Mice Created With Human Brain Cells

pin_gween writes "Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice in an effort to create realistic models of disorders like Parkinson's Disease. Although mice are 97.5 percent genetically identical to humans and it sounds like a large number, 100,000 only represents 0.1% of the number of cells in mice brains. FTA: 'It's true that there is a huge amount of similarity, but the differences are huge,' Snyder said. 'You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body. [...] Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor." 'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

Comments

NARF!

[Noctopus]

I for one welcome our new Pinky and the Brain overlords. NARF!

Re:NARF!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse" or flies?

"Help me! Help me!"

Re:NARF!

[mahju]

through my extensive research
I came up with this
We've got great news for you, then! Industry sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have let us know that Warner Home Video has both of these animated series on their radar screen for a possible mid-2006 DVD release! Look for a multi-disc set for each show, with around two dozen episodes per box.

Re:NARF!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love you man!

Re:NARF!

[yurnotsoeviltwin]

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I think so Brain, but I really don't enjoy diet soda very much.

No Pinky! Tonight, we're going to steal the humans' brain cells - AND TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!

42

[Anonymous Coward]

The mice were furious.

Re:42

[strider44]

The average mouse IQ lowered by about 5 points.

Re:42

[AndroidCat]

And you know this because you had mice running tests in mazes? Suddenly running down the wrong way, eating the wrong bit of cheese... Such subtlety, one has to admire it.

Re:42

[metlin]

The question then is, do they believe in Intelligent Design? ;)

(and more importantly, would that make us Gods, ummm?)

Re:42

[Bertie]

Nah. Even they can see through that.

Re:42

[AndroidCat]

You were expecting it.

Re:42

[banuk]

only if they used Pres Bush's brain cells

Re:42

[Hognoxious]

What, both of them?

Re:42

[zCyl]

Bush was only listening to the one on the right side anyway.

what are we going to do tonight brain...

[know1]

...same thing we do every night pinky....get experimented on barberously!

Re:what are we going to do tonight brain...

[ozmanjusri]

get experimented on barberously!

They gave you a bad haircut? The bastards!

Re:what are we going to do tonight brain...

[PakProtector]

get experimented on barberously!

They gave you a bad haircut? The bastards!

Seriously! They shaved their tails bald!

Re:what are we going to do tonight brain...

[EtherealStrife]

Actually, there is great potential in this research. In parts of the world where calcium is scarce, something like 1 in 5 people develop Parkinson's or Lou Gehrig's disease. Over the generations, some of these people have developed immunities (or atleast, high tolerances), and now suffer little to no brain damage even while being "carriers". If I had Parkinson's disease I sure as hell wouldn't think twice over a few hundred / thousand rats dying for me.

97.5% genetically identical

[rhade]

so is all this 97.5% like generic organ, dna stuff? i dont see the similarities between humans and mice

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[kfg]

so is all this 97.5% like generic organ, dna stuff?

You're about 50% banana.

i dont see the similarities between humans and mice

You obviously haven't even looked at a banana very closely, let alone a mouse. About the only difference a lifeform from the proverbial Mars would see between a human and a mouse would be scale. We are virtually identical to mice in every detail but stature.

If you want learn human anatomy, disect a chicken, and a chicken isn't even a mammal.

KFG

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[el americano]

If you want learn human anatomy, disect a chicken...

Comments like this explain why KFC kicked KFG's ass in fast food poultry.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[grimJester]

They are mammals. Most of their bodies work the same as ours although they are on different scales. They have muscle tissue, brain tissue, eyes, a skeleton etc. that work the same way ours do. They are similar enough to us that many/most of the same drugs that work on us work on them. Apart from size and shape there are no major differences.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[oudzeeman]

dna that encodes protien synthesis is largely the same, although obviously arranged differently in the chromosomes. that 97.5 match figure is spread all through the genome - a gene that encodes the same thing in mice and man could be located at entirely different positions.

The company I work for http://www.jax.org/ maintains over 2,000 straings of laboratory mice for sale to other research institutions (we do genetics research and are designated a national cancer center, the 69 million dollar a year mouse business all started by selling surplus mice to other researchers, now it's a large part of the company and there has been discussion about spinning it off as a for-profit subsidiary. Right now, since all the surplus funds from the mouse business go directly towards supporting the research, we enjoy a tax-free status). We have models for diabetes, glaucoma, aids, certain cancers, adult onset obesity, etc. In experiments that involve drug testing, the only real difference (after you factor in mass differences) between mice and humans is how fast the mice metabolize the drugs.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[thelonestranger]

They are similar enough to us that many/most of the same drugs that work on us work on them. It's true..I came home last night to find that some mice had gotten into my stash and were sat around giggling and eating nachos.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[mcvos]

We are virtually identical to mice in every detail but stature.

We also have some extra bits in our brain that seem to make a lot of difference.

In fact, those differences in our brains are probably the reason why they need to put human brain cells in mice in order to study Parkinson.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[lelkes]

And bananas are 50% genetically identical to humans. Really.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[kfg]

As there is a lot of difference between two cars with different systems of electronic fuel injection.

The similarities, however, still dominate.

Compare a car to, say, a violin, for instance.

Come to think of it, you're very different from a car, but actually related to the violin.

You're much, much closer to a mouse than to a violin. A mouse does have a brain.

I assume you do as well. Perhaps I am mistaken.

KFG

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[Anonymous Coward]

It should also be noted that 97.5% is of coding dna (which is itself a small percentage); it's likely the junk dna is quite different for the most part between diverse species.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[BillyWitchDoctor.com]

BillyWitchDoctor.com feel...more comfortable with chicken.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[OldManAndTheC]

We are virtually identical to mice in every detail but stature.

