entertainment, or profiteering or otherwise frivolous endeavours, then I would agree with you.

No he didn't? He quoted directly what you said and responded to it? It is not absurd at all? It is in fact exactly what you'd hear from any scientist or medical official.

Or would you rather only hear people who agree with you entirely?

Now I did respond to the topic, are you going to respond to that?

*Damnit! even , haha!



Yak, would it not break your heart to use those two kitties for testing?
I understand it'll help and you probably would put them up, but would it not break your heart??

Dalai, well, a human has the ability to decide for themselves whether they would want to be tested on and if it apparently works on animals, it should work on humans, no?



S xx

Does anyone know if Herceptin was tested on animals before becoming available?

ffs. I don't know why I'd hoped you'd do any better than this What an anti-climax.

Yes, it would break my heart were my pets to be used in testing. No, this does not correlate in ANY WAY whatsoever with said testing being 'cruel', and no, the animals used for testing are not anybody's pets ffs?! Do you think they just call up the SPCA to find subjects?

Again, how is this relevant?

Is it unfortunate that we are in a position where necessity dictates we use animals for research, and yes, it is sad. But this doesn't make it cruel.

There are countless things which sadden me; only a small proportion of these are due to cruelty.

I do not know much about selection, or testing for that matter!

Take cosmetics for example, and how they use animals for that!

Do you not find that cruel??

Animals DIE because of ........ Argh, I'm not even going to debate this, cause seems I'm not getting anywhere!

So fuck you


S xx

Humans > other animals.

Even cute ones

wtf?

You can cause regrettable harm to something in a way that is ethically balanced? ie on its merits the benefits outweigh the harm.

Its still cruel but logical.

Which is how i read her statement - she thinks its cruel even though she understands its worthwhile.

Whats wrong with that?

Cruel is letting millions of people now and in the future die because of a littl squeamishness over testing on some labrats who wouldn't have been alive in the first place were they not bred for testing.


And trying to extend that to testing on our pets is more than a little irrational and silly.

That's not how it works. Animal testing is performed for two reasons, one to make sure it's actually safe (well, not poison anyway) and two to make sure it actually has the effect they hope for. Once that has been proven in animals, then the long and incredibly tough road of getting approval for human testing begins.

Did you know there is a company in this very country infecting goats with HIV in order to develop a cure? They have even got to the stage of human trials.

Yes, what BOB said


S xx

You CANNOT lump that in the same bracket as testing for an HIV cure.

Indeed.
Trying to pretty up ugly faces cannot be compared to saving lives!

How do they choose the animals? Like the goats that are running around with HIV now? Maybe they should test on crims who aren't ever getting out of prison.. ever!

Yup I don't really pay attention anymore because there are small break throughs all the time but any potential benefits are usually years away.

When someone finds a cure for AIDS or even one type of Cancer you wont read it here first it will be the headline of year, decade or century.

They breed the animals themselves.

As for testing on prisoners...

They do (did?) test some stuff on soldiers.

not in any objective sense

What is wrong with that?
They are in prison for life, obviously they took a life, why not put them to use and try save lives??

I do not see that as being unethical?


S xx

sorry - that last post from me made no sense!

I mean how do they choose goats over rabbits over birds etc.. is it a methodical choice or just what happens to be in the animal lab cupboard?

No no definitely no testing on humans that are good and contribute to the world, I mean the crusty guy who has raped and killed seventeen six year old girls just for kicks!

Awesome.

Depends on what they are testing. Some animals are more suited to one particular kind of test than another due to physical organ or genetic similarities to humans.

Testing on prisoners? Hah, you know who did that?

Soldiers are a little bit different in that they generally sign their rights away when they sign up. They become property of the military, not people, is one way of putting it.

Cruelty doesn't have to have intent. It often does. But common usage aside, it IS the outcome, rather than the intent.

So, logically, you are wrong...woah.

Sugalicious - medical testing can go through many stages where no sane human being would want to be anywhere NEAR the immediate area, let alone be the test subject.

Cosmetic use is totally retarded and commercialism gone wrong. We have enough beauty products already? Why try to develop more? Apart from humans wanting more cos they are fickle and not that caring, there actually should be a ban on non-medical animal testing. THAT is cruelty with intent.

As for breeding animals for testing purposes only - that doesn't take away the fact that that is cruel. It can even be seen as doubly cruel, giving life only to purposely fuck with it.

Saying that, it is actually needed for many scientific breakthroughs.
As long as we don't go one step further and breed humans(or parts thereof) to test on, then we'll be fine.

With computer modelling probably 10-20 years off being able to handle a human model, then we aren't going to see a shift for a while.

