Blaccakre wrote:Excidium Planetis wrote:Even your own source, Psychology Today, says in another article that young children harming animals as part of curiosity is not a troubling sign: it is only later in life, when the abuse becomes sadistic, that it becomes a warning for possible mental illness.
Are you trying to make my point? Both the papers talk about young children harming animals being an opportunity to correct that behavior and teach the kid empathy.
Yes, but neither says that negative behavior follows from harming animals.
And neither justifies criminalizing children harming animals. The resolution requires nations to criminalize child insect-killing.
Your point was that if a child gets jollies from hurting animals the happiness the child gets outweighs the animals suffering...
Yes. That does not conflict with anything Psychology Today said. Animal abuse is sometimes a symptom of mental illness, but not vice versa. Schultz argues that, if it brings happiness, children should be allowed to kill insects. Screening for mental illness (which is taken very seriously in EP, given the liberal gun rights and compulsory military service) eliminates the threat of children who abuse animals growing up to be mass murderers. So where are the negatives associated with it?
Excidium Planetis wrote:Ambassador Schultz =/= EP the player. And to be fair, Excidium Planetis as a nation is probably psychopathic. We went to war over a bet one time.
OOC: totally not calling you out as a player, mate. EP is just a shorthand for your nation, like UK or USA. I like to think that in real life you're a swell guy/gal who doesn't condone children hurting things for fun.
But if Obama said something about child abuse, you wouldn't say "USA argues for bunny-torture"... because Obama is not the USA. Likewise, you can't say "EP is in favor of supporting psychopathy in children" if you are referring to an IC argument, because the opinions expressed IC are those of Ambassador Schultz. She sometimes speaks for her nation ("Excidium Planetis casts it's vote against" or "In the opinion of Excidium Planetis") but not always. And as your comments were OOC, it seemed directed at me the player.
Excidium Planetis wrote:What about the fact that GA#372 bans animal testing? Isn't that a good reason to repeal?
I think it's a bit of a red herring. Most human diseases are not communicable to animals; that's just not how biology works. Similarly, many animal born pathogens that become diseases in humans are benign to their host animals. So you simply don't see scientists infecting animals with small pox in order to derive a cure. Most disease study is done in tiny little petri dishes.
First of all, not all medical research is infectious diseases: there are experiments into genetics, where lab mice shine due to their homogenous genomes, and prosthetics. where research has been done on primates. There are also a host of other studies, like drug research or the study of the effects of space on the body, where animal research plays a part.
Second, animal research is far more important than you know: The California Biomedical Research Association even goes so far as to say that nearly every medical breakthrough in the past 100 years directly resulted from animal testing (California Biomedical Research Association, "CBRA Fact Sheet: Why Are Animals Necessary in Biomedical Research?," ca-biomed.org). Mice in particular have high value due to their high genetic similarity to humans (97.5%) and short lifespans (2-3 years, which allows lifelong studies, something difficult to do in humans).
Now, as for the applicability of human diseases to mice: New research into Chimeric Mice, mice with human genes inserted into their genome, allows research to be conducted on mice that closely simulates research on humans... without the possibility of human suffering. Look what Medical News Today says:
Medical News Today reported on a study that applied 21st Century laboratory methods to an infamous phase 2 clinical trial in 1993, where five human subjects died as a result of taking the drug fialuridine...
The researchers found that the chimeric mice displayed the same symptoms as the human participants in the 1993 trial. If these mice had been used in the preclinical testing for fialuridine, then the human deaths of the clinical trial would have been averted.
The full article, which covers the value of mice in lab tests in full, can be found here.