Well I don't know about you, but speaking for myself, I find significant differences:

• A mouse cannot use tools. I can use tools, or at least I could, if I could ever find my toolbox.
• A mouse cannot do the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. I can, except the Sunday one - that one's pretty hard.
• Mice love cheese. I don't - it really f*cks me up.

Of course, there are also similarities:

• We are both covered with soft, downy fur.
• We are both thicker around the waist than the shoulders.
• We both scurry away in fear at the least sign of danger.
• We both get cancer if we consume 10,000 servings of NutraSweet.

You're about 50% banana.

I like to think of myself as mostly fruitcake.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[s20451]

Mice don't really love cheese. If you're baiting a trap, it is much better to use peanut butter.

The tools/crossword puzzle thing comes down to opposable thumbs. Pretty hard to do the crossword when you can't hold a pen, or when nobody can hold a hammer to build the headquarters of the New York Times.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[ajnsue]

DNA is composed largely of bulky templates for how to make specific proteins. It also contains very detailed and elegant instructions on the expression of those proteins. The minor changes in those instructions make major differences in the end product.
A battleship and a toaster contain pretty much 95% of the same materials list - metals, plastics and such. But the instructions how much and how to assemble those materials make the difference.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it interesting no one has questioned this statistic more fully. Considering that it was widely publizied that chimpanzees proved only to be 95.9 (including insertion/deletion) identical, that the 97.5% for a mouse seems a bit inaccurate. Looking, I found only one place so far, http://www.llnl.gov/str/Stubbs.html that mentioned the comparitive percentage. It being 85%. This may be wrong, but a citing of the above statistic used in the article would have been nice.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[rocketman74]

The 97.5% number, as it reads in the newspaper article, is wrong. If you compare the complete DNA sequence of mouse to human, the correct number is around 70%.

Even if you restrict yourself to the genes shared between mouse and human, the DNA sequences are not 97.5% identical. I don't remember the number off the top of my head, but it's somewhere closer to 90%.

Note that this 97.5% number is not in the scientific article -- I double checked on the website. It looks like a number that the newspaper guy pulled out of a hat, probably from some other book or study he'd read.

My guess is that 97.5% refers to some other, much more specialized calculation, e.g. the percent identity at the protein level of genes that have clear counterparts in mouse or human, or perhaps to the fraction of known genes in human that have a counterpart in mouse.

In any case, the newspaper writer screwed up. As it's written, the 97.5% identity statement is very misleading.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[Anonymous Coward]

WHOOSH -- right over your head. You get a -1 Asperger's syndrome. The OP was making a joke, moron.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Idiot! It should be +100 Asperger's syndrome.

News for Nerds. Stuff that matters, and all that.

"Pardon the crudity of this model. I've only had a short while to work on it."

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[jc42]

If you want learn human anatomy, disect a chicken, and a chicken isn't even a mammal.

Actually, you'd be a lot better off disecting a mouse. Chickens do have some similarities to humans, but they are more useful in physiology classes as an example of divergent evolution. The organs aren't always the same, and even when homologous, they often have different functions.

You can see lots of examples by just looking at the digestive system. Birds use their beaks to roughly chop their food, while mammals do this with their incisor teeth. These are positioned similarly, but they aren't homologous structures.

Then birds send the chopped food to their crop, an organ that doesn't exist in humans. Squirrels have analogous cheek pouches, but those are yet another structure that's missing in humans.

We use our stomach for storage, but it's also the first digestive organ. The equivalent organ in birds is the gizzard, which is mostly for fine grinding of food. This is often augmented by swallowed pebbles, which serve the same grinding function as our molar teeth. In this case, both position and function are different.

In birds, the first actual chemical digestion occurs in the intestine, while in mammals digestion has already started in the stomach.

So in this one subsystem, avian and mammalian organs and functions don't much line up very well. Overall, there are obvious similarities, true, but neither is very useful in understanding the other in any depth.

For an even more extreme counter-example, take a look at bird and mammal lungs. They aren't even topologically similar. Birds have flow-through lungs, with air and blood passing through in opposite directions, to make a counter-current gas exchanger. And birds' lungs have a fixed size, with the air flow produced by muscles around the air sacs, organs entirely missing in mammals.

Nope; a chicken isn't a very good classroom example if you want to teach human anatomy. Better stick with the mice or rats.

But avian physiology is a fun example when debating creationists. Almost as much fun as squid anatomy. ;-)

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[susano_otter]

Riiight. It all comes down to opposable thumbs.

I mean, several species of Ape have opposable thumbs, and the last time I checked about the only tool they've mastered is the ant-scraping twig.

I'm sure that will totally impress the Space Aliens, when they arrive.

"Well, we have a couple technology-oriented species to choose from, on this world."

"Really? Have you figured out which one is worth negotiating with?"

"It's difficult to determine. You see, they both have opposable thumbs, which they have each used to devise clever tools. One species has devised internal combustion engines, heavier-than-air flight, electromagnetic forcefields (used mainly for information transfer), and rudimentary artificial biological manipulation."

"That sounds promising. What about the other species?"

"Well, the other species has devised a method of using twigs to scrape the insides of insect hives, harvesting the hive-creatures as food."

"Ooh. I see what you mean. That is a tough decision. What about these aquatic-type species? I see they have a richly artistic culture, based on beautifully poetic songs."

"True, but they don't have opposable thumbs. As you know, it all comes down to opposable thumbs."

"Good point. Shall we negotiate with the hairless apes, or the hairy ones?"

"I admit I'm stumped. If it's all right with you, let's just flip a coin."

Because of course it's all in the thumbs. The differences between rat and human brains are totally irrelevant.

I mean, you can't even flip a coin without opposable thumbs.

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[kfg]

You are speaking primarily of physiology. I spoke of anatomy.

