Of Mice and Cancer 109
Maximum Prophet points out a series of articles in Slate about the role of mice and rats in the fight against cancer. The first article discusses the problem of using the same type of animal for many tests; the reactions may be consistent, but they can also be different from the reactions a human has to the same treatment. "The inbred, factory-farmed rodents in use today—raised by the millions in germ-free barrier rooms, overfed and understimulated and in some cases pumped through with antibiotics—may be placing unseen constraints on what we know and learn." The second article focuses on one particular type of mouse, bred specifically for consistency and for its suitability to labwork, which has come to dominate biological testing. The final piece examines what researchers are trying to learn from the naked mole rat, a species that doesn't seem to get cancer on its own, and is resistant to attempts to induce cancer. "Buffenstein and her students tried one of these shortcuts. They placed some mole rats in a gamma chamber and blasted their pale, pink bodies with ionizing rays. The animals were unimpressed."
ohshi- (Score:5, Funny)
Please dont poke the rats, you might make them angry, and you wont like them when they are angry.
Re:Yes, of course they're constraining what we lea (Score:2, Funny)
OK fine. Side effects: You will lose all your hair and become pink and wrinkly. May induce urge to burrow and forrage.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, we knew that already. (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, I thought he'd discovered something rather profound:
"I began to realize that the ‘control’ animals used for research studies throughout the world are couch potatoes," he tells me. It's been shown that mice living under standard laboratory conditions eat more and grow bigger than their country cousins. At the National Institute on Aging, as at every major research center, the animals are grouped in plastic cages the size of large shoeboxes, topped with a wire lid and a food hopper that's never empty of pellets. This form of husbandry, known as ad libitum feeding, is cheap and convenient since animal technicians need only check the hoppers from time to time to make sure they haven’t run dry. Without toys or exercise wheels to distract them, the mice are left with nothing to do but eat and sleep—and then eat some more.
(My emphasis)
The mice he had bred were perfect stand in for Americans . Contrary to the thesis in TFA, these critters are
the perfect research subject.
Of course, the article then conflated the issue completely. But he's got a gold mine here.
Re:ohshi- (Score:2, Funny)
News just in, the TSA will be using these rats for testing their X-Ray backscatter machines.