[gmku]

First, as a pet owner all my life, I love animals.

But when you say "animal testing," you're using a very, very broad term. There's all kinds, and not all of it is inhuman or inhumane, and much of the best kind is aimed at easing human suffering.

[Bastian]

Originally Posted by flophousefloozie

Why should we subject the innocent to such selfish acts, simply for the betterment of our demanding, greedy civilization?

Since when is it selfish and greedy to have the urge of being healthy and living a long life without suffering?

I`m for animal testing if it`s neccesary to find cures for human diseases, and if there`s no alternative method that works without testing.
I`m against animal testing for cosmetica.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

although i think animal testing is quite horrid, it's much much worse to watch people you love die from nasty diseases.

True. And even watching people die that you don`t love is worse.

[cryptowonderdruginvogue]

i dont really care

[Glice]

Originally Posted by gmku

First, as a pet owner all my life, I love animals.

But when you say "animal testing," you're using a very, very broad term. There's all kinds, and not all of it is inhuman or inhumane, and much of the best kind is aimed at easing human suffering.

I think all of it is 'in-human' on account of being done on animals. Although perhaps ex-human is more appropriate?

[EMMAh]

No, I do not.

[!@#$%!]

Bubonic plague

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Plague ICD-10 A20. ICD-9 020 DiseasesDB 14226

 

 

Yersinia pestis seen at 2000x magnification. This bacterium, carried and spread by fleas, is the cause of the various forms of the disease plague.


Bubonic plague is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease plague, which is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis.
Contents

[hide]

• 1 Overview
• 2 Infection/transportation
• 3 Types
• 4 Clinical features
• 5 Treatment
• 6 History
  • 6.1 Historical plague epidemics
  • 6.2 Historical pandemics
    • 6.2.1 Plague of Justinian
    • 6.2.2 Black Death
    • 6.2.3 Third Pandemic
• 7 Plague as a biological weapon
• 8 Contemporary cases
• 9 Uses in literature
• 10 References
  • 10.1 Numbered references
• 11 See also
• 12 External links

//
[edit]

Overview

Plague has affected human society for millennia. A lot of scientists believe that it was responsible for the Black Death, which killed perhaps a third of Europe's population during the Middle Ages, with additional large numbers of casualties in Asia and the Middle East.
Plague is endemic in many countries in Africa, in the former Soviet Union, the Americas and Asia. In 2003, nine countries reported 2,118 cases to the WHO (World Health Organization), of which 182 ended in death. All were isolated cases, except for an outbreak in a village in Algeria (the first in fifty years), which caused eleven infections and one death. Plague is most common in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These two countries have on average 600 to 800 cases each year. They accounted for 2,025 of the 2,118 cases and 177 of the 182 deaths in 2003. Other countries with annual but many fewer cases are Tanzania, Peru, United States, China, Mongolia and Vietnam. According to the WHO, the actual number of cases in the world is probably much higher than reported, due to the reluctance of certain countries to declare cases, the lack of diagnosis because the clinical picture of cases is not very specific, and the absence of laboratory confirmation
The most recent outbreak of plague happened in Zobia, in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2004. The outbreak, which only appeared as the variant pneumonic plague, began among workers in a diamond mine. By mid-March 2005, when the WHO regarded the outbreak as over, 130 people had been infected, of whom 97 died. [1]
There has not been a plague epidemic (i.e an outbreak affecting a larger area) for many years.
[edit]

[!@#$%!]

Infection/transportation

Plague is primarily a disease of rodents, particularly marmots (in which the most virulent strains of plague are primarily found), but also black rats, prairie dogs, chipmunks, squirrels and other similar large rodents. Human infection most often occurs when a person is bitten by a rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) that has fed on an infected rodent. The bacteria multiply inside the flea, sticking together to form a plug that blocks its stomach and causes it to become very hungry. The flea then voraciously bites a host and continues to feed, even though it is unable to satisfy its hunger. During the feeding process, blood cannot flow into the blocked stomach, and consequently the flea vomits blood tainted with the bacteria back into the bite wound. The Bubonic plague bacteria then infects a new host, and the flea eventually dies from starvation. Any serious outbreak of plague is usually started by other disease outbreaks, or some other crash in the rodent population. During these outbreaks, infected fleas that have lost their normal hosts seek other sources of blood.
In 1894, two bacteriologists, the French Alexandre Yersin and the Japanese Shibasaburo Kitasato, independently isolated the responsible bacterium in Hong Kong during the Third Pandemic. Though both investigators reported their findings, a series of confusing and contradictory statements by Kitasato eventually led to the acceptance of Yersin as the primary discoverer of the organism. Yersin named it Pasteurella pestis in honour of the Pasteur Institute, where he worked, but in 1967 it was moved to a new genus, renamed Yersinia pestis in honour of Yersin. Yersin also noted that rats were affected by plague not only during plague epidemics but also often preceding such epidemics in humans, and that plague was regarded by many locals as a disease of the rats: villagers in China and India asserted that, when large numbers of rats were found dead, plague outbreaks in people soon followed.
In 1898, the French scientist Paul-Louis Simond (who had also come to China to battle the Third Pandemic) established the rat-flea vector that drives the disease. He had noted that persons who became ill did not have to be in close contact with each other to acquire the disease. In Yunnan, China, inhabitants would flee from their homes as soon as they saw dead rats, and on the island of Formosa (Taiwan), residents considered handling dead rats a risk for developing plague. These observations led him to suspect that the flea might be an intermediary factor in the transmission of plague, since people acquired plague only if they were in contact with recently dead rats, but not affected if they touched rats that had been dead for more than 24 hours. In a now classic experiment, Simond demonstrated how a healthy rat died of plague after infected fleas had jumped to it from a plague-dead rat.