Even so the chiken's stomach is still recognizbly a stomach and its liver a liver. We have the same number of limbs, located on the skeleton similarly, distinct heads, noses, eyes, etc.

but they are more useful in physiology classes as an example of divergent evolution.

I believe not enough time is spent in classes looking at examples of similarities. The old "I'm no monkey" syndrome still persists. Which is silly. Of course you're not a monkey. Your ancestors were lemur type thingies and you are an ape.

Although you had ancestors very much like mice as well. And bacterium.

Almost as much fun as squid anatomy

Yeah, I almost brought up squid, in fact.

KFG

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[oc255]

Baboons can use hammers and chains for weapons. Gorillas can sign simple phrases and mean it. Man clearly came from monkeys and you'd likely cut off your feet than cut off your hands.

Thumbs are where its at. Whale music is certainly an interesting point. I'd like to know more about how it relates to intelligence and capability and not just why it's slow, low and pretty to us humans. Slow is pretty to us because it's relaxing because we're stressed?

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[Ironballs]

There's a part of my body which looks like a banana. A large banana

Re:97.5% genetically identical

[susano_otter]

Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that baboons are violent creatures with an almost human-like aptitude for using whatever tool is at hand to deliver savage beatings in a spontaneous and effective manner.

But please note that baboons have not used their opposable thumbs (nor their clearly not-quite-human-enough brains) to devise advanced-technology hammers of their own, nor chains of any kind. Nor have they shown any interest in or ability to use those hammers to construct low-income housing for less well-off baboons. There's also a distinct lack of baboons using chains in bicycle drivetrains, internal combustion engine timing mechanisms, or even in the service of powerful machine guns (which you'd think that baboons would be pretty interested in).

Things like modern hammers and linked chains of metal loops are human-devised tools, not baboon-devised tools. The fact that baboons have figured out how to use them for the most primitive of applications--bashing things--doesn't do much to convince me of their smartitude and Alien-impressing tool-using capabilities. Wake me up when baboons use their thumbs to get properly into the Stone Age.

well i think

[know1]

" 'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

it's the thin end of the wedge. maybe this wasn't human enough...and nor will the next infinitessimally small step...but one day it will be too far and we won't have even realised

Re:well i think

[ozmanjusri]

but one day it will be too far and we won't have even realised

Then why will it have been too far?

Re:well i think

[KiloByte]

Yeah -- we ("we" as the researchers and (an infinitessimally small contribution) those who give them moral support) already crossed an important boundary.

Before, this research was protested only by few fringe tree huggers. Now you need to count in a whole bunch of religious fundies, and they are those who can block the funding.

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right!

Lets stop all scientific research because perhaps, at some point in the future, further research leading on from that might not be ethical.

Re:well i think

[rooftop]

And maybe with the next small step they cure Parkinson's disease. Maybe it's my secular mind, but i find killing and disecting millions of mice far worse than "upsetting god" by growing an ear on a mouse or putting in some human cells.

If the mice are happy and not in constant pain or anything, i don't really see what's wrong with it. Evolution creates new species all the time.

Re:well i think

[HillaryWBush]

You are the one who is a religious fundamentalist, if you have so much faith that science should be funded. Where do YOU draw the line? Can we engineer monkeys to contain a gene to knife each other and serve themselves with banana sauce? Well, maybe in a few years.

Re:well i think

[PakProtector]

"'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

Yes, certain boundaries. F#%$# you. Using other animals to experiences already is "certain boundaries".

At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".

Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

We humans aren't so special after all.

Re:well i think

[DrSkwid]

David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics.

an oxymoron of the highest order

Ethics, yeah, I'm all for them, in other people!

Re:well i think

[Gherald]

> > but one day it will be too far and we won't have even realised

> Then why will it have been too far?

You have to understand the conservative mindset: it will be bad because at that point in time we will not have the exact same moral reaction as we would today.

Almost any moral change is anathema to conservatives. In the USA, for example, about the only such change they have conceded is that minorities and women should have roughly equal rights to white males. Particularly ludicrous is that some are still against contraceptives....

Re:well i think

[sholden]

At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".

Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.

They aren't doing it for fun, they are doing it because it gives their genes an advantage (by elimenating some competition) and hence those that were wired to do so had an evolutionary advantage and so that wiring was passed on. Chimps in other groups also are still the same species.

The example that actually meets what was claimed is cats. Those things won't just kill a small animal for fun, they'll torment it for as long as the thing survives. Then the cat just leaves the dead animal alone, no eating involved... Torturing and killing other species just for fun.

Re:well i think

[MooUK]

Unfortunately (in a way), cats also rule. Hence their murderous aspect gets ignored. Including by me.

Re:well i think

[Ihlosi]

Then why will it have been too far?

Because the mice might realize it before we do.

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

And who knows who is having "fun" in the animal world? Did they ask the chimp or the cat if it was fun?

I think the point was that standard mammilian behavior includes atrocities and brutality (all mammals).

Re:well i think

[CmdrGravy]

Even with Cats I'm sure they play with potential prey creatures more to watch how they react and get paws on experience of their prey rather than because they just enjoy torturing things. They probably enjoy it too but I doubt that's the reason they engage in this kind of torture.

Re:well i think

[simul]

by the standards of someone who lived 100 years ago, a man walking around after a massive heart attack would be considered a "zombie". there was serious ethical discussion of whether a heart attack should be intervened with at all. today, and angioplasty is an inexpensive, routine operation.

bacteria with human dna now produce insulin inexpensively enough for poor diabetics to live full lives. it was not long ago that the pivelige of living a normal life as a diabetic was reserved for the wealthy.

having seen my grandson meet my grandfather (which he would not have otherwise been able to do), i can only feel that the true monsters are the ones who, through fear and intimidation, would try to put an end to human progress

there is no too far. lets go all the way.

