Comments on: “Mus homunculus” in the lab?

By: Vanessa Rousso

Vanessa Rousso — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:15:30 +0000

Hey Maurice, obviously this is for the benefit of humans, who has not understood that? There is this expression “the end justifies the means”, and this is the issue. Animals are living creatures too, with thoughts and pain, especially the more intelligent ones. Who gave you the right to torture them for your own benefit?

By: Maurice

Maurice — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:57:06 +0000

Well, I guess there would always be opposition no matter what animal is used for experiments… but what we need to understand is that ultimately all this is done for the benefit of humans, our benefit!

By: Joe Cada

Joe Cada — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:29:31 +0000

As a matter of fact they used to use monkeys a lot a few decades ago, but animal protection groups (not evolutionists) protested hard and now it is forbidden except for rare experimentations.

By: Custom Silicone Wristbands

Custom Silicone Wristbands — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:03:17 +0000

Good point Tom. Could you imagine the uproar if we started using monkeys for testing purposes like we do with mice? Evolutionists would go nuts if we experimented on their family tree.

By: Tom Dwan

Tom Dwan — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:02:47 +0000

Monkeys are closer to human beings, but far more expensive to maintain in labs, plus animal rights groups contest their usage for testing. So for mass testing at a first stage, other mammals are used such as mice, but with imperfect results.

By: Ocala Web Design

Ocala Web Design — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:08:45 +0000

Many years ago I worked at NYU and had a similar discussion with one of the professors. He stated the reasoning for experimenting on mice was because of similar genetics to humans and mice were abundant and easily expendable.

By: Kenny

Kenny — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:50:15 +0000

Depending upon the donor cell isolates and the murine hosts chosen, these mice may be constructed to develop a largely humanized white matter, including human glial progenitors, oligodendrocytes and myelin, or rather may be established to achieve a gray matter comprised largely of human astrocytes. By allowing the effects of given pathogens on human brain cell populations to be assessed in the live adult brain, these models may prove uniquely valuable in evaluating the in vivo biology and treatment of human neurotrophic and gliotrophic viruses.

By: Humans as models of human disease | Mystery Rays from Outer Space

Humans as models of human disease | Mystery Rays from Outer Space — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:02:13 +0000

[...] and ill people and large-scale informatics as part of the analysis.2 (He also comments on the “humanized” mouse approach that I mentioned briefly the other [...]

By: bayman

bayman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:38:10 +0000

I think much can be learned from humanized models. But they’re far from perfect.

I think it’s important to maximize the diversity of models under study. Different mouse strains are a good start. Different mammals, vertebrates etc…all sorts of species need to be used. Ideally only a few labs should be working in the same species. I think this would be both feasible and highly informative in this “post-genomic” age.

You can’t put your results into proper biological context if you’re only working in one type of species. With greater numbers and more diverse model species, our power to make biological inferences across phylogeny grows exponentially. Only then can you really understand which aspects of your model species are relevant to a particular other species (ie human).

The species are out there in the thousands, just waiting for us. Each new one is a goldmine of untapped, novel biology…

By: DVD Movie Club

DVD Movie Club — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:41:11 +0000

I’m no expert in the history of laboratory pathology, but why are mice used in the first place as test subjects? Is it because they are cheap, or because they bare some genetic similarity to humans? Is it a combination of both, or other factors?