Scientists Keep Rabbits Alive With Oxygen Microparticle Injections 274
ananyo writes "Rabbits with blocked windpipes have been kept alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath, after researchers injected oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood. Oxygenating the blood by bypassing the lungs in this way could save the lives of people with impaired breathing or obstructed airways (abstract). In the past, doctors have tried to treat low levels of oxygen in the blood, or hypoxaemia, and related conditions such as cyanosis, by injecting free oxygen gas directly into the bloodstream. But oxygen injected in this way can accumulate into larger bubbles and form potentially lethal blockages."
One step closer (Score:5, Funny)
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Joking aside, this sounds seriously legit! Will ambulances be carrying around machines to inject this into people like an IV?
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it will *hurt*. You still need to breathe out to get rid of carbon dioxide. It is not lack of oxygen, but build-up of CO2 that makes you feel like you need to breathe. Don't breathe out long enough and you'll find the pH of your blood going down, which is not very healthy. I imagine having these oxygen injections without breathing will feel a lot like asphyxiation, except that instead of passing out in 3 or 4 minutes, the experience will last 15 minutes.
Also, as mentioned in the article, these microparticles don't magically disappear so you can't keep adding them indefinitely.
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yeah... something tells me that "kept alive" means "killed" in this study."
It's a rabbit. If sacraficing a creature so stupid to not even be self aware can save hundreds or thousands of human lives, so be it. Science is cruel, but well worthwhile.
How do you know they're not self aware, and if you don't know 100% that they're not is it worth the risk?
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It's a fucking rabbit.
Re:One step closer (Score:4, Funny)
One last hooray, if you will.
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"Just" a rabbit?
Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth!
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Interesting)
there's no action that you can perform in this world without directly causing death to many creatures.
a vegan just draws the line a little lower than everyone else.
in nature, all is expendable. better get used to it.
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more serious note, probably also a step closer to easier surgeries like lung transplants. Maybe a step toward treating cystic fibrosis.
But zombies, absolutely not. There's nothing contagious here, and I thought zombies breathe. I mean, if they weren't using their lungs and windpipes, how are they always moaning... always moaning... day and night, keeping me awake... realizing that it's inevitable...
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not sure if it'd make transplants easier, but it could increase survival rates among Cystic Fibrosis patients as they wait for a lung transplant. (I have CF)
Re:One step closer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just have to lock yourself in the bomb shelter with your MREs and wait for the zombies to rot. Then come-out and rebuild society.
*
*Anybody know where I can get cheap MREs?
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Re:One step closer (Score:4, Interesting)
Said a bozo who doesn't realize that a human skin color goes from all black to all white in 100 generations.
The Matrix (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:The Matrix (Score:5, Insightful)
You forgot about that huge contraption that he had to pull out of his face....
So instead of just pumping it in, (Score:2)
they had to use a carburetor.
That's a way to make use of "new" technology.
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Makes sense. The automotive carburetor came long after fuel injection and at the time was revolutionary for power production and fuel economy.
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They then figured out it could also work for cars 60 years later, and called it a breakthrough in technology.
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They then figured out it could also work for cars 60 years later, and called it a breakthrough in technology.
To be fair, the cost, size, weight, and safety standards are a little more stringent in the private passenger car market. I suspect the breakthroughs involved meeting those requirements.
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The "perfected" part is a figment of someone's imagination. The batteries were heavy as hell, and those diesel-electric boats had very limited electric range and speed. It was barely usable I'd say.
Good luck making an electric car with, say, 100 mile electric range and lead-acid batteries. The technology simply wasn't there 60 years ago. Even if you could accept the outrageous weight and volume requirements, you still need electronics to do individual cell management. Lead-acid batteries need it too if you
Is it economist pretending to be engineer week? (Score:2)
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it's not like they were squirting blood in to oxygen...