Re:well i think

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

How do you know the chimps aren't having fun while also increasing their chances of reproduction by kicking some rival chimp ass? Why not just apply that same principle to humans and say that eliminating the "competition" (by whatever means, regardless of how much the individual enjoys it) is giving one group an evolutionary advantage, thus any "fun" experienced by the brain is simply a genetic expression of the desire to propagate?

Or conversely, one could argue that the cats are honing their paw-eye coordination by smacking around a dying rat, or maybe they're passing those skills along to their offspring, so there's something useful happening besides mere malice. Chasing around injured rodents is Hunting 101 for kittens.

Basically you can look at this in a variety of ways depending on what your starting opinion is.

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost any moral change is anathema to conservatives.

On the other hand, the people who opposed eugenic sterilization in the US and in other countries were almost all religious conservatives. Unfortunately, they were generally not successful until people were shocked into their senses by the enormity of the Holocaust.

Re:well i think

[utexaspunk]

Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

We humans aren't so special after all.

So it's okay for us to do it because monkeys and dolphins do it? Is that where we look for behavioral guidelines? Maybe if we seek to behave like animals.

Re:well i think

[whimdot]

Yes, these mice are nibbling at the thin end of the wedge.

Re:well i think

[digidave]

If you can rationalize that as an evolutionary advantage then so too can you with humans. As hunters and gatherers I'm sure it was a huge advantage to keep in practice even when you didn't need food. Growing up, human children needed to hone their skills for when they had to provide for themselves and for others.

Even today, our hunters are better prepared should our highly technological civilization ever fail. If we should ever be thrust back into the stone age, so to speak, who do you think will survive? Geeks? Not likely. It'll be the hunters and outdoorsmen who already know how to live that way.

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

Even with Cats I'm sure they play with potential prey creatures more to watch how they react and get paws on experience of their prey rather than because they just enjoy torturing things. They probably enjoy it too but I doubt that's the reason they engage in this kind of torture.

For "Cats", please substitute 'Saddam Hussein's government' or 'the CIA' (depending on your political leanings).

Re:well i think

[hesiod]

> Where do YOU draw the line? Can we engineer monkeys to contain a gene to knife each other and serve themselves with banana sauce?

You won't be so glib when the terrorists begin to employ Bonobo Sauciers!

Re:well i think

[HillaryWBush]

You won't be so glib when the terrorists begin to employ Bonobo Sauciers! I for one will welcome them!

Re:well i think

[gad_zuki!]

>but one day it will be too far and we won't have even realised

So? Am I the only person who thinks it might be a good idea to raise some animals closer to our level? A smarter mouse or a smarter dog is just that, a smarter animal not a human babie with paws instead of hands. Ethically, its arguably helping animals and practically it would make things like search and rescue operations run a lot smoother if the dog understood more abstract concepts and could communicate better with its handlers.

Its funny how every few years there's a major ethical line to cross and once its crossed its not a big deal. Remember the big concerns over c-sections, enriching foods with vitamins, television 'radiation' in the home, golden rice, vaccinations, etc? Yeah, neither do I. Outside of a nutjob marginalized super-minority no one sees these things as threatening anymore, nor do they have data to back up their claims. I'm sure a lot of the "yuck factors" we're seeing today will make us look like those who protested against spoiling milk by adding vitamin D or developing goldenrice to provide vitamin A to those who are deficient in it.

As we approach easier manipulation of ourselves and our environment the so called "yuck factor" will keep coming up and as we get used to these things it will go on the back burner as the talking heads start worrying about the next big thing like nanomachines or whatever the near future might hold.

Re:well i think

[ndogg]

Honest question: Where's the ethical dilemma in humanizing something?

Re:well i think

[Spy der Mann]

by the standards of someone who lived 100 years ago, a man walking around after a massive heart attack would be considered a "zombie".

Do NOT confuse superstition with ethics. One thing is taking a decision on whether to perform a surgery, and a very different thing is MAKING EXPERIMENTS with human DNA.

Denying ethics in the name of progress will sooner or later put us in the Nazis place, where they wanted to get rid of jews because they considered them a "sickness for mankind". Don't you love mankind? Don't you want to heal mankind? You're doing mankind a favor, just get rid of the sick humans, and mankind will "progress".

Obviously a line has to be drawn, and it's much safer for the sake of humanity, if the line is drawn a few steps back. Because, once the line is drawn, you can never go back. Take a look at abortion, in the Roe vs. Wade case. That was called "progress". And nobody has dared to go back. Any attempt to do so is attacking "women's right" and the "progress of society".

You seem too confident to know where the line (in medicine research) should be drawn. But your children may have drawn the line a step further, and your grandchildren another step further. Morals are taught by your society, by your parents, and by the media. Once you say something is "right", nobody will be able to tell future generations that it's "wrong".

Perhaps some people are more conservative than you on certain aspects, but less conservative on others. What happens if both of you take the less conservative approach? The end result could be worse than both of your individual decisions.

Can you bear with the responsibility of not drawing the line one millimeter further than it should be? Can you?

Re:well i think

[SmallOak]

Sorry but 'rights' are always in flux

* In Roman times it was the fathers 'right' to kill his children.
* In America it was a 'right' to own slaves
* I was a right to employ children's to work in mines
* it was a right to use opium and cocaine

"Obviously a line has to be drawn, and it's much safer for the sake of humanity, if the line is drawn a few steps back."

I remember when the first heart transplants happened. I was a huge ethical issue. Should we have drawn a line in the sand then? Should we have drawn the line with blood tranfusions? Should we draw the line at vacines?