[!@#$%!]

Types

Depending on the symptoms and the route of infection, plague appears in several forms, classified by the WHO with different ICD-10 codes:
Main diseaseA20) Plague (Pestis). Infections caused by Yersinia pestis.FormsA20.0) Bubonic plague (Pestis bubonica) occurs when Yersinia pestis causes an inflammation of the lymph nodes, making them tender and swollen (from lat. bubo = bump). This is the most common form of plague.(A20.1) Cellulocutaneous plague (Pestis cellulocutanea) is a very unusual form, with Yersinia pestis causing a skin infection.(A20.2) Pneumonic plague or pulmonic plague (Pestis pneumonica) occurs when the lungs are infected by Yersinia pestis. The second most common form of plague. It may be a secondary infection, caused by bacteria spreading from the lymph nodes and reaching the lungs, but can also exist on its own, caused by inhalation of airborne bacteria.(A20.3) Meningeal plague or plague meningitis (Pestis meningealis) looks like meningitis at the outset. It is most common in children and is usually the end result of ineffective treatment for other forms of plague. Unusual.(A20.?) Pharyngeal plague occurs when Yersinia pestis is consumed, often through food. It can resemble tonsillitis. Very rare form.(A20.7) Septicemic plague (Pestis septic(h)aemica) occurs when Yersinia pestis multiply in the blood. The third most common form. It is usually associated with hunting and skinning of animals, but can also occur secondary to bubonic and pneumonic plague.(A20.8) Other forms of plague (Aliae formae pestis) include the milder forms abortive plague, asymptomatic plague and pestis minor, all three often resulting only in a mild fever and light swelling of the lymph glands, usually resolved in approximately a week if appropriate treatment is given. [edit]

Clinical features

Bubonic plague becomes evident three to seven days after the infection. Initial symptoms are chills, fever, diarrhea, headaches, and the swelling of the infected lymph nodes, as the bacteria replicate there. If untreated, the rate of mortality for bubonic plague is 30–75%.
In septicemic plague there is bleeding into the skin and other organs, which creates black patches on the skin. There are bite-like bumps on the skin, commonly red and sometimes white in the center. Untreated septicemic plague is universally fatal, but early treatment with antibiotics reduces the mortality rate to 4 to 15%.[1][2][3] People who die from this form of plague often die on the same day symptoms first appear.
With pneumonic plague infecting lungs comes the possibility of person-to-person transmission through respiratory droplets. The incubation period for pneumonic plague is usually between two and four days, but can be as little as a few hours. The initial symptoms, of headache, weakness, and coughing with hemoptysis, are indistinguishable from other respiratory illnesses. Without diagnosis and treatment, the infection can be fatal in one to six days; mortality in untreated cases may be as high as 95%.
[edit]

Treatment

An Indian doctor of Russian-Jewish origin Vladimir Havkin was the first who invented and tested an anti-plague vaccine.
The traditional treatments are:

• Streptomycin 30 mg/kg IM twice daily for 7 days
• Chloramphenicol 25–30 mg/kg single dose, followed by 12.5–15 mg/kg four times daily
• Tetracycline 2 g single dose, followed by 500 mg four times daily for 7–10 days (not suitable for children)

More recently,

• Gentamicin 2.5 mg/kg IV or IM twice daily for 7 days
• Doxycycline 100 mg (adults) or 2.2 mg/kg (children) orally twice daily

have also been shown to be effective.[4]

[!@#$%!]