And as Yak implies, a computer model might not be too far off animal intelligence, so where does that leave us?

Ohhhh wow I didn't even think about that.. what were those prisoners in jail for... ummmm... possibly not raping and killing the innocent..

presumably those trials would be conducted on HIV positive people with the usual control method and if it proved overwhelmingly beneficial by comparison to the control group then the trial would be suspended and the control group included in the drug application

oh dear

That and it was about 50-60 years ago.


And the soldiers who were tested on with radiation from atomic bombs (including some of our own sailors at Christmas Island courtesy of the British) did NOT give permission for it and their descendents are still fightiong for compensation today.

Ummm. They are running (ran I think is the case now) FDA approved human trials. Of course they are conducted with proper scientific method you fucking pillock. The point I was making was that it even goes on here. Purely trolling for reaction from the anti-testing mob.

sorry Kris B... I know my lack of intelligence upsets you sometimes...

There has been far more testing on soldiers than just those events. I'm talking in general terms, not of a specific event.

So, you don't want to test on animals, but you'll test on humans that you think are animals?

Hmmmm ok. I'm not sure I'm aware of any other, more recent events. I kinda thought that testing on soldiers was a thing of the past.

Pretty sure they do still test on soldiers, dalai.

Not necessarily super-experimental stuff, but at least the effectiveness of supplements.

No, I am against animal testing - sorry did I not say that? Those humans who choose to end others lives for fun.. they should be tested on.. and I am not sure exactly what the name is for them.. certainly not animals though..

A question for the anti animal testing people: If you had to choose, would you rather testing be done on chimpanzees or rats?

They do quite a lot of testing on drugs for US soldiers, mainly for energy/sleeping and alertness. Also testing of drugs to minimise emotional damage.

Am sure there's many, many others in there, many of which are bad publicity.

I guess you can also count in things like Agent Orange and the aftereffects of exposure to depleted Uranium rounds but some of those were purely through ignorance, a colossal fuck up on someone elses behalf.

Interesting to know PFunk. I think I'll go look this up.

In saying the above, am pretty sure this goes through animal stage too.

If you're going to invoke the name of Logic, I'm going to have to ask you to elaborate there. Please explain to me your logical string which shows why I am wrong, logically? Because to me it just looks like this: "I am right, therefore you are wrong." which is pretty epic

Needless to say, I disagree with your premise. Cruelty IS about intent. I try to eat free-range eggs/meat these days because I don't agree with battery-cages and other inhumane treatment of animals; I think that's cruel. ie the purpose for the treatement is increased profits. I don't think that's an acceptable end-goal to justify the treatement of the animals. But I still eat meat, because breeding them and killing them HUMANELY is NOT cruel

Nope! Couldn't choose! Far too hard! Good thing I am not a scientist..

Yaksha - ever heard of a dictionary.




Maybe read it.

Ignorance had nothing to do with it in the case of Agent Orange. Monsanto knew it wasn't safe, but hey, a corporation can't be expected to forego profits just for a little human safety can they? :/

Doubly

See this is the trouble with people like you.
You don't understand context, and you use pleb dictionaries like dictionary.com invariably. If you can't learn to argue coherently then please just stop

Rats




BUT breeding them and them dying painfully from tumors caused by the formula’s or whatever is NOT cruel????


S xx

NOT when it's for the purpose of saving millions of human lives! When they kill the rats, they still do so humanely. They don't just smash them with a hammer

For sure, did no one see pineapple express?

Wow!!

Yak, you're just heartless!

Suffering from a concoction that COULD MAYBE help save a life is CRUEL!!!!
Fuck the intent blah blah, your logic!
It is STILL cruel!
DESPITE how it may help human kind!

Shame on you!


S xx

Be a man and admit you got this wrong.
Cruelty doesn't have to have intent.
End of topic.

Sugalicious.

A thought experiment: If an evil villain had set up a rig so that a rat is working its way through a labyrinth to get some cheese, but if it gets the cheese a pressure sensor will be activated which will lead to a bomb being detonated which will decimate the entire city of Auckland, and the only way it can be stopped is if you press the red button which sends out an ultra-sonic frequency detectable only to rats, which causes the most HORRIFIC and painful death to the rat, but nonetheless preventing him from getting the cheese...

Would you press the button? If someone didn't press the button, would you say that's a cruel thing to do, knowing full well their actions directly caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders?

No I didn't. You're wrong, and I'm blocking my ears now so I can't hear you.

If you can't explain how you are right and I am wrong, then that's cool.
I understand.

