this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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Why, though? Greedy breeders already "produce" more dogs than there are loving families for and as a result dog shelters are constantly full with sad dogs who don´t have a home. This drug will result in shelters getting even more overcrowded. Death is a natural part of life, just as birth, I wish more people would get that.
I'm pretty cynical, but this is a new level.
My dog lives longer and shelters get more crowded? That's a complete non-sequitor. Much like my choice of lunch doesn't impact your lunch situation.
Perhaps my reading comprehension is poor, but the article seems to indicate that the pill will give a dog more "active years" and not necessarily more years. I guess we'll find out in four years when it's done.
Accepting death as a part of life is in no way cynical, it´s logical.
Don´t think only of yourself, try to see the bigger picture. Not just your dog will live longer, a lot of dogs will with that drug, resulting in less adoptions. Since commercial breeders are not going to "produce" less dogs just because of the new drug, the result of dogs living longer will be a higher population of dogs. Now considering the number of people who want to adopt a dog will decrease while the number of dogs available will increase, this will necessarily result in more dogs who don´t find/have a home. It´s really quite obvious if you think about it.
The article indicates both as far as I comprehend it:
"Biotech company Loyal is developing an injectable drug, LOY-001, designed to help large breed dogs not only live longer, but stay healthy longer"
Not all breeders are puppy mills, or producing brachycephalic breeds, but they are out there, and there's other breeders putting longer noses on pugs and Frenchies.
Artificial insemination is common with the breeders I am familiar with. Though I'm not sure breeding racks are necessarily animal abuse, dogs in heat are fucking horny.
That is not what I meant to say. I argued against artificially increasing life expectancy, which does not equal arguing for decreasing natural life expectancy.
If people stop paying for dogs, they will stop breeding them to sell.
Also, I accept death as part of life, but I still look both ways before crossing the street. I'm not getting off this ride any sooner than I have to.
Yeah, what we need is something that makes dogs have shorter lives, like up to a year at most. Wait what?
What actually shortens the life expectancy of dogs is the kind of selective breeding for unreasonable external characteristics that has long been carried out by greedy and/or ignorant dog breeders.
Sounds like you need to have a chat with them, not folks who own a dog they like, already.
This might eventually help us understand how to extend human lives.
But why would we want that? In my opinion that would be a mistake. The planet is already severely overpopulated and as I said, death is a natural part of life, just like birth.
I want my senior, rescue dog to live longer, as long as he's healthy and happy.
That is of course very sweet of you and I understand it on a personal level. You love your dog and would do anything for him and so you even wish he could live infinitely if that was possible. However, maybe you could also try to understand my reasoning as well? I was talking about human/canine society as a whole and if all humans and/or dogs would get to live, let´s say, twice as long or even become immortal, that would lead to severe problems regarding overpopulation, don´t you agree?
I don't think there would be overpopulation. There would be changes to breeding laws. It would become much more of a "thing" to create a new life.
I envy your optimism.