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Comments: 324 +- Science: Dye Used In Blue M&Ms Can Lessen Spinal Injury on Tuesday July 28 2009, @01:33PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday July 28 2009, @01:33PM
from the lands-where-the-jumblies-live dept.
from the lands-where-the-jumblies-live dept.
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medicine
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science
SydShamino writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that the dye used in blue M&Ms and other foods can, when given intravenously to a lab rat shortly after a spinal injury, minimize secondary damage caused by the body when it kills off nearby healthy cells. The dye is called BBG or Brilliant Blue G. Given that 85% of spinal injury patients are currently untreated (and some doctors don't trust the treatment given to the other 15%), a relatively safe treatment like this could help preserve some function for thousands of patients. The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue." The researchers are "pulling together an application to be lodged with the FDA to stage the first clinical trials of BBG on human patients."
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Sound Methods? (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously though is there like a lab out there giving rats spinal injuries and jacking them full of chemicals? Cause if there is, I've got my resume handy!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How do you think they determine what dose kills you? They inject 200 rats with an overdose of, say, acetaminophen, and wait for horrifyingly painful liver failure. I guess it's better than testing it on humans though.
Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you just have rats in your house/warehouse/store/(or heck, even your lab, as long as they aren't lab rats) you can put out backbreaking traps, glue traps that cause slow death by dehydration, warfarin baits, whatever you want and nobody will say a thing. No standards, just the maintanence guy hittin' em with a shovel if they are twitching too much for the garbage.
Same thing in other areas: You don't need to deal with an IRB to raise feedlot pigs. And, for human testing, you (ostensibly at any rate) need informed consent, and various safeguards, IRB oversight, etc. If you need to spray your nerve toxin/probable human carcinogen on your crops, you just hire some undocumented mexican for $3.50 an hour, and throw him away if he breaks...
I'm not arguing that science needs less scrutiny(unethical conduct is always bad, and "trust us, its for the greater good" doesn't have an especially noble history; but I do think that science draws flack well out of proportion to its relative ethical risk, for reasons I don't fully understand. Numerous fields of human endeavor kill, maim, or cripple far more animals and humans, to far less benefit, than science, and somehow get away with less scrutiny and opposition. Why is science the target?
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Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of those procedures are less about caring for the rats and more about proper bookkeeping, budgeting, specimen tracking, etc. It's procedural controls to keep it science instead of just injecting rats with food coloring.
As to why science is the target: probably because it's so procedural, and done for reasons many people can't understand properly or deem to be wasteful. A dozen rabbits getting maimed in a wheat thresher is just an unfortunate side effect of your vegan diet; a dozen rabbits getting experimented on for a reason you don't understand is torture and unethical, even if it may alleviate pain and suffering for untold numbers of fellow humans.
=Smidge=
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Just some thoughts as to an explanation why.
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Tell me how animal fighting is illegal, but underground fighting is not (only the gambling is).
If you don't understand the difference between two consenting adults getting into a ring and beating the crap out of each other or 2 animals being driven into a fury and then placed in a small enclosement I very much doubt you'll be able to grasp any answer you'll get.
Re:Sound Methods? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you that it's unfortunate that animals are sacrificed for medical research, and I hope and expect that the researchers are aware of their moral obligations to the animals under their care. But fixing spinal cord injuries so that people can walk again is worth the lives of millions of rats.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How many rat deaths exactly is a person walking again worth? A million? Could you stomach the hundred thousand gallons of blood flowing from the chopping block, knowing it was saving someone's mobility?
Are you sure you're comfortable with the ramifications of throwing out a number like one human life = 1 million rat lives? You know, the only reason it's not the other way around (1 million human lives for 1 rat life) is because we're the apex predators with the cages and the ne
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Humans are really unique in how much they argue about the ethics of killing something for the benefit of their group. Pretty much all animals just kill it and go their merry way. Either they kill it for food or they kill it because it violated their territory or whatever. Sometimes they just kill for fun. None of them complain about the ethics of all that.
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You exaggerate, a rat has nowhere near a pint of blood in him. Probably not more than ten thousand gallons, tops.
Yes, in fact I am.
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I draw the line at complete rat genocide.* After all, you've got to leave at least one breeding pair so you can restock for the next round of experiments.
Have you ever owned or bread rats? 3 weeks gestation, litter size of 6 to 16, sexual maturity after 90 days... it doesn't take long to be completely overwhelmed. I tried it once as an alternative to driving 45 minutes to a pet store to feed my 10-ft python. It only took me a few months to give up.
Re:Sound Methods? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Are rats less deserving of our sympathies than "intelligent" humans?
Yes.
Wouldn't it be /more/ humane to test on those creatures that can give informed consent?
No.
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So conflicted (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Insightful)
But even if you're right, that does not mean we should be completely carefree about inflicting harm against creatures that can feel pain or fear or both, merely because they're not human. Tossing off one-word yes/no responses to that guy's questions makes it sound like there is nothing further to discuss, when in fact the issue of animal testing is a hotly contested one and not so easily answered.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No, that's my dinner!
Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sound Methods? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with your conclusion, but not your argument. The fact that they are "bred specifically for scientific purposes" doesn't have any impact on the moral aspect of animal testing. We've had people who were specifically bred for farm labor but that didn't make slavery moral.
The reason animal testing for medicine is OK is because we agree that the life of a human is more valuable than the life of a lab rat. Whether or not I may agree with that assumption doesn't change the fact that it has become a consensus. The best we can do as far as creating a moral framework for human society is to accept such a consensus. It's imperfect, but I don't see another way, unless you're willing to abrogate moral responsibility to the pronouncements of an imaginary deity, which really means "a bunch of guys who wrote moral pronouncements and then claimed they came from god". I happen to prefer the consensus method to the imaginary deity method.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even from an evolutionary perspective, yes. Aren't rats kind pretty low on the totem pole?
Depends what totem pole. The totem pole of "most like humans", then they are a little ways down, but still FAR above the 1/2 way point if you include non-mammals.
In terms of "most evolved" rats are exactly where humans are. If there was any argument to be made, you could say they are MORE evolved, since they have a shorter life span and more children - more chance for natural selection to work it's magic.
Evolution works towards optimizing a species for survival; not for "becoming human" or "becoming
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Ah, the one in Toledo.
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And all this time... (Score:5, Funny)
...I've been focusing on the green ones!
Re:And all this time... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:And all this time... (Score:5, Funny)
I tried, but couldn't get them to squeeze out the little needle. Tried using a caulking gun, but that was just extremely painful.
Turned out as badly as when I tried snorting coke. The bubbles just about killed me.
Parent
Blue pill (Score:3, Funny)
Don't take the red pill. Take the blue pill. It's better for your spine.
Blue Rat Group (Score:5, Funny)
The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue.
Do they also start taking part in voiceless percussion stage performances?
Blue red (Score:3, Informative)
Glad to see the blue M&Ms won't be going the way the red ones [wikipedia.org] did in 1976 [wikipedia.org].
natgeo article with more pictures (Score:3, Informative)
Random! (Score:3, Funny)
"Well, the Tide With Color-Safe Bleach injection didn't fix Squeaky's 'beetus. Your turn, Roy!"
Why M&M? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe M&M/Mars, thanks to all the free and undeserved publicity, would be willing to help fund the necessary study, since no drug company seems interested in doing so (after all, there's no profit in selling a commodity food coloring.)
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This is going to be a can of worms (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means that restricting it to use in trauma centers is going to end up with a lot of nonurban victims left paralyzed for life. Trouble is, administering it outside of a trauma center is going to cause a lot of problems with licensure etc. Which causes me, as a nonurban first responder, to simultaneously stress out and reach for the popcorn.
Smurf (Score:3, Funny)
This articles begs to be tagged "smurf".
I mean, healing people with blue dye...
The Blue Man Group... (Score:3, Funny)
... will be filing a lawsuit shortly to block this attempted copyright infringement.
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Can be considered healty now?
At least if you have a spinal injury or possibly other type of nerve damage?
Or will you have to eat a truckload of M&M before there is any effect?
Depends, if you can eat blue smarties INTRAVENOUSLY they might be helpful. I would work up to it by taking them in suppository form first.
Re:Blue Eyes? Blue Vision? (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.
Yeah, given the choice between blue tinted eyes and spinal injury most people will chose spinal injury, I know I would.
Parent
Re:Blue Eyes? Blue Vision? (Score:5, Funny)
The spice must flow!?
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Do rats with blue eyes pray to earthworms?
I wouldn't mind being a Fremen myself...
Re:Mobsters, the new clinical trialists. (Score:5, Informative)
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Seems to me we should be contracting out mobsters as researchers. Because they also just 'happen' to find people who suffer spinal cord injuries.
That's a good idea. They'd probably do it for free, too, because if there's one thing mobsters hate, it's a rat.
Re:How about yellow? (Score:4, Funny)
No need, there are lots of naturally occuring yellow foods. Some tomatos, some potatos, squash, egg yolk, corn...
Yellow snow... no, wait, scratch that off the list.
Parent
Yup (Score:4, Interesting)
And since it's an injected drug, there are all sorts of legal restrictions on who can administer it. The list does not include EMT-Bs (basic emergency medical techs), only full paramedics [1] -- who are not always around when you need one.
[1] Training for paramedics beyond the standard "field medic" is extensive, including cadaver labs and stuff like that. Even so, they don't administer drugs without explicit direction from medical control (typically nearby ER doc.)
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Re:85% are untreated!!??? (Score:4, Informative)
We can fix the mechanical damage to the bones and ligaments, but the current best-practice treatment for the nerve damage consists of waiting to see how bad it is, followed by physical therapy. After hundreds of years of research, we haven't found anything more effective, which is what makes this such big news.
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