^^ now go back in time & solve that without animal testing

[!@#$%!]

http://www.biorap.org/br4animalr.html

Animal Research And AIDS
What part has animal research played in the fight against AIDS?
Experiments with mice, cats, rabbits and monkeys have helped scientists search for vaccines and anti-AIDS drugs. Scientists also are using mice to learn more about the way the AIDS virus works. (These animals do not get human AIDS, and they do not spread AIDS to people.)
More than 90 percent of all research animals are mice and rats. Why is that?
When deciding what type of animal to use in an experiment, scientists ask a very important question: what type of animal will allow them to get the best possible answers to their questions? Very often, scientists get the best possible answers using mice and rats.
There are many advantages to working with laboratory mice. One of the most important is that we can breed mice that are genetically identical -- which means that the mice are exactly alike down to their genes.
Let's say a researcher is testing a new medicine on genetically identical mice. One group of mice (the experimental group) gets the new medicine, and a second group (the control group) doesn't. The experimental group lives longer than the control group.
Because the mice are alike in all ways except for the medicine, scientists can conclude that the new drug may help extend life. Researchers will continue to study the medicine to see if it is safe and effective for humans.

 

[!@#$%!]

yes, i've gone nuts with the posting. but really... when people discuss these things on purely sentimental grounds i feel the need to apply a little information overload.

[nicfit]

Originally Posted by cryptowonderdruginvogue

i dont really care

but i thought you were testing the effects of lead poisoning on animals...HA,just kidding,to even the deepness of !@#$%! posts i added a little bit of shallowness.....sorry guys.have a nice evening/morning,whatever time of day it is in your time zone.

[jon boy]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

yes, i've gone nuts with the posting. but really... when people discuss these things on purely sentimental grounds i feel the need to apply a little information overload.

its not sentimental i just dont agree with it. i cant just turn my feelings off and say its ok in some circumstances. the past is the past and there is nothing that can be done about that, something which pro animal testers seem to have a hard time understanding. i think in the present day and future there is no need for it.

anyway to quote michael in alan partridge 'why do they spray the perfume in the monkeys eyes? why dont they just put it on its wrist?'

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by jon boy

its not sentimental i just dont agree with it. i cant just turn my feelings off and say its ok in some circumstances. the past is the past and there is nothing that can be done about that, something which pro animal testers seem to have a hard time understanding. i think in the present day and future there is no need for it.

anyway to quote michael in alan partridge 'why do they spray the perfume in the monkeys eyes? why dont they just put it on its wrist?'

oh well i do not agree with the testing of cosmetics on animals and shit like that. i favor the use of "natural" body products for that reason.

the question was rather general on "animal testing"

i agree however with the testing of animals for medical research.

let's not conflate the two.

it is sentimental when people offer no solid arguments against testing because it's "unpleasant" without considering the consequences of going without animal testing.

the article i posted mentions how 1/3 of the population of europe was killed by the bubonic plague during the middle ages.

i don't know of any spoiled, middle class, coddled person in this planet who could survive a fortnight under the life conditions of the middle ages.

but that's where we would be more or less without animal testing & other "progress' that hippies love to decry.

yeah im rambling i know but i just had this delicious cheesecake...

[jon boy]

the article i posted mentions how 1/3 of the population of europe was killed by the bubonic plague during the middle ages.

like i said the past is the past. its now and the future i dont agree with. i dont think there is any place for it in modern society.

the breeding and/or use of animals in any medical experiments is inherintly cruel. i am not some alf left wing type. fuck that.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by jon boy

like i said the past is the past. its now and the future i dont agree with. i dont think there is any place for it in modern society.

you might have heard of AIDS, malaria?

i guess the life of a mouse is worth more than the life of some african who can't post on the internet

anyway here's a list of nice diseases that are not of the past.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0903696.html

please find a cure testing on vegetables...

--

let's not forget future mutations of the influenza virus! the biggest killer in history.

[porkmarras]

As much as i hate unnecessary vilolence on animals(and on people for that matter),it took a few dear ones to be taken away by aids and cancer to change my mind.

[jon boy]

please find a cure testing on vegetables...

see, you seem to think that there are no other ways of doing things.

[porkmarras]

Whatever it takes.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by jon boy

please find a cure testing on vegetables...

see, you seem to think that there are no other ways of doing things.

i happen to have a b.sc. in biology though i did not pursue further studies in this field (i couldn't stand the boredom of lab life), and while i know there are many alternatives and options to study diseases, i know also that some times there is no practical alternative.

a good friend of mine used to do studies on mice brains. her work was on neurotransmitters. she had to put the brains of the experimental mice in a blender and analyze the thing through some kind of apparatus, the name of which eludes me right now. she would spend the whole afternoon crying, tears down her face, while she performed the vivisections-- but she still did her work.

life is not always pretty.