This sounds like Saw

You're smarter than this Mr. Drake

There's a reason we tell students at uni to avoid basing their essays on dictionary definitions... :>

Gummi - sorry, I've never looked up the definition of cruel.

As an aside, how many of you are sub-editors, editors, English or Linguists professors?

I made a claim. You came in and just said "No it doesn't" - and turned quickly to condescending tone and quoted a dictionary. It SHOULD be obvious why this is insufficient. If you want to argue properly, then the onus is on you to offer some sort of coherent argument. If you don't want to, then at least don't continue the disservice of making yourself look stupid

fucking foool

Ok look. mattdrake, let me show you why your beloved dictionary definition is inadequate in the context of this debate.

If we take a look at dictionary.com right now, it will try to convince us that 'cruelty' is merely the deliberate administration of pain. There don't seem to be ANY caveats to this.

So then, if a Doctor is giving you your tetanus jab when you're a kid, which is a slightly painful jab, is this CRUEL? You would have me believe so. The rest of the world realises this is retarded. Do you see now?

Yak. The only person here who looks stupid is yourself.

If you want attention this much, maybe buy another pet.

If you can prove to me with ANY source that cruelty has to have intent, then let's hear it.

Slightly painful does not equal suffering.

Fishing
Flu jabs
Giving your kid a light smack as a disciplinary measure
Punching your friend in the arm as a mode of greeting
Kicking your kick-boxing sparring partner in the leg
Shooting someone with a paintgun during a paintball game

Are these all CRUEL actions to you?
Why do you set yourself up like this?

Please prove to me where level of pain has ANY relevance, in terms of the dictionary definition? All it says is the deliberate administering of pain. Now you are changing the definition to suit your own needs. Why? Is it because you are introducing a caveat based on common sense?

Actually, I already answered these.

And fish - well, the most up to date scientific knowledge shows fish can't feel pain or suffering as we know. Their central nervous system connects in a slightly different way than mammals.

you've got to be cruel to be kind

As a medical scientist and a pharmacologist im fully with Yak on this one..

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU PEOPLE THINK MEDICAL THERAPIES ARE DEVELOPED!!!

You can NOT model the complexity of a living organism. We dont have the capability/technology.

People who think testing is cruel should vist a cancer ward and see the families of people who are dying infront of their eyes. That is cruelity. I agree with YAK..if we did nothing.. and didnt try to intervien through R&D. That is MORE cruel.

AND ofcourse Herceptin was tested on animals. ALL PHARMACEUTICAL/THERAPIES are tested on animals. Its a regulatory requirement to gauge safety and efficacy.

This sentence means you're specifically disagreeing with Yaksha.

lol, with friends like these... :>

Well you guys are arguing about the definition of "cruel".. where as i dont care if its seen as cruel or not. Its about the greater good.

yet can you honestly disagree with me.

because I know you know.

That im right.

You sound more like loulabella & sugalicious than a scientist

They're the only two disagreeing with you, btw.

yet it is still objectively and observably cruel

no more no less

Hehe, I agree with you that saving lives is more important than the suffering imposed on lab animals.

I agree that the lab animals DO suffer (although this is minimised as much as possible).

I disagree that imposing this suffering on the animals amounts to cruelty.

:>

and s xx's op is empirically correct and true

I should add that some people ITT seem utterly unable to tease apart points 2 and 3 in my last post :p

Conflate away, opies :>

Sorry I just get pissed off when people bring up this subject. Because they dont understand the science behind pharmaceuticals.

And yes the comment was directed to anyone who has that view.

oh..and exactly how am I sounding like them?

well see I agree with that.

This is the issue, although her original statement would be agreed with on the specifics it triggered the "animal cruelty/animal testing" defences in all the academics here. Even though she appears to say it is still a valid pursuit to ease the deaths of humans.

You tell me not to attack yaksha for who he is perceived to be yet some of you seem to be doing the same thing to sugalicious (though the rest of her argument wasnt well thought out).

Just another thought... yeah animal testing might not be the most humane thing the world but meh, until there is something else...

Those who find animal testing cruel.. do you wear leather products? do you eat meat? and are you sure all the beauty/face wash/etc products you use not tested on animals?

Incorrect. Studies have conclusively proven that fish DO suffer as a result of 'painful' stimuli. Google it yourself.

And where have you answered the other ones?! Tell me, mattdrake, what IS your definition of cruelty? Cause no matter what it is, I can own it. You seem to be saying that deliberately causing someone to suffer is cruelty. So then, please answer my questions about the kickboxer, the tetanus jab, and the paintballer? When I got my tetanus jab it fucking hurt, cause I hate needles, and I told my doctor this. Is he cruel? He caused me to suffer. Should I sue?