SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Swallowing just a few drops of a new vaccine could protect against the deadly Ebola virus. The new immunization is not meant for humans, but chimpanzees and gorillas, for which Ebola is a devastating disease as well. Yet the vaccine may never reach these great apes.
[...] U.S. rules on research with chimpanzees are another hurdle, Walsh says. Further improvements on the vaccine, for instance to prevent it from losing its activity in the tropical heat, would require another round of testing on captive animals. And that looks all but impossible at the moment, he says.
Biomedical research on chimpanzees has been declining for years, and a new rule issued by the U.S. government in 2016 requires a permit under the Endangered Species Act. Although the rule still allows research on captive chimps if it benefits wild populations, the restrictions have made it too expensive to maintain chimpanzee groups for research, says Walsh, who cut his own vaccine study short when the rules took effect last September. Walsh has titled his paper "The Final (Oral Ebola) Vaccine Trial on Captive Chimpanzees?"
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/ebola-vaccine-great-apes-shows-promise-ethical-hurdles-may-block-further-research
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep43339
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 10 2017, @01:04PM (2 children)
We do experiment on humans, but humans give consent to be part of the experiments. So could we teach higher primates to give consent? Could we make them understand something like 0 pills = probable death, 1 pill = probably happy life, and 2 or more pills = probably bad in some other way. If we could give them enough knowledge to get them to reliably chose 1 pill, no matter if it was a nasty or a nice pill, then I'd say we were well on the way to getting them to understand at least part of the experimental setup. Getting them to understand invisible forces (germ theory), I suspect would be forever impossible, in particular as 95 of humans that have ever lived have not understood the concept, and we haven't even managed to do that with some currently-alive humans (anti-vaxers, for example). So we'll never be able to get informed consent. However, I think a willingness to repeatedly take one nasty tasting placebo simply because they worked out that it will help them not be in the probably death group will at least show an understanding that going through a bit of hardship can lead to better things.
And if we can't ever get anything like informed consent, perhaps that's an argument for a black/white cutoff separating those species we should be allowed to test on without informed consent (those unable to give informed consent), and those we should not be allowed to test on without informed consent (those able to give informed consent). It's the most clearly defined break in the continuum of grays.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @03:25PM (1 child)
informed consent
Do we need informed consent from pigs to eat them?
Do we need informed consent from birds when we put them in cages?
Do we need informed consent from mice when we set traps?
Research animals shouldn't be used frivolously, but the intent is to further scientific knowledge and often human health. People eat animals - not because they need to for survival, but because they taste good. People cage pets for companionship and decoration. People kill mice simply because they are a nuisance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 10 2017, @09:20PM
And yet bestiality is seen as horrible, even when the animal willingly participates. People say we shouldn't apply human rights to animals, and then hypocritically try to apply human standards of consent to those same animals, all while doing things like impregnating cows to get milk. Not to mention that, by human consent standards, all sex between non-human animals is rape. It's not even coherent.