An allegation isn't evidence, and animals do die in testing for medical gain. The real question is whther it is undue, avoidable, unethical, causing unnecessary suffering. As somebody that believes that animals are quite concious and we don't particularly have the right to "use" their lives for our medical gain, this is far from the common societal consensus. I also hypocritically eat these animals which I justify as just nature - so its hard to draw a distinct line that my belly has more justifaction to their life than much more valuable scientific progress.
> As somebody that believes that animals are quite concious and we don't particularly have the right to "use" their lives for our medical gain, this is far from the common societal consensus.
The mammalian anatomy has been conserved for 65 million years. Function follows structure. We are essentially the same, the only difference is we grew out the neocortex to be more capable of language, vision and abstract thought. All of those animals feel the same fear, pain, and love that we are capable of- we are just able to associate them with ideas better. It is shocking that some people still don't recognize this, but I suppose it is understandable they would reject something that would get between them and their cheeseburgers.
> its hard to draw a distinct line that my belly has more justifaction to their life than much more valuable scientific progress.
Ironically enough, I'm vegetarian and keep a snake. He is a Ball Python, and not a particularly good eater, so I feed him live rats. Doing this can truly makes me sad as Rat's death is sometimes... prolonged, and sometimes Rat is friendly and smart. But Snake needs to eat whole animals, while conversely I can get by just fine on beans and rice. Keeping and feeding Snake is very–philosophically enlightening(?)–I can't quite grasp the words for it–but it acts as a reminder of the natural order of life, and a reinforcer of why I think of animals the way I do. Snake is a simple, reptilian killing machine[1] juxtaposed by rats who often are smart, curious, capable critters, yet Snake must eat rats or he will starve.
It seems you understand this, but you can't realistically develop new products for human use on any type of a time scale that most people would be happy with, and the amount of human happiness those products enable, especially through longer, healthier lives to share with family, and the literally billions of lives affected, makes testing on animals a worthwhile evil, at least to me.
I've been party to this(your) view before, typically when I defend animal testing and someone points out that I'm vegetarian with confusion and outrage, both mild, and proceeds to remind me that I often cite animal welfare as a significantly motivating factor in my diet. So I guess my comment is to say that I think it comes at least partially from a place of not being close enough to death. We hide away slaughter houses and even import immigrants to work at them, meat comes to us in plastic packages often with specific names that further us from the animal that much more. Indeed, I know that if I had met the cow that produced the cheese that I so love and keeps me from becoming a vegan, I would refrain much more than I do.
But that is just me, I've met plenty of people who raise pigs named porkchop, bacon, and babyback, or a cow named Angus, and while they don't slaughter the animal themselves, I have no doubt they would. They just really love meat and don't have the same reverence for animals that I do, but most of them feel the same way about my (lack of) religion. Different strokes, live and live, it takes all kinds~
[1] I must admit Snake gets curious sometimes wishing to escape and explore, and it makes me sad that I can't let him act upon those wants because it wouldn't be in the best interest of his welfare.
In the long term there could potentially be a lot of benefit in restoring motor function or communication in people with catastrophic brain or spinal damage, as well as any number of other helpful neural surgeries. The device itself is one part of that, but developing surgical techniques is another large part of the research.
However like all things, it needs to be developed ethically, the counter point of course being that some of our best medical techniques have been developed over the years in unethical ways (by modern standards).
Federal regulators judging which medical research is valuable to society, then evaluate their policies based on that? Or are you asking whether it's worth it for the company to engage in moon-shot research without rock solid proof ahead of time?
All that should matter here is that they follow the rules and act ethically
My question has to do with is the intended applications of Neuralink worth it, to needlessly kill animals in testing and push research through carelessly?
