Mice, Men, and Medicine
The U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) currently offers over 6,000 genetic strains of laboratory mice, and research labs all over the United States poke, prod, and generally harass the poor creatures, in hopes of discovering ways to improve the lives of humans. In doing so, they have found ways to cure a plethora of ills in mice, including cancer, Sickle Cell Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Type I Diabetes, early-stage Alzheimer’s Disease, baldness, and more. Some lab mice can even regenerate lost limbs and organs.
Due to the problems in translating these treatments into safe, reliable medicine for people, there is a gap of many years between finding a cure for mice and duplicating that cure in humans. Sometimes, given differences in physiology, the treatment is simply not compatible with humans.
The answer? I suggest we use gene therapy to transform all humans into half-man-half-mouse, disease-thwarting, regenerating mutants. It seems the most direct route to success. Plus, cheese is damn tasty.
Article on SEED magazine website (includes links)
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I am glad you posted this. I know there is a lot of animal testing done that is completely unnecessary; especially for personal and household products. http://www.navs.org is a good source of information.
Additionally, as the article points out, curing these deseases in mice is so close to moot when applied to humans that it is a waste of time, money and of course, torturing animals. Oh, the Time and Money thing, well these people would not be able to do much more without Time (wasted) or Money and so they keep the animals around so they can get Government Grants to run their facilities and keep their jobs.