Lots of applications (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Lots of applications (Score:4, Insightful)
Established airway for a lung transplant? Huh? Sure you can use an external heart-lung machine, but the problem is always with hemolysis and clotting. Deleting the "lung-" part from the "heart-lung" machine would certainly help with both.
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In CF (I have CF), most people do still die of upper respiratory infections, rejected lung transplants, or lung failure while waiting for a transplant.
Re:Lots of applications (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lots of applications (Score:4, Insightful)
But you might target the brain?
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You could create an arteriovenous fistula and use something like a dialysis machine that ensures a proper fluid load, a proper removal of depleted particles and a fresh supply of new ones.
Although you'll likely not use something the size of a dialysis machine as a diving aid. And for medical care there's already extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines and techniques.
An artificial gland that releases its stored particles when blood is severely hypoxic would be a neat solution though.
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As long as that "gland" would somehow inform you that it was triggered. It'd be silly to switch over to the backup only to use it all up unaware -- say in oxygen-deficient atmosphere.
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Clearly, lungs are impossible.
Re:Lots of applications (Score:5, Interesting)
To supply an adult human, you would need 300-600 mL of infused volume per minute. Given that an adult has a blood volume of roughly 5 L, you can imagine that you're going to run into problems pretty quickly.
I don't see why. They inject the microparticles directly into the blood, and this rapid infuser at least can move 1000 mls of fluid per minute. [belmontinstrument.com]
The mircoparticles themselves sound like they could be made fairly rapidly:
The microcapsules are easy and cheap to make, says Kheir. They effectively self-assemble when the lipid components are exposed to intense sound waves in an oxygen environment — a process known as sonication.
The article notes that this would probably not be something you would do for long term though, and that there are already techniques to oxygenate blood externally then pump it back in, used during surgery.
Oh god (Score:5, Interesting)
You see no problem with pumping a human being full of a non-blood liqued at a rapid rate?
The human in question would either explode OR the blood will become ever more diluted until all you got is the new liqued which isn't blood. And you need blood to survive, even if you are not a vampire.
The article makes this pretty damn clear, it is not for surgery, it is for emergencies. There already exist perfectly fine methods for putting oxygen into blood, they are used routinely during surgery. But they are bulky and slow, so they can't be used on the scene of an accident or in an emergency room.
This method is for keeping a patient alive until surgeons can save him. It is to stretch the window between incident and surgery to give emergency services more time. You would be suprised how advanced medicine is in saving people and how hard it is to get that advanced care available fast enough to work in an accident that could happen anywhere EVEN outside a hospital! Amazing I know but people do insist on getting accidents more then a minute away from a emergency room.
If it could be allowed legally, it might become possible for ambulance crew to give patients a shot of this stuff and make sure their brain has oxygen enough to survive until proper life support systems can take over.
But you CANNOT just pump a human being full of non-blood and expect them to survive.
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I think that as long as the non-blood provides gas exchange (not merely oxygen, but also CO2 removal), pH balance and some sugars to keep the cells happy, it shouldn't be much of a big deal short-term, right? I'm sure over longer times the wacky haemodynamics will tend, for example, to kill liver, but for a couple of hours I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Re:Oh god (Score:4, Interesting)
The only real problem I see is lack of clotting: that liquid will leak like crazy from any broken vessel...
Beats current techniques (Score:3)
Re:Beats current techniques (Score:5, Informative)
Furthermore, this is temporizing just like any other O2 delivery method. Oxygen is essential for life, but eventually you have to clear the CO2, or it's pointless. As a bridge to a secure airway or crash on to cardiopulmonary bypass? Sure, it's not a bad idea, except that the only thing that matters in that kind of life-or-death situation is how long it takes to get it in the room. By the time you get this stuff out of the refrigerator in pharmacy and run it to the OR, ER, or ICU, you could have gotten a surgeon there to do the cricothyrotomy or even a proper tracheostomy.