Re:well i think

[CmdrGravy]

I agree, play and practice are both important factors in human development as well.

Re:well i think

[Jeremi]

Take a look at abortion, in the Roe vs. Wade case. That was called "progress".

Mainly because it was progress. The problem is that women are going to have abortions whether abortion is legal, or not. What we as a society have control over is whether those abortions will be safe and legal, or whether they will be performed in secret by amateurs, and commonly result in the severe injury or death of the woman. It's analogous to repealing Prohibition -- which we did not because we approve of alcohol particularly, but because the effects of banning it turned out to outweigh than the benefits.

I think many people in the USA are too young to remember what life was like in the USA before abortions were legal. Those people should take a look at what is going on in South America, whose countries have some of the world's strictest anti-abortion laws, and paradoxically also some of the world's highest rates of abortion. In many of those countries there are mass movements to legalize abortion, for the same reasons we legalized it here.

Abortion is an unpleasant thing, and well-meaning people on both sides of the issue should want to see the number of abortions minimized. The way to do that, however, is to educate people about their bodies and contraception, so that they have control over when and how they get pregnant, and thus no need for abortion. Simply banning abortion only drives it underground.

. Once you say something is "right", nobody will be able to tell future generations that it's "wrong".

That's clearly not true: past generations thought slavery and racial discrimination was "right", but the abolition and civil rights movements were able to convince society that they were "wrong". So it is possible to de-legitimize practices that are widely seen as unethical.

Can you bear with the responsibility of not drawing the line one millimeter further than it should be? Can you?

Yes, because I'm aware that erring too far on the side of caution can be just as harmful as plunging ahead to quickly. For example: if we ban all stem-cell research, we risk condemning millions of nerve-disease suffers to an early, painful death that they could otherwise have been saved from. (or, a more extreme/ludicrous but nonetheless factual example: girls in Islamic schools dying in fires because the (male) firefighters were not allowed to enter the building to rescue them. Here the cost of upholding the girls' "morality" cost them their lives)

Re:well i think

[Jeremi]

They aren't doing it for fun, they are doing it because it gives their genes an advantage

"fun" and "gives genes an advantage" aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, I would argue that what a given organism considers "fun" is an direct result of what is genetically advantageous for that organism. (hence the popularity of sex, no doubt... ;^))

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I asked my cat, Mr Whiskers about this and he said "Kill them, kill them all but torture them first! It's fun, no really try it!!"

Now if you'll excuse me it's time for my lithium and to sharpen some knives.....

Re:well i think

[tgibbs]

They aren't doing it for fun, they are doing it because it gives their genes an advantage (by elimenating some competition) and hence those that were wired to do so had an evolutionary advantage and so that wiring was passed on. Chimps in other groups also are still the same species.

And what is "fun"? It is activation of brain reward systems that have evolved by natural selection to encourage us to engage in activities that increase the probability of passing on our genes. So yes, they probably are doing it for fun.

The example that actually meets what was claimed is cats. Those things won't just kill a small animal for fun, they'll torment it for as long as the thing survives. Then the cat just leaves the dead animal alone, no eating involved... Torturing and killing other species just for fun.

Yes, it certainly appears to be fun for the cat. And it probably evolved to be fun because it encourages the cat to develop skill in prey stalking and catching--skill that will come in handy if food is scarce.

Re:well i think

[Artifakt]

The point is, what if we make smarter animals, and then keep experimenting on them like they were still the same as their ancestors. First, it's logically indefensable - a smarter mouse is what it is, not something that can be properly treated as a Heisen-mouse, half smart and half dumb, whichever suits the society at the time. Second it's a moral issue - how can you make an experimental animal smarter without simultaniously giving it more understanding that it is caged, totally controlled, and subject to pain and premature death as a result of being an experimental subject? In other words, making animals smarter will in and of itself increase their suffering in an experimental environment unless making them smarter comes with recognition of associated rights.
          I had to go back and re-read your comment to see you were talking about making animals smarter and then using them for some very ethical purposes such as search and rescue. What you're describing there seems like a quite possible win/win situation, and yes, I agree the society probably should want to persue such options. I hope you will consider the spin-doctors who will doubtless use arguements phrased much like yours to claim that making animals smarter is a way of compensating them for participating in research trials that involve close confinement, surgery, and even vivisection and try to get society to treat that as a win/win also.
      Given your "marginalized nutjob super-minority" comment, I would worry somewhat about how much care and concern you would show if you were the one making these ethical decisions. If your most major goal in this thread is to suggest animals be improved for situations where both the animals and humans can benefit simultaneously, I think comments like that undermine you own position more than they help. You've actually made some very good points - you don't need to undercut all the other sides of the debate.

Re:well i think

[Anonymous Coward]

* In Roman times it was the fathers 'right' to kill his children."
In modern time, it is the mother's "right" to kill her children.

* In America it was a 'right' to own slaves"
That's pretty much reserved for African and Muslim countries now.

"* I [sic] was a right to employ children's to work in mines"
Now we hand them to strangers to raise and call it "daycare."

"* it was a right to use opium and cocaine"
Welcome to the Netherlands.

Re:well i think

[TastyCakes]

[Yawn]. Call me when they clone Jesus and Hitler and make them fight each other.

Re:well i think

[dasunt]

Woah, there! Easy now, fellah! We've already lost that one to Chimps, at the very least, who have been seen to actively seek out and kill Chimps that don't belong to their own group, going so far as, when finding a lone 'other,' to head back, round up a posse, and then go 'curb stomp' their 'ass.' Chimps will also kill babies of any female they meet that they have not had sex with. Hence Chimp promiscuity.

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

We humans aren't so special after all.

So it's okay for us to do it because monkeys and dolphins do it? Is that where we look for behavioral guidelines? Maybe if we seek to behave like animals.

