Labs Are Euthanizing Thousands of Mice In Response To Coronavirus Pandemic (sciencemag.org) 65
sciencehabit writes: Science Magazine has learned that researchers across the U.S. are euthanizing thousands of lab mice in anticipation of a shortage of workers who can care for them. Some scientists have had to sacrifice half or more of their colonies, potentially resulting in the loss of months or years of work. "I was staring at my mice one by one and deciding who lives and who dies," says one researcher. "It was really rough." At the moment, Science has not seen evidence that larger animals such as cats, dogs, or monkeys are being proactively euthanized. That will likely remain the case. Unlike larger animals, mice breed quickly and must be used quickly. And because they comprise about 95% of all research animals, they suck up the most money and time.
Lucky for them (Score:1)
If I was a mouse, I'd certainly prefer to be euthanized painlessly and quickly instead of remaining a lab rat subject to experiments.
Re:Lucky for them (Score:4, Funny)
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...and deciding who lives and who dies
They call these people scientists? They're referring to test animals as persons. No wonder the Wuhan virus made it out of containment.
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Mice, humans, all you have to do is adjust the weight when calculating the LD-50.
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You've got to be pretty blind or willfully ignorant to think there's something special about humans that grants us personhood.
We're all animals. Humans are a lot brighter than most, but most everything that makes us something other than calculators is shared with most other higher animals.
You can value another being's life far less than a human one, without denying their personhood. They love, they hate, they fear... all evidence indicates they're just as sentient as us, just far less sapient.
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A wild mouse typically lives for 1 to 1.5 years [orkin.com]. They have to constantly search for food and water, and live a stressful life evading p
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Being a lot of mice are sold in petstores for food for pet snakes. Experements arn't so bad.
I was staring at my mice one by one and deciding.. (Score:1)
Re:I was staring at my mice one by one and decidin (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think that every lab animal endures a life of excruciating torture and pain, then I'm not really sure what to tell you. Perhaps we should just release them all into the wild where they'll live happy Disney movie lives free from harm [wikipedia.org] or worry [wikipedia.org].
Too broad of a stroke there (Score:5, Informative)
To even be approved to do mouse work at any US university (and most other countries as well) you have to clear many hurdles first:
You can't just let the animals suffer, even if they are mice; you'll never get approval or funding to do so. Even though mice get the least attention from regulatory inspectors they still count at the institutional level. When I was in the mouse lab we had a special facility in the (rather small) school that was dedicated to mice; grad students were absolutely not allowed in without a post-doc, faculty member, or DVM accompanying them. Each animal was accounted for, birth to death. Each cage had to be paid for by the PI all the way through and no animals were allowed to be acquired or birthed unless the supplies were already ready for them.
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We all die in the end. The only question is how long, and how well, we live in the meantime.
That's kind of the whole point of free range farming - just because you intend to eventually eat an animal doesn't necessarily mean you're okay with commissioning it to live a short, miserable existence until then.
Re: I was staring at my mice one by one and decidi (Score:1)
Mice have a higher lifespan in an enclosure than they do in the wild. Regular meals, regulated temperature, fewer diseases, no ticks, no predators, no poison. And a white mouse tends to do very poorly in the wild as it lacks even the most basic camouflage. I've kept extra mice from the lab as pets, my longest lives one last just short of 4 years the next oldest was 2.5 years.
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I was trying to argue that just because we plan to kill them anyway, that doesn't mean killing them today for no good reason is morally equivalent.
Sure, an engineered breed of severely inbred mice that should never have existed in the first place, do poorly in the wild. That doesn't reduce the moral price paid for breeding new ones that will be subjected to a lifetime of imprisonment and experimentation. The benefits we get may be worth it, I just think it's extremely disingenuous to pretend a price isn't
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Sure, an engineered breed of severely inbred mice that should never have existed in the first place, do poorly in the wild.
lab mouse, fancy mouse, and the wild house mouse are all related and all in the same ballpark for life span captivity.