Re:Beats current techniques (Score:5, Insightful)
The experimental solutions contained 50-90 mL of O2 per deciliter - to sustain an adult human, you need about 300 mL O2 per minute. At least 300 mL of IV fluid and as much as 600 mL per minute is going to have to go through one hell of an IV. I doubt you could achieve such infusion rates without specialized equipment (e.g., 8.5 French rapid infusion catheter + Level One pump) or multiple intraosseous needles. Furthermore, this is temporizing just like any other O2 delivery method. Oxygen is essential for life, but eventually you have to clear the CO2, or it's pointless. As a bridge to a secure airway or crash on to cardiopulmonary bypass? Sure, it's not a bad idea, except that the only thing that matters in that kind of life-or-death situation is how long it takes to get it in the room. By the time you get this stuff out of the refrigerator in pharmacy and run it to the OR, ER, or ICU, you could have gotten a surgeon there to do the cricothyrotomy or even a proper tracheostomy.
That's all technically true. I think the question you AREN'T asking is the most important one - what if you're not trying to sustain a human, but simply lengthen the amount of time before cell death? If I recall my first aid training (and I do), even an extra 10 minutes can be the difference between brain damage and 100% recovery.
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Re:Beats current techniques (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, not to mention organ donation. If you have a severe enough head trauma such that the person is /undeniably/ dead, something like this could save a lot of organs, and by extension, a lot of other lives.
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If there is one thing that religious people have taught me in this life, it's that there is no such thing as "undeniably" dead.
They can deny, deny, deny, and then deny some more.
More likely this will lead to more vegetable gardens being carefully maintained. That's their decision really and I hope I am never faced with it.
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"..., but simply lengthen the amount of time before cell death? "
This would be awesome for meat. You could have the tissue alive right until you chuck it on the grill.
mmmm, tender meat.
Re:Beats current techniques (Score:5, Insightful)
You could have the tissue alive right until you chuck it on the grill. mmmm, tender meat.
Well, no, actually.
The tenderest beef has been dead for days or even weeks. As the cells within a cut of beef die, they release enzymes that slowly digest connective tissue (mostly collagen). "Live" steaks would contain intact, live cells that wouldn't have a chance to release any digestive enzymes before being cooked.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging [wikipedia.org]
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You won't do tracheotomies with steak knives, you'll do a cricotomy.
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Let me guess: You've never watched the Police Academy movies.
So what? (Score:5, Funny)
So what? I have a pet rabbit that I can keep alive with regular oxygen particles.
And I don't even have to inject them or anything. They just go into the holes in his face.
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I suspect that he has tried and it has only resulted in several restraining orders.
they forgot something (Score:5, Interesting)
CO2 must also be removed. that's probably what ultimately killed the rabbits.
Besides overloading the red blood cells with CO2 and preventing the removal from the cells, it also screws up the PH of the blood really quick. I assume that with this process it could get bad enough to lead to shock.
Now what would be really cool would be if they could come up with a sold-state exchanger for CO2 to O2. Something like a fuel cell in reverse - create a chemical exchange from an electrical power. Implant that into a body and it could run on batteries instead of breathing. But I don't think that technology in that form currently exists. They have "rebreathers" but those are huge space-suit-size affairs and operate on a far more involved process.
But I bet someone's working on it right now. Probably several someones.
Re:they forgot something (Score:5, Informative)
Rebreathers just scrub CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it up as a carbonate. They need not be particularly large, though - the CO2 scrubber on the GE (Datex-Ohmeda) ADU Carestation is about the same size as a pint glass. The rest of the system is the bulky part, and in most situations could actually be done without.
Re:they forgot something (Score:5, Funny)
Can't they just shake them to get the dissolved CO2 out? Works for a bottle of coke. What if they gave the rabbit a Mentos?
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I don't think they -forgot- that, I think they just focused on one step at a time.
Gee Karl, did you forget to remove the CO2 from my kid's pet rabbit? It went all floppy after I gave it back to him.
Sorry Stan, It must have slipped my mind. Good for science, though!
You're right Karl, look at me still talking when there's science to be done.
