Animal experiments may be less useful than alternative methods
The way the argument about usefulness of animal experimentation for
medical purposes is put by its defenders is often fallacious for a
very simple reason: it is on qualitative, and not quantitative,
grounds.
(In addition, it goes against the nature of advanced science,
historically, to reason in qualitative and not quantitative terms. The
most developed sciences, like physics, and fields of science reach
their maturity by going from being qualitative to being quantitative,
especially in recent times.)
When people say `drug x was developed through animal experiments' or
`treatment y was found researching on animal models', the point is not
even whether what they say is true or not.
The relevant question is: how many (how many millions, more likely)
animals were used, how many experiments that had no useful result were
necessary before arriving at that particular single result?
It is a statistical problem that we should address.
Because, had we used a different method of research, the statistical
utility (I mean, for example, the percentage of successes) could have
been higher.
We must always use this yardstick, this criterion for comparison.
(This is the way that control groups are used in tests: I'm here
transferring a scientific technique to a meta-scientific context.)
It may very well turn out that, when compared with other methods
already in existence or that we know could be developed, the
percentage of successes in medical animal experimentation, among the
number of all experiments performed, is extremely low.
It could also turn out that the corresponding percentage of misleading
results (eg penicillin, or the role of smoking in lung cancer) or
downright deleterious effects is higher than it needs to be.
It's certainly well worth investigating along these lines, from now
on.
posted by Of Human and Non-Human Animals at 9:40 AM
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