Scientists breed world’s first mentally ill mouse
Scientists breed world’s first mentally ill mouse
July 29, 2007
Jonathan Leake Science Editor
SCIENTISTS have created the world’s first schizophrenic mice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the illness.
It is believed to be the first time an animal has been genetically engineered to have a mental illness. Until now they have been bred only for research into physical conditions such as heart disease. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments using a limitless supply of laboratory animals.
Animal rights campaigners have condemned the research, saying that it is morally repugnant to create an animal doomed to mental suffering.
The mice were created by modifying their DNA to mimic a mutant gene first found in a Scottish family with a high incidence of schizophrenia, which affects about one in every 100 people. The mice’s brains were found to have features similar to those of humans with schizophrenia, such as depression and hyperactivity.
“These mutant mice may provide an important new tool for further study of the combinations of factors that underlie mental illnesses like schizophrenia and mood disorders,” said Takatoshi Hikida, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a leading researcher.
The egg cells of mice were genetically modified by inserting a gene associated with schizophrenia into their DNA. The eggs were fertilised and grown into viable baby mice using surrogate mothers.
Animal Aid, a campaign group, said rodents were not a reliable way of modelling human disease.
* Have your say
It's all very well finding risk genes in illness or even character traits, but it is our behaviour that primarily makes us ill, lack of exercise, sexual misconduct and poor diet are easily understood to be factors in physical and mental illness.
It almost seems as though we would like to find treatments, or even engineer ourselves to become resistant to our own paucity of humanity, correcting natural "defects", to allow ourselves to smoke cannabis in front of the TV!
Mutant genes allowing schizophrenia or physical illness aren't defects. They are things we should work around, by lifestyle and selecting a healthy partner, who has some integrity, and who rides a bicycle, for instance.
I say this: clone David Cameron!
Keith Murray, Brighton, UK
Our current longer lifespan is not because of animal-testing (we don't go to the vet to treat our illnesses because a cat or mouse is not a human being and there are great many scientists who assert that vivisection presents fallacious results). We live longer lives because we have better access to food, shelter, treatment of injuries such as broken bones and rotting teeth. We live a more hygienic lifestyle which means less women die in childbirth, and people no longer throw sewerage and refuse into the streets to rot as we did. We now also make provisions for the disabled and aging citizens (rather than leaving them out in the wilderness to die as was done in earlier times). There are many reasons why humans live longer, but animal-testing is not the reason. Animal testing is big business, and definitely erroneous. Only clinicial trials in humans reveal the answers on which we can rely. (When a mouse is given a drug, it cannot tell you if it has a headache or feels nauseous.)
S, Birsbane, Australia
Some questions for those who seem to be of the view that "if it takes 100 mice fatalities to cure one human, then its worth it."
How far are you prepared to take this logic? Are you willing to accept that we perhaps genetically engineer one person condemned to misery by by their chromosomes if it will cure 100 human beings?
"Ah" you say "that's different." Why? Because humans have souls and mice don't? I don't see why anyone would believe that.
It is true that human beings have a more sophisticated level of consciousness, of course. But anyone who thinks that mice have completely no level of consciousness is simply foolish and dogmatic. Perhaps, then, we must accept that even a lowly mouse's limited awareness gives it a certain set of rights.
"But" you say, "what rights exactly?" Yes, well... now the ethics of this situation start to seem a little more subtle and interesting, a little less black and white than they initially did, don't they?
http://tinyurl.com/2kk6k2
July 29, 2007
Jonathan Leake Science Editor
SCIENTISTS have created the world’s first schizophrenic mice in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the illness.
It is believed to be the first time an animal has been genetically engineered to have a mental illness. Until now they have been bred only for research into physical conditions such as heart disease. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments using a limitless supply of laboratory animals.
Animal rights campaigners have condemned the research, saying that it is morally repugnant to create an animal doomed to mental suffering.
The mice were created by modifying their DNA to mimic a mutant gene first found in a Scottish family with a high incidence of schizophrenia, which affects about one in every 100 people. The mice’s brains were found to have features similar to those of humans with schizophrenia, such as depression and hyperactivity.
“These mutant mice may provide an important new tool for further study of the combinations of factors that underlie mental illnesses like schizophrenia and mood disorders,” said Takatoshi Hikida, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a leading researcher.
The egg cells of mice were genetically modified by inserting a gene associated with schizophrenia into their DNA. The eggs were fertilised and grown into viable baby mice using surrogate mothers.
Animal Aid, a campaign group, said rodents were not a reliable way of modelling human disease.
* Have your say
It's all very well finding risk genes in illness or even character traits, but it is our behaviour that primarily makes us ill, lack of exercise, sexual misconduct and poor diet are easily understood to be factors in physical and mental illness.
It almost seems as though we would like to find treatments, or even engineer ourselves to become resistant to our own paucity of humanity, correcting natural "defects", to allow ourselves to smoke cannabis in front of the TV!
Mutant genes allowing schizophrenia or physical illness aren't defects. They are things we should work around, by lifestyle and selecting a healthy partner, who has some integrity, and who rides a bicycle, for instance.
I say this: clone David Cameron!
Keith Murray, Brighton, UK
Our current longer lifespan is not because of animal-testing (we don't go to the vet to treat our illnesses because a cat or mouse is not a human being and there are great many scientists who assert that vivisection presents fallacious results). We live longer lives because we have better access to food, shelter, treatment of injuries such as broken bones and rotting teeth. We live a more hygienic lifestyle which means less women die in childbirth, and people no longer throw sewerage and refuse into the streets to rot as we did. We now also make provisions for the disabled and aging citizens (rather than leaving them out in the wilderness to die as was done in earlier times). There are many reasons why humans live longer, but animal-testing is not the reason. Animal testing is big business, and definitely erroneous. Only clinicial trials in humans reveal the answers on which we can rely. (When a mouse is given a drug, it cannot tell you if it has a headache or feels nauseous.)
S, Birsbane, Australia
Some questions for those who seem to be of the view that "if it takes 100 mice fatalities to cure one human, then its worth it."
How far are you prepared to take this logic? Are you willing to accept that we perhaps genetically engineer one person condemned to misery by by their chromosomes if it will cure 100 human beings?
"Ah" you say "that's different." Why? Because humans have souls and mice don't? I don't see why anyone would believe that.
It is true that human beings have a more sophisticated level of consciousness, of course. But anyone who thinks that mice have completely no level of consciousness is simply foolish and dogmatic. Perhaps, then, we must accept that even a lowly mouse's limited awareness gives it a certain set of rights.
"But" you say, "what rights exactly?" Yes, well... now the ethics of this situation start to seem a little more subtle and interesting, a little less black and white than they initially did, don't they?
http://tinyurl.com/2kk6k2
bin66 - 1. Aug, 00:20