If you try to argue that it's completely fine to subject mice to imprisonment and experimentation with no moral qualms since it helps humans,
Morality or immorality is a non sequitur position, and nobody could rationally debate it. Sorry!
Is it ethical to breed and use live animals for experimentation? The general consensus is that yes it is, under limited circumstance. There are some great essays discussing the ethics of either position that I think are worth reading. (and was, and may still be, required reading in ethics classes
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Ethics are just moral guidelines designed by committee.
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It's not. But that's a wonderful sounding platitude.
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That's the distilled essence of the dictionary definition. Care to offer an alternative?
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Animal Shelters (Score:5, Interesting)
"Nonessential" (Score:3)
Such a poor criteria for deciding who gets to remain open, rather than "risk of disease transmission". And one that's subject to arbitrary political whims. In the bay area, marijuana dispensaries are declared "essential". Gotta keep people lining up to get their pot, after all. In Ontario, new car dealerships are declared "essential" - not just their repair shops, but the whole dealerships.
Totally different here; here, places are shut down based on disease risk. Which is a huge incentive for businesses to take steps to reduce their risk of disease transfer. The other day, for example, I ordered a vinyl wrap from a small printing company. Surely anyone would declare such a company to be nonessential. Yet it's run by a guy working by himself. He took my order online. I showed up for him to measure the hood - I didn't need to be anywhere near him. He'll only be touching the hood when he wraps it, and never getting inside the vehicle. Why exactly should this be banned, unless hurting the economy is the goal? For me, delaying this purchase would be a minor inconvenience, but for him, it's his livelihood. What buys him food and pays his rent.
These sorts of things are not a significant means of disease transmission outside of the household. That's things like parties, public transit, crowded restaurants / bar / shops / etc, dense lines, and so forth, which put people in close contact with numerous random people for long periods. Where businesses are fundamentally incompatible with social distancing - to pick an example, hair salons - yes, this can mean forcing shutdowns. For others - restaurants, theatres, stores, etc - business as usual is too dangerous, but with significantly reduced capacity and employee hygiene measures, spread can be reduced to minimal levels. Public transit may need to (in addition to additional cleaning costs) reduce capacity and/or shift traffic to lower-demand times, which may require prioritizing certain riders and may potentially indirectly disrupt businesses as a result - but indirect disruption is a different topic than specifically-ordered shutdowns. And while governments may be hesitant to enforce against private gatherings, as major sources of the spread of disease, enforcing against them is very important, because they're major sources of spread between groups.
The goal should be to disrupt life as little as possible while disrupting transmission to the maximal extent. These "some arbitrary politician declares certain companies essential or nonessential while doing little concerning things that are actually serious sources of spread" policies are... not that. Yes, it is a way to reduce spread, but a very economically inefficient one relative to how much spread you reduce.
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Ontario's criteria btw for being "essential" can be found here [www.cbc.ca]. It's so broad it surely apples to at least half of the businesses in the province, if not far more.
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Why exactly should this be banned, unless hurting the economy is the goal?
Ding!
My county and the surrounding 5 counties have zero cases. Yet the state governor has ordered everything non medical closed. All gatherings of more than 10 people are banned. Schools have been closed for the rest of the YEAR. Fortunately I can stay home with my kids since I'm losing my job on Friday.
This is about making it hurt as much as possible. The only way to beat Trump in November is to tank the economy. My governor is a democrat. And a racist.
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I'll take it (Score:1)
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I view some of the things done to date with suspicion , but I would take that , "every special interest" thing because they are clearly written down and documented.
"The House Democrats' bill requires that any company getting coronavirus-related aid disclose its diversity stats, including its employees' race, gender, pay, corporate board diversity and the structure of its offices that deal with diversity and inclusion."