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Breaking two C-O pi bonds and two C-O sigma bonds to form an O-O sigma and pi... That's going to be an energy expensive process.
CO2 > O2 +C
Energies in kJ/mol^-1
1x O=O: 498
2x C=O: 2*(803) = 1606
So you're putting in about 1600 kJ/mol and getting back 498 kJ/mol, plus some carbon, so you need to find about 1100 kJ/mol of energy from your battery.
I think there's a reason that plants don't bother cracking CO2 right down into O2! Plus, what do you do with the solid carbon? Would you have to keep changing a fil
Cruel experiment (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, about the CO2 thing...you know that visceral panic you feel when you can't breathe? It's not triggered by lack of oxygen, but rather by excess CO2. I'm sure dying from asphyxiation is unpleasant enough, but having the experience dragged out to fifteen minutes (or more, once the methods are improved) must be horrific.
This will change the Tour de France forever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This will change the Tour de France forever (Score:4, Insightful)
Lame (Score:4, Interesting)
Why, why, why are these stories always "save peoples lives" angled? How cool would it be to dive with this stuff running in your veins? I bet the liquid is incompressible too. I wonder what the ratio of volume of the liquid versus how much oxygen contained within it is.
Compressibility (Score:2)
It's shells of lipid (fat) around gaseous oxygen, so it should be compressible.
Re:Lame (Score:4, Informative)
Well, liquids aren't compressible in general, so I suspect that is already covered.
The problem with diving isn't the blood, it is the lungs, and later (when you resurface) the difference in solubility of various gasses in your tissues under different pressures.
The amount of, for example, nitrogen that can dissolve into your blood (again, for example) depends on the pressure. As the pressure goes up, more can dissolve. As the pressure goes down, less can dissolve, which means that when you surface, nitrogen dissolved in your body can suddenly reappear as a gas bubble which requires many times the volume that it took while dissolved. In a joint, or long muscle or fat, this can be painful. In an important artery or in your heart or other important organ (most of them), this can be fatal.
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Why, why, why are these stories always "save peoples lives" angled? How cool would it be to dive with this stuff running in your veins?
Dunno if I'd want to have to inject myself with a hypodermic every 3 minutes while diving. On the other hand, if there was a pill I could swallow that would somehow release oxygen into my bloodstream via the intestines, that would be pretty cool. As a bonus it could double as a propulsion device.
Yawn. ECMO, anybody? (Score:3)
Less than indefinitely is as good as dead? (Score:2)
Why 15 minutes? Weren't they confident they could keep the bunnies alive indefinitely?
What happens after 15 minutes? How are the microparticles cleared from the body after the oxygen in them is used up? How fast can they be absorbed and does is it too slow for the rate at which the body uses oxygen. (I suspect that's the root of the time limit.
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Nobody tell the State Department (Score:4, Interesting)
You think waterboarding is torture? Wait until some goon figures out how to use this technique to allow them to keep their victim alive as they experience their own suffocation. Over. and. Over.
Glad I'm not a rabbit (Score:2)
Sometimes when they lengthen the lives of rats or cure them of cancer I think it must be nice to be a lab rat. Certainly much better than being a lab rabbit apparently.
Perfect timing (Score:3)
This is just in time for the Olympics. Let's see how well Phelps can keep up with microparticle enhanced bubble-head mariners.
Obviously not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously so... (Score:5, Funny)
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the mice were there just for fun...
Re:Choking Mice (Score:5, Informative)
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Fair comment. I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this. That is what the lung transplant girl from Ottawa recently in the news suffered from. I was acquainted with someone who passed away from this. And there were an inordinate amount of workers at a plant in Missouri that made flavouring for microwave popcorn that developed fibrosis in the lungs too. Essentially your lungs get hard like scar tissue and can
Re:Science... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats something sci-fi pulled out of the US Air Force books actually. Also Canadian Air Force books. It was originally thought up as a concept in canada to combat the massive g-forces the avro arrow could generate. It turned out it wasn't needed. Its been tested extensively by the US since(and there was some testing done in canada as well) but never used for any regular procedures afaik. It has also seen some testing for under water purposes, deep diving(Similar problems to massive g-forces and ridiculous altitudes)
I've actually tried it myself at a marine research facility. Its extremely fucked and you can choke to death while being fully oxygenated(if you're a wuss, essentially). Also excess fluid left in the lungs can cause infections etc to set in.