As a vegan (strict vegetarian), I've been told that people should eat meat because animals eat meat. Judging from how frequent that response is, there seems to be a lot of people who base their morality on animal actions.

Lets hope they never learn what a praying mantis female does during sex. ;)

Re:well i think

[Cruciform]

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

So that explains the "Don't drop the shrimp." sign at Sea World.

Re:well i think

[sxtxixtxcxh]

you just might be onto something there... but let's just stick to stuff familiar to most slashdotters, shall we?

Re:well i think

[utexaspunk]

I'm a vegan, too. It always irks me when I see the "other animals are doing it, why can't we?" defense.

Re:well i think

[TastyCakes]

You guys are using twisted logic. This guy was responding to this:
"At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority"."
That's the guy who thinks animals are morally superior because they "don't kill others for fun". Note that he's both totally wrong and a tree hugger.

Re:well i think

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Oh my God! Did you hear? They beat the women in Kumar!!!!!
By the way most of this thread is barely scratching the surface of what is ethical behavior, is creating 100,000 ubermice only to have them die months later to cure human disease ethical? To quote a Nick Dipaulo bit, "if strapping a monkey's brain to a car battery might someday cure AIDS, I have two things to say. The red one is positive, and the black one is negative."

Re:well i think

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Eugenics = new, massive morality change

Conservatism = value status quo, only gradual changes, no huge, sudden breaks with the past

Conservatives oppose eugenics. Working as described...

Perhaps people are confusing conservatism's leaders' frequent use of patriotism and nationalism, i.e. a source of pride in longstanding identities, often overlapping some kind of hatred, with the hatred subtext of eugenics, vis-a-vis "we're better than them".

Note the common components are politicians, and them redirecting the hatred of people. Meethinks there's a deep truism there somewhere...

Re:well i think

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Three nested comments deep about monkeys with augmented brains wielding weapons attacking humans, and not one mention of Planet of the Apes?

Shame on you, Slashdot. For shame!

Re:well i think

[boldra]

And what about chimp who was observed slowly peeling the skin of another chimp's arms before killing him? Was there a genetic advantage to that, or are chimps evil?

WTF?

[Tune]

I thought mice - being pan dimensional beings - were far more advanced than humans (ranked 3, just after dolphins).
This is like modding an xbox 360/ps3/whatever with a Z80 - why whould you want to do that?

Re:WTF?

[PakProtector]

I thought mice - being pan dimensional beings - were far more advanced than humans (ranked 3, just after dolphins). This is like modding an xbox 360/ps3/whatever with a Z80 - why whould you want to do that?

Because somewhere, everytime you do it, a Systems Engineer dies inside.

That, or it makes God cry. I forget exactly. Oh, well. Back to masturbating. Gotta get rid of those kittens somehow.

Re:WTF?

[Guppy06]

"This is like modding an xbox 360/ps3/whatever with a Z80 - why whould you want to do that?"

Because the Sega Master System kicked ass!

Re:WTF?

[pato101]

This is like modding an xbox 360/ps3/whatever with a Z80 - why whould you want to do that?
To play Manic Miner, obviously.

I for one welcome our new Brainy Mice Overlords

[digitaldc]

'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,'

Translation: The worry is that the mice will sue for cruel & unusual punishment and civil rights violations if humanized too much.

Re:I for one welcome our new Brainy Mice Overlords

[afaik_ianal]

I don't think you're going to get too many lawer mice out of this. To do that, you need to remove some of the original brain material, and substitute in some shark brain cells.

Re:I for one welcome our new Brainy Mice Overlords

[madaxe42]

Whether the mice become sentient or not, you can be sure some lawyer will file a class action suit on their behalf.

Re:I for one welcome our new Brainy Mice Overlords

[PakProtector]

I don't think you're going to get too many lawer mice out of this. To do that, you need to remove some of the original brain material, and substitute in some shark brain cells.

Run! The Munchkin Rules Lawyers cometh!

Re:poor humans

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I dunno, guv, where were you when we started caging the poor bastards? Or confusing them with Apple peripherals?

and the first 2 mice created said...

[mahju]

"Why Brain, what are we gonna to do tomorrow night?"

"Guess... "

"Oh yeah, try to take over the world, right... "

Re:poor humans

[Walt Dismal]

Outsourcing programming becomes even cheaper once you have mice with human brain cells. Pay attention, Bill.

I for one welcome...

[ocelotbob]

Yay, human-brained mice. This means that once they escape and start rampaging, scientists will have no choice but to create a race of catpeople to counter them. Of course, this will lead to revolts creating a need for dogpeople, but for a short time, I shall have my catboy! Vengance shall be mine!

Re:I for one welcome...

[PakProtector]

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and assume that you're female, since you have a need for a cat'boy.' So, uh, I have these adorable ears left over from my Inu Yasha costume...

Um. Yeah. That's all I really had to say.

Re:I for one welcome...

[ettlz]

Of course, this will lead to revolts creating a need for dogpeople...

"I'm a mog — half man, half dog. I'm my own best friend!"

Re:I for one welcome...

[AndroidCat]

Got to have cat girly-girls too!

Hid the Bell with a blot she did.
But she fell in love with a hominid.
Oh, where is the which of the what she did?
- The Ballad of Lost C'mell

Re:I for one welcome...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm my own best friend!

What a coincidence, I've been my own lover for years.

Re:I for one welcome...

[ocelotbob]

I'm ocelotbob, and am very much male. So unless you're AC/DC, I'm sorry to burst your hopes and dreams.

Re:I for one welcome...

[TripMaster Monkey]

I'm ocelotbob, and am very much male.

So you suffer from XYY syndrome?

^_^

Re:I for one welcome...

