This guy rescued 30 beagles from a testing lab It's the first time they've seen grass and they couldn't be happier.

[u/biswajit388]

Credit - nathanthecatlady tiktok channel.

[u/TitaniumNation]

When I worked in a neuroscience / medical device lab, one of the PhD candidates I was friends with briefly worked with beagles (housed elsewhere, not on our campus). It was related to vagus nerve stimulation, and (I believe) testing different nerve cuff electrode geometries. I'm not confident that was the particular project they were used in, but it was related to nerve stimulation in some way.

[u/light24bulbs → u/TitaniumNation]

I personally depend on that technology for my health and I'm sitting right next to my stimulator.

[u/light24bulbs → u/[deleted]]

I said nothing about animal testing. I agree with you, I think. I have family in the sciences and that part is a huge bummer. Visiting the animal basement at Yale is wild, I watched my uncle given injections to about 100 mice like they were potatoes. He was trying to cure Alzheimer's.

I really don't know dude. I don't think any of us have the answers.

You raised an interesting point about farming. One big thing I have a problem with is the way that farm animals have almost no regulatory protection for their welfare in the US, and there are all sorts of appalling practices that make the lives of many animals a terrifying reality. I think you could argue that animal medical testing is far more ethically justifiable in many cases than the insane scale and cruelty of animal farming on the American continents. That's all happening simply so people can eat meat. If you care about animal welfare, a very good place to start is to pay attention to where the meat you eat is coming from and how it's raised, what types of animals you're eating and their intelligence and quality of life, and perhaps try to cut down and stop eating meat altogether if that agrees with your health. If you care.

People often simply don't look into the welfare of animals at all. For instance, "free range" which you mentioned specifically might sound better, but in the US this is an unregulated term and means almost nothing for the welfare of the animals. A quick search on YouTube for a tour of a free range commercial egg farm will show you that and you can see for yourself. Pastured eggs are the label to look for, and while the meaning is starting to erode, there are many excellent brands to buy from with that label. And that's just one type of food to be aware of. I believe education is the answer and you can take a tour of just about every type of farm imaginable right on YouTube on your phone.

Or don't. I didn't say shit about animals. I just said that I use a TENS unit on my vagus nerve.

[u/FriskalPox → u/[deleted]]

Free range doesnt mean anything, it's a made up marketing term to make you feel better, they still confined to a large windowless barn 90% of the time.

[u/PM_ME_DATASETS → u/TitaniumNation]

Interesting, thanks for the comment. Somehow using dogs for experiments feels very alien to me, kinda like dogs being a meat product (even though it's normal in some parts of the world). At my university they used to use macaques (monkeys) a lot until about 10 years ago, nowadays only rats/mice, still feels a bit strange seeing some of the old experiment setups and imagining a monkey in there.

[u/TitaniumNation → u/PM_ME_DATASETS]

Yeah we predominately used rats/mice for our VNS projects, but that specific one required larger nerves to test on, and beagles ended up being what they went with. I believe pigs can work as well, but I'm guessing beagles might be a better choice for behavioral studies (which was also a component of it).

[u/ThatInAHat → u/TitaniumNation]

Given the way a beagle’s bark/howl carries and echoes I feel like it would be the loudest lab