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basetop

The neverending mouse studies that rarely apply for humans.

"Misleading mouse studies waste medical resources"

https://www.nature.com/news/misleading-mouse-studies-waste-m...

"Why animal studies are often poor predictors of human reactions to exposure"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746847/

"Drugs That Work In Mice Often Fail When Tried In People"

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/04/10/5227754...

Not sure what the answer is to human medical testing and research since experimenting on humans is unethical. But mice shouldn't stand in for humans for human research since mice and humans are very different. I wonder how scientists in the future will look upon using mice for human medical research.

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They will probably think it's crude and ineffective, but it's the best they had at the time, and at least they weren't testing on humans ( at least cruel and/or unnecessary unimportant testing. The real travesty here is sensationalized headline and mis-directed reporting as a relevant correlation for humans. - It's all about the click/eyes, with no real substance for the reader

My current favourite twitter account is https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice

Yes, that's a great way of staying on the cutting edge of basic science in mammals.

Loads of studies could be ethically performed with humans but it's more expensive to get test subjects. With mice you get a bunch of them and control what they do throughout their whole day without having to pay them anything.

As you said, not all studies can be done on humans, and some that could would be cost-prohibitive. My hope is that the ability to "print" organs will give us some increased ability, though we would not be able to see impacts on the entire body. Something that has positive effects on one's heart is no good if it also makes one's head explode.

There's still the concern of ethics with individual organs, though. How much of a person can you get without it becoming one? Is the idea of a "soul" reality? Tough questions.

For now, mouse studies are imperfect but necessary. Like it or not, they may allow research that is not feasible on humans in terms of safety or cost. We probably need to continue them, albeit taking them with a grain of salt. In mice is worth something, mostly getting the next set of research funded.

The refrain of "but this was done in mice" is the most predictable and least useful feedback you can give someone about their scientific results.

Instead of thinking of the problem, let's start thinking of solutions. For example, can we genetically humanize mice or other mammalian models to more closely resemble human?

Presumably you are not suggesting experimenting on humans to answer basic science questions?

Is it ethical genetically humanize mice?

Why not? Is it ethical to breed dogs for a particular trait? At least in this case it's done to further knowledge.

Pigs are already being genetically humanized in order to enable pig to human organ transplant:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5287079/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/09/scientists-grow-bull...

What if alien abduction is just the government conducting human experiments in a way that no one will believe and does not cause people to think they are violating ethics?

Food and health, a lot of totally contradicting studies.

Moreover, maybe mice shouldn't stand in for humans because it might just be as unethical to experiment on then as it would be experimenting on humans.

It's absolutely idiotic. There's no scientific basis for testing these kinds of stuff on animals yet somehow it is still being done.

Also a nice source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3902221/

Let's not get carried away. There is plenty of scientific basis for testing on other mammals.

Hell, most of our knowledge of genetics comes from work done on fruit flies. Many key immune pathways like TLR (Toll-Like Receptors) would have come to our attention later if it wasn't for research in fruit flies. Obviously though, we have lots more in common with mice than with flies. Hence, it's worth it.

The problem you're describing has more to do with journalists over-hyping scientific results than the utility of said results.

Nope. It's a problem where accuracy is ridiculous, recall and precision too. Big discoveries, never on non-human animal models.

Nope.

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