I was wrong and I’m sorry

Animals can only be used in research when there is convincing scientific justification, when expected benefits outweigh potential risks, and when scientific objectives cannot be achieved using non-animal methods. In Canada, there is federal and provincial legislation overseeing the humane treatment of animals.

This type of intervention makes scientific evidence appear secondary to partisan political opinion, weakening the integrity of the research enterprise. Moreover, such actions embolden activist campaigns that often misrepresent the reality of modern animal research and are usually counterproductive. These campaigns frequently ignore or sidestep the strict welfare standards and regulatory requirements that govern research facilities, as well as the medical breakthroughs that benefit both human and animal health.

Blah blah blah.

Again, tell me the specific justification in this case, given what they were doing to beagle puppies.

I’m not interested in just hand waving it away and saying “trust the system”. If the system produces horrific results, the system should be able to openly justify why they were necessary.

They said they told him how researchers would induce hours-long heart attacks as part of efforts to improve medical imaging processes for humans.

If only you’d bother actually reading the whole article, the same phrase you took a bit from actually explains why they do that. But no, better to just attack the whole thing pretending we do that for fun.

Dogs are a particularly useful model for heart problems in humans because they naturally get several of the same conditions and diseases humans do. You can try to create genetic variants of mice to have these conditions but it’s not nearly as good as a species that naturally experiences the condition. You may waste hundreds of mouse lives for poor quality research that way.

All studies involving animals require ethical approval involving a detailed assessment of the protocol by a committee that must include veterinarians, managers of the facility (not the lab members but outside of the research team), technicians who work directly with the animals, other researchers doing unrelated work, and a community member otherwise uninvolved in research at all. This is just for the ethical approval, they will also have to go through scientific merit evaluation by a different committee before this step. They must lay out exactly what they are doing and why it is necessary and how they are mitigating pain and distress. They may be under anesthesia for the entire heart attack, and then euthanized without waking up, or receive painkillers and be monitored constantly by a veterinarian. If they don’t do this, the work wont happen, and results wont be publishable either. Without being at that meeting we can’t know the exact technical justification, but there is a very strict process to follow and often everyone has more feelings about it when they are companion animals and they receive a lot of scrutiny.

I’m not all for animal research, some of it is poorly done and wasteful and doesn’t have any practical use. Or the data suffers from human incompetence. But a lot of it does help humans and animals. And there is a lot more tendency to intervene on pain and distress than you’d think - a distressed animal with no pain mitigation is not a good representation for your average human receiving treatment for something at a hospital. Your average local veterinary clinic almost certainly sees far worse cases of neglect and festering horrifying injuries and disease at the hands of incompetent dog owners than a study like this would ever produce.

Tbf, we only get belligerent after enduring so much shit from carheads and pedestrians. I guarantee you I can’t commute downtown for 10 minutes without having some car parked in my late or an entitled pedestrian walking or standing there without regard.

Not to mention the shit people have thrown at me consciously or not, and the times I’ve almost gotten run over while doing what I’m supposed to be doing and still getting honked and yelled at.

That is not a justification, that’s a hand wave. That sentence answers literally none of my questions.

It does, maybe it’s just not precise enough for you, but it does. Medical imaging for humans. What do you actually want?

I don’t believe you’re here to argue in good faith anyway.

Edit: I also notice that you carefully avoided another answer that goes into much more details than mine. Yeah you’re not here in good faith.

I understand that, but all of that boils down to “trust the bureaucratic system”.

It’s inherently problematic that the justifications for animal research trials are not required to be publicly posted. If the justification is legitimate, you should feel comfortable defending it publicly.

Keeping it secret and gatekept to the scientists in the field means that the broader public has no real input or say on topics that are not just purely scientific, but deeply moral and ethical.

Virtually every scientist I’ve ever known has been a deeply moral person, but at a broader scale, there have been enough scientific studies that have been used to abuse people and animals, that their shouldn’t be a culture of ‘trust us scientists, we always know what the right thing is’. There should be a culture of open transparency and verification.

Edit: I also notice that you carefully avoided another answer that goes into much more details than mine. Yeah you’re not here in good faith.

I replied to yours first because it was shorter and easier, I was literally replying to them when you made your edit. You need to spend less time on the internet.

And here are the specific questions I asked which again, that sentence does not answer:

I would genuinely like to understand what the cost/benefit analysis was, what alternatives methods of research were considered, and why they weren’t viable.

I absolutely agree. There is a push for more openness and transparency in animal research, it is a major initiative of the CCAC for rollout over the next 5 years. There is a lot of fear of animal rights activist groups and litigation or harassment from them that I think is generally unfounded - those incidents are pretty rare. Unfortunately, situations like this with Doug Ford only stoke the fear and protectionist attitudes that need to be broken down… now people in this field feel more targeted and scared and less likely to speak to the public. It’s very counterproductive.

CCAC - Canadian Council on Animal Care

CCAC - Canadian Council on Animal Care (ccac.ca)

Also, if you are passionate and interested in this kind of thing, consider reaching out to a local institutional Animal Care Committee to see if they have a spot open for a community member! You’d have to sign a confidentiality agreement at this point in time but maybe you would find something like that very interesting. Many institutions have a stipend for the time spent attending meetings and stuff, it can be quite a time sink for just a volunteer position.

So in general, research on animals is a step before research on humans. That’s as simple as that. It costs more to do experimentation on humans, and it’s also more dangerous (to humans). But you didn’t need the article for that, any simple research online would have given you that answer.

I maintain that you are not arguing in good faith here.

Edit: There’s a bit more information on this article from the CBC, notably with the following:

Other effective models don’t yet exist for this specific line of inquiry that connects the metabolic and cellular mechanisms that can lead to, or prevent, a heart attack or heart failure with non-invasive imaging techniques.

Cats and dogs, not all animals. Because it’s performative.

I maintain that you are not arguing in good faith here.

I maintain that you think that because you spend too much time on the internet and don’t talk to people in real life. Irl people have opinions that don’t all fall in lock step with the hive mind.

So in general, research on animals is a step before research on humans. That’s as simple as that. It costs more to do experimentation on humans, and it’s also more dangerous (to humans). But you didn’t need the article for that, any simple research online would have given you that answer.

Ironic that you’re complaining about me arguing in bad faith when you can’t answer of any of the very specific questions I asked, and keep hand waving them away with broad generalizations.

There is a lot of fear of animal rights activist groups and litigation or harassment from them that I think is generally unfounded - those incidents are pretty rare.

I get the fear, but do also agree it feels unfounded. If farmers and slaughterhouses manage to get by, it seems like animal research labs should be able to too.

I got an edit that you may have not seen. Just wanted to point that out.

Also, attacking my character with all that “too much time on the internet” is not the killer argument you seem to think it is.

Funny how I got this extra information with 1 online search, which you seem quite intent on avoiding.

Exactly my point.

What we need is auditing and enforcement of our already comprehensive ethical restrictions on scientific research across fields. He’s using this one instance of gross negligence and misconduct to attack science in general, rather than do the proper job of enforcing the regulatory apparatus. Why is he doing this? Attention and optics to distract from his massive failures and bad ideas and investments, and also his side dealing which is getting harder and harder to ignore.

This was a particular research group that was flaunting the laws, it’s far from the standard. You’re embellishing it into some kind of trend when you have no understanding how scientific research is conducted or enforced in this country, it’s absolutely not that, and if you want to pearl clutch you should be looking toward Ford’s constant attacks on municipalities and environmental standards to get his cut from developer friends, full stop.