[ettlz]

What a coincidence, I've been my own lover for years.

Welcome! You are among friends.

Re:I for one welcome...

[_EternaL_]

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
That wriggled and wiggled and tiggled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!

Re:I for one welcome...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Careful! If you do that too much, your paws will stop being furry.

Re:I for one welcome...

[Chris Spencer]

It's already been done.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because we have the same brains.

Re:poor humans

[AndroidCat]

Because we can breed them with the mice that have human ears growing on them, and they can sit around all day thinking "Does this ear make my butt look fat?" (yuck warning, don't view when cranched.)

The "yuck factor"

[TripMaster Monkey]

Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor."

Everyone wants to save Hitler's brain...
but when you put it in the body of a Great White Shark,
suddenly, you've gone too far.

Professor Farnsworth

Re:The "yuck factor"

[midicase]

"...yuck factor."

What, no wikipedia entry for this highly technical term?

As I sip from my Pinky and the Brain coffee cup.

Re:The "yuck factor"

[PakProtector]

FRY:Hey, Wait a minute! Is this another experiment that crosses a line that man was not meant to cross?

PROFESSOR: Holds Index finger and thumb almost together, shrugging

Re:The "yuck factor"

[Dirtside]

but when you put it in the body of a Great White Shark,

"Contrary to what most people say, the most dangerous animal in the world is not the lion or the tiger or even the elephant. It's a shark riding on an elephant's back, just trampling and eating everything they see." - Jack Handey

The conscious neuron?

[jtangen]

Remind me what's so unique about human neurons that cause people to fear that mice will somehow become conscious, thinking organisms?

Re:The conscious neuron?

[metricmusic]

Knowing that one day you're going to die.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[penguinoid]

The problem is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster might give the mice a soul if we give them too many human brain cells.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Anonymous Coward]

No way, His holy tentacle woulnd't have blessed such a non-intelligent designed being.
By the way some studies show that the mice population living in the pirate vessels and the global warming correlate, that rules completly out any FSM intervention in the design of the mice.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[JBHarris]

How do you know that they aren't already? (Oh wait, that was your point.)

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Tuffsnake]

I'm pretty sure that mice are already conscious, thinking organisms - see the cheese experiments - (well unless you smack 'em hard enough on the head and knock 'em unconscious).

I think the concern along the lines which you are speaking (however bizarre and insanely remote) is more about if they might somehow gain a self awareness which may in some strange way elevate them from the status of animals to semi-human. While I am no biologist/psychologist I think that there would have to be some crazy turn of events to allow this "evolution" in mice.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mices already are thinking and somehow conscious organisms. They have just not evolved enough yet(probably won't evolve much). Maybe in some million years we may be talking to monkeys.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Just Some Guy]

There is a small section in our brain that lets us understand mirrors. That is, we can look in a mirror and know that we're looking at a representation of ourselves, and use that reflection for things like grooming, self-examination, and so on. IIRC, there are three other primates that have this capability (gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans (or was that chimpanzees?)), but that's it - no other animal has this capacity. For various reasons, some scientists also believe this directly correlates with self-awareness.

Since mice don't have it, this hypothesis would mean that they are not thinking, conscious beings. Graft it into them, and they would be.

IANA neuro researcher, but that's my understanding of the situation.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Darius Jedburgh]

And I suppose C++ became conscious when they added RTTI.

Re:The conscious neuron?

[Rufus88]

Their propensity to arrange themselves with highly complex interconnections?

Keeping a tally...

[Metasquares]

So far we have super-strong, long-lived, regenerating mice with human brain cells. We're getting pretty close to "the mice of NIMH".

Re:Keeping a tally...

[Damastus the WizLiz]

Dont forget, They can fly jets already anyway.

Re:Keeping a tally...

[Yst]

Why stop at mice when you could have rats.

Mind you, the telepathy thing could be a bit hard to manage.

Re:Keeping a tally...

[cratermoon]

Nicodemus says, "No comment."

Re:Keeping a tally...

[Anonymous Coward]

So far we have super-strong, long-lived, regenerating mice with human brain cells. We're getting pretty close to "the mice of NIMH".

Nickel Metal Hyride Mice?

Re:Keeping a tally...

[hesiod]

> > We're getting pretty close to "the mice of NIMH".
> Nickel Metal Hyride Mice?

I was wondering about that myself (mice-elf?). I wonder how much energy a NiMH mouse can store, and do you have to fully discharge it on a wheel before reusing it?

Re:Keeping a tally...

[ikkonoishi]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084649/

This has been another useless fact.

Re:Keeping a tally...

[ToxicBanjo]

So far we have super-strong, long-lived, regenerating mice with human brain cells. We're getting pretty close to "the mice of NIMH"

We need those mice... they have to be able to kick the shit out of the rats if they don't move the house to the "Lee of the stone!" :)

brain simulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

If 100.000 brain cells is 0.1% then a mouse has 100.000.000 brain cells. How many bytes does it take to describe a brain cell? How many connections are there from a single brain cell to other brain cells? Say it takes 4 bytes to address the connections. Then 10 connections per cell make 4GByte in total. Who is going to write the software to simulate a mouse?

Re:brain simulation?

[wanax]

Modelling 'real' neurons in detail is generally done with ~10k compartmental models, which are generally described by something like:
http://neuron.duke.edu/cells/
and modelled in something like:
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/

Even using vastly simplified neurons, like integrate & fire types, for example: http://www.nsi.edu/users/izhikevich/publications/s pikes.htm
you still have many vastly different types of spiking behaviors.

You then still have to deal with the fact that neurons 'generally' connect to about ~10k others, (actual range something like 10-100k). And that's before you get to details like what neurons are where, with what densities, that long range connections in mammalian brains are generally not very well understood, etc. etc. etc.