Also strengthens unions. Cancels postal service debt to the treasury. Airlines have to reduce their carbon footprint 50% by 2050. Cash-for-clunkers program for older aircraft. $1 billion for Obamaphones. $15/hr minimum wage. Absentee voting without
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Anything with more than 10 people should be discouraged even if there are no cases in your area. It just takes one person to spread it and then suddenly you've got a case in your country and the surrounding 5 as well. Rural counties are NOT immune, and are at some of the highest risk of having an overloaded healthcare system if there is an outbreak.
My mom in a rural county grumbled about the "stupid governor" in California after his notice, at which point I checked the map and her county already has sever
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My county and the surrounding 5 counties have zero cases.
Zero KNOWN cases. Likely a number of undetected cases. And if there aren't now, there will be soon as people travel from the rest of the US where rates are growing exponentially and quickly.
What you're proposing is exactly how the virus spread all the way from China to Italy to France to the US. At every stage people said "we don't have an outbreak here, so we can go about life as normal and just ignore the virus". That allowed the virus to grow under their noses, turning a minor problem into a major proble
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Your theory doesn't explain the actions of Republican governors [usnews.com] taking the same actions, now does it? Governors for Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, and West Virginia [cnn.com] are what, conspiring against Trump?
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Why exactly should this be banned, unless hurting the economy is the goal?
I asked you this in another thread, and your response was essentially to pick nits. I'll ask again, and remove any hyperbole and see if I get a straight answer:
Why? Who benefits? Why is EVERYONE lined up to crash EVERY economy on earth? What's the endgame?
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I don't know what other thread you're referring to, but:
Flailing panicked attempts to look like you're doing something. As with most bad rushed political decisions.
As an example: I have some family in the US, in the Houston area. Shortly after New Orleans was devastated by Katrina, Rita formed in the Gulf of Mexico, a real monster - and was aimed at Houston. People freaked out. The government freaked out, and ordered an evacuation. Traffic jammed up all the way to Dallas. Cars broke down in the h
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Because in Rei's universe, everyone has been tested and there are infinite resources for managing them.
In the real world [twitter.com], even Republicans disagree with that nonsense.
You've not been elected. You have no medical or public health experience [twitter.com]. We're
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I advocate for what my own government, following the advice of a team of epidemiologists, has been doing to great success. But don't let that distract you from a nice ad hominem.
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Sure you are. I totally believe your non-specific, unverifiable claim. So many other governments, following the advice of teams of epidemiologists, are wrong [cnn.com]. But in Reitopia, they agree with you.
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I guess Iceland is fictional. We're FYI following a similar route to South Korea, which has gotten widespread praise for its handling of the disease.
But again, by all means ignore countries that have actually done well against the disease and insist that the only viable route is those countries that have done poorly against the disease. Because that totally makes sense.
Don't believe life is carrying on in Iceland? Here's the view out of the window of a building I just stopped by: link [ibb.co]. Or check out traff [vegagerdin.is]
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So isolated that it may as well be, yes. There's a reason that it's a meme in Plague, Inc.
South Korea [reuters.com], Taiwan [mynorthwest.com], and and even Singapore [straitstimes.com] have been or are doing the same thing as the rest of us.
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Nice try. Not a single one of those links talks about shutting down businesses. They're all about public events. Iceland, too, shut down public events. That's not even remotely the same thing. Since this was a debate about lockdowns involving closing of all "nonsessential businesses", and you provided three articles, not a single one of them supporting your premise, there's only one word that could describe that, and that word is "fail".
Also, I love how your first article was nearly a month old. ;) Aw
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To give a couple examples of the sort of businesses that have had to close in Iceland - salons. Driving instructors. Recently, pools (they were hoping they would be able to keep them open, but it was determined that they couldn't reduce the risk sufficiently). Many other businesses fall into a category where they can stay open but have had to implement significant changes. Restaurants. Movie theatres. Small shops. Etc. They face significant limits on capacity and spacing of customers. For most busine
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Just to preempt this:
I fully expect you to deliberately misinterpret this as meaning "any businesses" instead of "all businesses" / "all nonessential businesses" (even though I explicitly wrote "Only businesses which are fundamentally incompatible with disease transmission controls are closed."), so I'm going to preemptively call you out on this one.