Doing something dangerous enough to have a paramedic crew standing next to you when you start it is a bit of a head trip too.
Once you're in there tho... its not even slightly comfortable. It feels like your chest is being heavily pressed on and you have this constant drowning feeling that takes a bit to get over. Overall, I'd say thats probably the main reason it hasn't been used much. On paper the whole deal is fantastic. In reality, not so much.
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Let me get this straight: you've been inhaling an oxygen-saturated liquid? For how long?
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you have this constant drowning feeling that takes a bit to get over.
I nominate this for understatement of the year.
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I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this.
If someone somehow found a cure for cancer by sacrificing a million human babies, and no more babies would need to be killed afterwards in order to treat people, would you refuse the treatment? That would be pointless. The ones who died are already dead, and refusing the treatment will not bring them back.
Human dignity (Score:2, Flamebait)
So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades? After all, they are already dead.
Morality isn't about efficiency, it is about saying "I won't do this because I think it is wrong". And yes, for some this includes making use of research obained through immoral means. Most human beings just get this and don't need to have it explained. That you do, says a lot about you.
For most, "everyone else is doing it" is thankfully not good enough or we
Re:Human dignity (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades?
No, I was saying that I think it's pointless to refuse a treatment because of the methods used to develop it that are no longer in use. The scenario I described was a one-time thing, and the perpetrator would be punished, but the treatment would remain available. I suppose you could refuse the treatment, but I just think it's meaningless.
And yes, for some this includes making use of research obained through immoral means.
What a meaningless sacrifice.
That you do, says a lot about you.
That I have a different opinion than you?
For most, "everyone else is doing it" is thankfully not good enough or we all be living in a world like Somalia and other hell holes where individual morals have disappeared.
Individual morals likely never disappear as long as you're human. I don't see where anyone mentioned the fact that everyone else is doing it, either.
The daily proof is that we don't eat our dead.
I thought that was unhealthy, anyway? And who is "we"? I'm sure there are some cultures that do.
I predict you will be shunned.
Eating human sounds rather unappetizing to me, so I'll pass on that. But I find it amusing that a few sentences prior to this you mentioned "everyone else is doing it," and here you basically say, "no one else is doing it!"
Amazing as it may appear to you, some people would indeed refuse such a treatment.
I never said that they couldn't. I just said I thought it was meaningless.
It is what makes them human.
And people who don't are... goblins or something? No True Human would go through with the treatment! Statements such as these always amuse me. They attempt to state as a fact what a human being should act like, and anyone that doesn't follow their made-up rules must be some sort of alien in disguise as a human.
That you can't means you are an animal.
All humans are animals, and I believe you'd be hard-pressed to find a human being that doesn't have any morals whatsoever. Them having different morals than you doesn't mean that they don't have any at all.
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I'm all for science and testing, but damn. Imagine feeling like you are choking to death for 15 minutes...
Your mom never complained.
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man, there's some mods that really need an injection of sense-of-humour particles...
Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably less than 1/10000th the number of rabbits that were sacrificed for dinner plates last night alone.
Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed? (Score:4, Interesting)
>Yes, I'm pretty conflicted about animal experimentation myself
When it comes to life saving medicine, I'm not conflicted one bit.
Thumper or...
Me.
I vote me.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:2)
I vote Thumper.
(I kid, I kid. but there are some people who say that when they would be faced with the choice of saving the life of a human or a dog, they would save the dog.)
Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted young (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted young men, I wouldn't expect most of them to have any morals beyond their own immediate instinctive needs. It is not how things work.
A decision as to how to live and die only comes when dead becomes a reality. Like people who decide to stop treatment of a fatal disease because they want to live the remainder of their live with some dignity rather then have a tiny hope with misery of dangerous medication. But you cannot judge this, until you have faced death.
In some games and lots of movies and books, this is explored, from sophies choice, to Lawrence Oates self-sacrifice. What would YOU do? The current zombie game "The walking dead" gives you such choices, who do you save? There is a site that shows all the choices people made in the first episode. Of course, such a game is not real. But I wonder if the choices made are influenced by the players history. Will a person from a civil war, a parent, someone who lost someone dear, a young man, a woman who had an abortion for convenience, etc etc, make different choices NOT for gameplay reasons but because the choice fits with their world view?
Hard research because there is a LOT of prejudice at work in just the previous sentence. Not just the abortion one, even presuming a young man is a different type then the rest says a LOT. Not sure what it says, it is just a lot.
But when you are young you tend to think in "Me, me me" terms. It is as you experience more (and that happens as you age) that you develop a more rounded view of life. Including perhaps one day, the choice as to how the end of your life should be. But statements as "It is better to die a free man then to live as a slave" are only truly understood by people who had to make the choice. Do you take every option to survive or do you say "no, this line, I will not cross". Ultimately, if you are faced with such a choice, it defines you. Just not for very long. But often moral choices such as that come down to, "could I live with myself if I did this?". For some the answer will be yes, for some the answer will be no.
But I wouldn't expect to find a many non- "me me me" responses on a site aimed at emotionally stunted young men. Or one aimed at young women either for that matter. And that is good. No reason for the young to think about how they are going to die, clutching at every straw, taking your own life or refusing to extend it at all costs. That is something for the old and terminally ill, let the rest believe they are going to live forever and that hanging on as long as possible is the only thing that matters.
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I don't believe it's possible to give a convincing argument for choosing you over a member of something else's species. If other beings did this to us, I would hope humans wouldn't be so arrogant as to claim they're special snowflakes deserving of special treatment.
Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed? (Score:4, Insightful)
>I don't believe it's possible to give a convincing argument for choosing you over a member of something else's species.
You are drowning.
Thumper is drowning.
Who am I to save. Hmm.... let me think about it.
Oh wait, I shouldn't think about it because I should pick you over Thumper. Because only people with absolute lack of empathy would pick Thumper.
Sorry if this annoys you.
--
BMO
Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed? (Score:4, Insightful)
We called them eugenicists.
What? I don't believe that has anything to do with what I said.
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And you've gone down this road mentally, thought about it, and wrote down that you're not sure if certain humans should be allowed to live versus another species or whether humans are worth sticking up for at all.
It depends on the situation. Deciding whether or not to save a member of another species you love over a human has nothing to do with eugenicists.
I didn't say anything about whether humans are worth sticking up for at all or not. That's a subjective matter.
Don't message me back.
Then don't reply to me in a place where I have the ability to reply to your comments.
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Oh, well you know for insulin and the pancreas they killed around 10,000 in London, Ontario alone just trying to figure out what was going on.
The more you know...but if your morals are getting in the way of saving the life of type 1 diabetics. I understand, try a starvation diet, it's much the same thing.
The problem with a never ending and profitable drug treatment is that is kind of removes the incentive to develop a cure [canada.com].
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This is something that could save a lot of lives. I am perfectly fine with it. Now, if you are taking about cosmetics research (the one that has the most demand for rabbits), I agree. It is cruel.
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Well, sorry Mrs. Smith. There might have been a technique that couuld have saved your boy; but we couldn't kill the rabbit. Would you like to pet the rabbit? So there's Mrs. Smith at her son's funeral petting the rabbit, and that makes up for it.
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You're not the only one, but you're probably in the minority here.
I bet you believe humans are the only ones who kill for pleasure. At least this is for science.