That whole argument is predicated on the false assumption that mice are accurate enough human analogs that you even can cure human disease with their help. There's a good reason why it's such a common comment to point out how "in mice" was omitted from a headline that otherwise sounds like a medical breakthrough.

Where do you draw the line and say that the arithmetic regarding suffering lab animals versus suffering humans does or doesn't add up?

The answer is far from obvious for many people and so obvious as to not need discussion for others. But the proportions of the population that fall into each group varies over time, from place to place, etc., as does the fraction of each group deciding for or against animal experimentation.

If the simulated organs perform better for research and avoid needless animal suffering, then it's a win/win. Right now it's a win/lose at best, possibly a lose/lose if you factor in reproducibility issues using animal organs for research.

First off, we should only be making this kind of trade-off (non-human lives for human lives) because it's absolutely necessary.

But even ignoring the ethics concerns, an accurate non-animal model is going to be vastly preferable to a real animal for a lot of stages of research. It's going to be easier to isolate variables, and a lot of research time and resources are taken up by animal models just being real animals.

> How many lab rats is one person worth?

Zero, if there are alternatives.

Because not everyone in society is anthropocentric?

I think it’s important to realize, the mice are still dying as we speak for this purpose.

This is simply a step toward not needing to literally kill animals needlessly, if it succeeds. In the meantime, while stuff like this is really early on, we’re not going to stop animal testing.