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Wrong [newyorker.com] When you lock down entire cities, you shut down businesses too.
Really? If countries locked down entire cities a month ago that doesn't count? I love how you're avoiding the entire China issue amongst all this. You
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And preemptively fail. The residents of Daegu surely send you a hearty "Fuck off."
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I literally quoted a prominent South Korean economist. The levels of nonsense you'll go to....
Haha, I see you've graduated from "1 month old" to "much of a month old" ;) And once again, your article does not claim what you said it does. Do you even read these things before you post them? Where exactly did you think it said in there "South Korea shut down all businesses" or "South Korea shut down all businesses that some politician declared nonessential"?
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You keep harping on this "month old" thing as if it makes one bit of difference. You're arguing that there was no shut down, right?
I've got a wealth of media [go.com] that I can keep citing until you find whatever magic words you need besides "quarantine," "closed," and "special management zone."
Thanks to your selective editing, I can confidently say
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It was his last reply [slashdot.org] to your last spiel on this subject [slashdot.org] from Saturday.
If you lack the competence to figure that out in less than a couple of minutes, then why in the hell do you consider yourself competent to opine on how to manage an epidemic?
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That is the goal. Your problem is that you're putting way too much emphasis on the first part, and not nearly enough on the second. You're not qualified to make that judgment, we haven't elected you to make that judgment, and your apparent "plan" simply amounts to an unmanageable free-for-all of self-judged risk of disease transmission.
We're not doing it. The medical experts and elected politician
You can say "killing". (Score:1)
We can handle reality.
No need to accelerate the euphemism threadmill. I don't want to hear "... made the mice go home" or "bid farewell to the mice" or "put the mice to bed with a cushion" in a decade.
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Yes this is killing however euthanasia means killing in a humane way. Should I now expect you to complain about me using the word humane?
NOOOOOO! (Score:2)
Not the heckin' mouserinos!
What are we going to do tonight Brain? (Score:3)
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Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?
I think so Brain. We can cut brassieres in half ot make face masks!
True, but where will we find them in mouse size?
Narf!
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lab rats (Score:1)
Mmmm (Score:2)
"I was staring at my mice one by one and deciding who lives and who dies," says one researcher. "It was really rough."
Don't they have any cats to do those decisions?
Why not just let them go ? (Score:2)
For those who aren't injected with crazyjuice_#21a or have been subjected to some frankenstein level experiment, why not just let them go ?
I see zero reason to euthanize the control animals at the very least.
In a related question, can someone explain to me why the World is freaking out about Covid-19 ?
It seems to be a touch overkill if you compare numbers to the seasonal flu.
( I'm not calling Covid a hoax or anything, but the published numbers vs the level of panic seems way beyond expectations to me )
Going
I hope we don't lose too many "model" lines. (Score:2)
I hope we don't end up losing too many (any, really) specially bread or gene engineered lines of mice that serve as models for disease processes for which we don't have decent treatments and are researching.
It's bad enough that we're going to lose the progress on a lot of research - pausing for months while COVID-19 is resolved, or having to start a project over. And we'll lose medical RESEARCHERS, which is not just personal and family disaster but also one for all of humanity, or at least the subset that
From the Front Seat of the Car (Score:1)
Posting AC for obvious reasons.
I work in an animal facility in the USA for one of the big Pharmas. I'm here right now 1200+ Mice are 1 floor down from me. 400 rats, some rabbits, etc... I'm in one of the "locked down" states. We're still at work.
We've had a joke for years that if the building went up in flames, they'd let same the animals and leave the people. It was a joke because it's true.
We've had people locked-in this building for a week at a time during a major snowstorm. We had a crew in here for 5