Thousands of Lab Mice Lost In Sandy Flooding 88
An anonymous reader writes "While New York University's Langone Medical Center in lower Manhattan was the site of heroism as 260 patients were evacuated from flooded floors and a nearly complete loss of power, similar floods at NYU's nearby Smilow Research Building killed thousands of laboratory mice, including genetically altered specimens in-bred over many generations as research subjects for melanoma and other diseases. Other laboratory animals, cells, and living tissue used in medical research were also lost; because of the gestation period involved, some projects were likely set back a number of years. Past experience with storms such as Allison in Houston and Katrina in New Orleans has shown that keeping laboratory animals in basements is not good practice, but research institutions keep doing it anyway."
Not just dead mice/lost research.... (Score:4, Informative)
What the news also isn't reporting, is that because of this flooding, there is all sorts of hazardous medical waste floating in the water underneath/in NYU medical center.
I would expect this to become a problem; there are millions of gallons of water which likely cannot simply be pumped out into drainage systems, and may have to be treated first, or removed for treatment at a later time.
The failure of NYU's backup systems may be one of the biggest localized issues to come out of this disaster. Time will tell,
Re:I'd be MOST worried about contamination (Score:3, Informative)
Most of the time you breed for genetic anomalies. Things like color-blindness, Huntington's repetitions, predeliction for cancer (cell cycle/apoptosis genes) are what are bred in. They are highly unlikely to be transmitted.