dark beer is healthier!

yep they can.

Well, I dunno. There are plenty of people who drink beer. It might be useful to know if it's good or bad for them, and what some of the specific effects of drinking beer are. Lo and behold, the sphere of human knowledge has been expanded a bit by this study.

Yeah, all that's holding him back from doing trials with humans is a couple of extra forms. It obviously has nothing to do with obtaining permission from his institution, the agency that's funding his research, the various oversight agencies, or the subjects themselves. Nor does it have anything to do with the large differences in funding required to do human trials and the amount of time it takes to get enough subjects together to get some results.

You do realize that every drug on the market was tested on an animal (and found to be safe) at some point? And that many drugs that are extremely toxic to humans were never released ot the market specifically because their toxicity in animals was an obvious warning sign? Wait, I think that's the point you're missing.

Ah, as I suspected: you in fact have no idea what you're talking about. It isn't just that the drug or procedure itself isn't toxic, it's that participating in the trial itself could require subjects to engage in dangerous behavior. The subjects would already have to have heart disease, like the dogs, and to do this study they'd have to stop taking whatever heart disease medication they might be taking (which could be as simple as aspirin) and use a drug that has been shown to have harmful effects in many other ways.

[Edited on Nov 14, 2003 by AJ]

1) I doubt that they had to force dogs to drink beer...they like it anyways, just like people
2) Sure, it's not my money...i live in Pennsylvania...but at any rate, learning that darker colored drinks are better for my ticker is valuable to me
3) So what your suggesting then is that we genetically cross breed people with Guinea Pigs and Sheep to make a race of super beings that are immune to STrychnine and Arsenic? That's PURE GENIUS!!!

I have no idea what could go wrong wit experimenting on beer...but i sure would like to find out. Sign me up!

( wants to hang out and drink dark beer with Lorelei)

tab

Sorry AJ, I suspect you are the one who is outside their frame of refrence. Ever heard of thalidomide? Animal pathophysiology is different than in humans. Animal experimentation has resulted in mass human injury. And our government has kindof a kooky idea of what is "safe" [MEA (or monoethanolamine), TEA (or triethanolamine)]. If you want to start standing up for the status quo, fine by me, but do a little more reading first.

The great Bogeyman of drug testing- I was wondering when thalidomide would show up. Never mind that the FDA's trials were based on West Germany's supposedly successful trials from the late 50's, or that it was pulled shortly after the medical field started to see the results. Or that all this happened 40 years ago, and the pharmaceutical industry is very different now.

I agree, animal testing is not a perfect system. I work in a place where some of the research is on the design of cancer drugs; clearly, animals die in this research, and it's not a great feeling knowing that you're packing up drug samples that will be used to 'cure' mice of cancers that've been induced. The problem is that there don't seem to be viable alternatives that can work in large-scale settings.

To add to that, on balance, drug testing seems to have benefitted many more people than it's harmed. If we're talking about Gilette testing shaving cream on vivisected bunnies, there's obvious ethical problems, but these are not vanity drugs that we're talking about. Despite my sarcasm, though, I'm very interested- what are the alternatives that you suggest? Everything I've heard seems to suggest testing on humans first (likely not going to happen, for obvious reasons), or curtailing drug research (again, not going to happen).

Point of information: Thalidomide was never approved in the US.

Didn't know that. I do know that it was approved and used in Europe (of course) as well as Canada, though there was less use (and less birth defects) in Canada than the Continent. However, the thalidomide scare is what prompted the feds to pass many of the laws governing human drug trials. Disturbing point of information #2, though, is that both FDA and NIH clinical trials of thalidomide have been ongoing since the mid 90's.

Yeah, I've heard of those, and they aren't nearly as scary as all that when you get past the initial frisson of horror. They're looking at it as an anti-cancer drug, and teh results are promising. The scientists running the studies are taking heroic precautions to avoid any of the study subjects becoming pregnant. It's certainly a bit risky, but thalidomide's side effects are much more tolerable in an anti-cancer drug than they are in a tranquilizer.

Ugh, don't get me started on people who freak out about the drug approval process, on either side of the argument... this post would get too long. what it's supposed to be is a
*** PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ***

BEER IS HEALTHIER THAN SOFT DRINKS.

I don't have the study or know where you can get a copy of it, but it was brought to my attention by my brother in law, who holds his bachelor's in nutritional science and is working towards his master's... if you really want to know, I could try to find out more information on where you could get a copy of the actual published findings. But basically, what they did is this:
They took two demographically equalized study groups, and a control group. None of the groups made any changes to their regular diets, except that the one group drank one additional pint of beer a day and the other group drank one additional can of pop a day.
After a year, the control group and the beer group both gained no average weight.
The pop group gained an average of 12 POUNDS.
Draw from that what you will.

*** END PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT ***

Although it didn't need the approval of medical science, this once again proves that Guinness is the greatest beer in the world.