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A comment on Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year.

Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by Asooka on Monday April 17, 2017 @11:49AM (#14131769)
Can horseshoe crabs actually feel pain? I thought their nervious systems were too simple for that, ergo there's practically no ethical concerns with doing whatever you want to them, as long as it doesn't lead to genocide.
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by dang on Monday April 17, 2017 @01:31PM (#14132791)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14131514 and marked it off-topic.
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by woodruffw on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:17PM (#14132068)
Pain might be one consideration for an ethical argument against the status quo, but there are plenty of others:

* Environmental - Are we diminishing the horseshoe crab population in a way that'll adversely affect the environment?

* Sustainability - Will our current methods be able to supply indefinitely increasing demand for horseshoe crab blood?

* Practicality - Are we using a natural resource as a way to avoid a more responsible or practical engineered solution (compare: whale oil)?

I don't claim a satisfactory answer to any of these (I just don't know enough about horseshoe crabs), but a "yes" for any of them represents a plausible ethical concern.

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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by tim333 on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:05PM (#14131935)
Probably they can. Pain detection evolved so organisms can avoid damaging their bodies. There's no reason to think that doesn't apply to crabs.
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by prodikl on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:50PM (#14132408)
i think this is the most logical answer. i would imagine pain appeared very early in a common ancestor as its effect on survival is absolutely immense
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by jsnathan on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:25PM (#14132139)
It's still being debated (for what that's worth) but there are numerous studies that indicate that they do [1].

I don't think we have any workable theory at this point that would explain how exactly (biological) neural networks produce pain, or predict how complex they need to be to do so.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans

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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by sndean on Monday April 17, 2017 @11:58AM (#14131862)
Not sure about the question of pain, but most IACUCs (Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees) at universities and elsewhere don't care what you do to invertebrates.

It's an odd line to draw, but that's apparently the line: whether or not there's a spine.

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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by ecdavis on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:05PM (#14131930)
Humans can't feel pain if anaesthetized.
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by bykovich on Monday April 17, 2017 @12:36PM (#14132263)
This is a dumbfuck ethical theory.
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Re:Biomedical companies bleed 500k horseshoe crabs a year by bobsil1 on Monday April 17, 2017 @01:30PM (#14132780)
We come up with this risible excuse every time we want to do something awful: sport fishing, chicken slaughter, baby circumcision. "They're dumb / they can't feel pain."
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