Rats Taking Over from Mice in Labs

I recently fostered the sweetest little rat and I currently have two mice. Therefore, this Boston Globe article saddens me on both levels. And, of course, our old friend, Charles River Laboratories, will be a major supplier of lab rats.

Scientific advances over the last three years have now made it feasible to easily tinker with rat genes, creating the possibility of far better models of certain human diseases, and potentially shortening the time it takes to develop medications...

While both rats and mice have similarities to humans, rats win out in key areas.

Their blood system is much more similar, with a heart that beats four times faster than a person’s, instead of the mouse’s six times faster. Rat brains are far more complex than mouse brains, making them more likely to exhibit the behaviors of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, and autism, among other disorders. Their liver enzymes are more similar so they metabolize drugs more like people do.

Rats are also simply larger, as are their cancerous tumors, making them easier to study and to operate on.

But these innovations won’t mean the end of the lab mouse.

“To what degree the rat will replace the mouse remains to be seen,’’ said Iva S. Morse, corporate vice president for research model services at Charles River Laboratories, a Wilmington company that started by breeding lab rats in 1947 and has become a major supplier of rodents for research.

Canadian Council Says Mouse Pain Study Was Ethical

I understand that, per the researcher's words, you have to create pain to study pain, but was this study really necessary? There's just something that sits in my gut and says this is wrong...

From CBC News...

The research in question took place over many years and involved inducing various degrees of pain in mice using methods such as dipping their tails in hot water or injecting them with mustard oil or vinegar. The faces of the mice were then photographed to understand how they express pain.

"No one likes putting animals in pain," said Mogil, who holds a Canada research chair in the genetics of pain. But he said in the case, the pain was necessary and scientifically justified.

....However, Leslie Norins, the publisher of the newsletter that led to the council's investigation, questioned Mogil's research methods.

"Mice were purposefully subjected to intense pain without anesthesia," said Norins. "In our reading of the national guidelines, this came very close to a violation.

A Trip to an Animal Lab

Well, kind of. It wasn't a full-fledged tour, but disturbing nonetheless.

I can't really talk about what I do except that I work in government. In a brief tour of a particular biotech research company, I was taken to the animal lab. They did not experiment on primates (I asked!), but did experiment on mice and guinea pigs. Interesting that many of the grants this place gets specifically say they can't experiment on any domesticated animals (cats and dogs I guess.).

Anyway, I couldn't enter the actual rooms where the animals were kept because I would have had to wear a bio-hazard suit. But I did get to walk around the floor. It was a rather grim place. There was a poster in the lunch room with four cute animals (a dog, cat, rabbit and something else.) It reminded me of an adoption poster at the animal shelter. But when I got closer, I read, "Animal research opens minds." It was a jarring moment. This adorable poster that draws you in to the sweet faces of these animals basically proclaims that it is a good thing to use their bodies for medical research, which almost always leads to pain and death. It was an incongruous message.

Then, heading out, I noticed three little knitted mice. My tour guide was a little uncomfortable and said, "Yeah, that's a little morbid. One of the employees' moms knitted those."

One knitted mouse had a little sign that said, "I want my mommy."

The other had a sign that said, "RIP."

Now I'm way more morbid than most people in my tastes and sense of humor, but even I found this to be very disturbing. It certainly doesn't fill me with confidence in these people's skills in compassion and humane care.

Weird, weird, weird. Just thinking about it makes me crave a shower.

Two Examples of Mice Experiments - Valid or Not?

I came across these stories about two different medical experiments using mice.

In this experiment, scientists tested whether lighting can cause depression. They used different lighting situations to see how they affect mice moods. One of the conclusions? That children who watch television late at night could be “more likely to develop depression."

I'm not convinced that I as a taxpayer would approve funding of this project. Aren't there better things to research? You would need to be watching television late at night regularly in order for the lighting to have an impact. Children shouldn't be regularly watching television late at night for many reasons other than depression. Like they should be sleeping! Are parents who are not paying attention to their kids suddenly going to send them to bed because they might get depressed? Plus, are mice comparable to kids (although I would prefer mice subjects to primates who are so much more sensitive)?

Whether intentionally or not, the title of the article catches the frivolity of the research...."Don't let your mouse watch TV."

Please.

Here's another experiment using mice to determine whether stress and chemicals in plastic is leading to messed up male genitals and, therefore, infertility. The mice are exposed to certain chemicals to see the impacts. But see the qualifications in the article....

....The animal research has offered one explanation for the rising number of babies born with these conditions. However, it involved exposing rats to chemicals at levels that humans are usually not exposed to. This means the conclusions should be treated with caution.

....As this study was mainly about the effect of high doses of a chemical called phthalates on the number of rats born with undescended testicles, it is premature to report that stress has a part to play in reducing fertility in men.

So, why put the animals through this if it's not even a reflective experiment. Sounds like they did it because they could and who cares if you destroy a few carcasses for the hell of it.