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How many (even well designed and appropriately modelled) animal experiments have not led to treatments for neonates? Worse still, how many have led to treatments that, when tested in neonates, were found to be harmful?
Ultimately "a treatment aimed at improving neurological function in a sick newborn with cardiac, hepatic, and renal injury" can only be tested in a sick newborn with cardiac, hepatic and renal injury. No cell culture or even animal model will capture the "complex organ interactions and multiple comorbidities".
Without specifying the non-arbitrary distinction that makes humans different to other animals, animal research is unjustifiable (this is the basic claim made by Singer). To claim otherwise is to ignore both the underlying moral argument and the empirical one made by Pound and Bracken.
Re: Animal research has been essential to saving babies’ lives
How many (even well designed and appropriately modelled) animal experiments have not led to treatments for neonates? Worse still, how many have led to treatments that, when tested in neonates, were found to be harmful?
Ultimately "a treatment aimed at improving neurological function in a sick newborn with cardiac, hepatic, and renal injury" can only be tested in a sick newborn with cardiac, hepatic and renal injury. No cell culture or even animal model will capture the "complex organ interactions and multiple comorbidities".
Without specifying the non-arbitrary distinction that makes humans different to other animals, animal research is unjustifiable (this is the basic claim made by Singer). To claim otherwise is to ignore both the underlying moral argument and the empirical one made by Pound and Bracken.
Competing interests: No competing interests