The brain is a lot more complicated than you think. We're still many many years away from modeling a mouse brain, at a purely neuronal level. I mean, there still isn't a definitive model of the Aplysia, neuron count ~10k...

Re:brain simulation?

[penguinoid]

Neurons have several thousand connections, not "about 10". Furthermore, these connections are analog (have a range of strengths), say 1 byte to address the strenghts. Given about 100,000,000 brain cells, you would need almost 30 bits per connection as well, but call it 3 bytes. At 1000 connections, you need 4 kb per neuron, or 400 Gb of memory for 1 rat brain. Barely doable, but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...

Re:brain simulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

There can be upto 27,000 connections from one neuron, and each of these connections can be of varying strenght probably best representated by a floating point.

Re:brain simulation?

[KurtisKiesel]

The human stem cells would have divided as they recieved genetic information used to grow.

Re:brain simulation?

[slashname3]

but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...

That's where you use the boinc software to assemble several hundred thousand systems across the Internet to run the mouse simulator. Now that the classic seti program has gone away I am sure there are a lot of people that no longer participate. Such a mouse simulator might get them to load the boinc software and allocate their systems.

Of course the real problem is once you get such a simulator going how do you prevent it from messing with cheese futures on the stock market?

Re:brain simulation?

[istartedi]

Yeah, and then when you get that simulation running we'll probably realize that there are a million different chemicals that can impact the performance of the neurons, and that we don't even know about half of them yet. Toss in local concentrations, thermal variations, etc. and you'll either need killer software or a lot more bits.

Re:brain simulation?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the opposite ? Simulating computing with rat's brain...

Yeeee : "Now, the RB-Card (standing for Rat-Brain-Card) keep and protect your 400Go of data and bite unauthorized people trying to access your data".

Re:brain simulation?

[makkdk]

So we combine p2p with seti and everybody start simulating just a couple of brain cells with 1000~10000 of connections. If the mouse starts singing a popular song are there rights problems with that.

Re:brain simulation?

[slashname3]

Of course. The RIAA will sue everyone involved. :)

Re:brain simulation?

[tgibbs]

If 100.000 brain cells is 0.1% then a mouse has 100.000.000 brain cells. How many bytes does it take to describe a brain cell? How many connections are there from a single brain cell to other brain cells? Say it takes 4 bytes to address the connections. Then 10 connections per cell make 4GByte in total. Who is going to write the software to simulate a mouse?

Nobody knows, because nobody knows what level of detail is required. Do you need the exact pattern of dendrite branching and the locations of individual synapses? How about the locations of individual receptors and transmitter uptake sites? That certainly can make a difference in how the cell responds, and would require a lot of bytes to describe. Or can you get away with a statistical distribution that might have a small number of parameters?

Re:brain simulation?

[smoker2]

At 1000 connections, you need 4 kb per neuron, or 400 Gb of memory for 1 rat brain. Barely doable, but the processor power to handle all of that will not be easy to find...

Isn't that where simple "cell" processors would come in handy ?

Each neuron is adapted to a fairly small task, although they can be "re-programmed" IIRC.

Re:brain simulation?

[greg_barton]

Furthermore, these connections are analog (have a range of strengths), say 1 byte to address the strenghts.

You're kidding, right? There's this thing called the "synaptic gap" which is hugely complex in and of itsel. There's thousands of neurotransmitters, the production, release, reuptake, and destruction of which are all dependent on the cell's state and enviromnent. There's the receptors for those neurotransmitters, their state and number, also dependent on the cell's state and enviromnent. One byte is about 16 orders of magnitude too little information to describe the state of a synaptic gap.

Re:brain simulation?

[cameroneagans]

Quote: "If 100.000 brain cells is 0.1% then a mouse has 100.000.000 brain cells"

Ummmmm....no. 100.000.000 wouold be 1%. They actually have around 10.000.000.000. So you can figure on around *400* Gbytes. I don't know about you, but give me a programming wizard or give me death!

Re:brain simulation?

[StikyPad]

He was asserting that the whole thing is way too complex to synthetically produce with today's technology, even when working with a simplified model. You just said, "Nu uh, it's not way too complex, it's way WAY too complex!"

Re:97.5% genetically identical - ah yes, but

[OneSmartFellow]

We are virtually identical to mice in every detail but stature.

God is in the detail

Pity...

[marcushnk]

'You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body.

What a pity... we could do with a decent contender for the positions currently held by Bush/Blair/Howard.

Re:97.5% genetically identical - ah yes, but

[OneSmartFellow]

In that same vein:

A brick house is virtually identical to a pile of sand in every detail but stature.

news from old friends

[illuminatedwax]

Good to hear that NIMH is still up and running after that last scandal. They do good work.

Re:TOOKIE WILLIAMS: MURDERER, NEGRO, PHP PROGRAMME

[HaydnH]

I see we've found out which human donated the brain cells for this study!!

Re:fp

[TallMatthew]

jews did 9/11 and TOOKIE REALLY DID HIS MURDERS. loooooooooooool. lameness filter aborted.

If only we could add 100,000 brain cells to you.

Re:poor humans

[OneSmartFellow]

and we can do that to the mice because...?

....They are easy to cook and taste good too

That's disgusting!!

[LaughingCoder]

Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice

Now I don't even want to touch my mouse! I guess it's back to the command line for me.

Re:That's disgusting!!

[wsumark]

they are close to no-handed web surfing via a mouse that can navigate the web on its own... a lot of people are going to be sore for a while.

Splinterscats...

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a little magic and we can create splinterscats - remember Morrowindl?

"Boundaries"

[base_chakra]

The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries

How about if we cross a different barrier and drop the anthropocentric bullshit.

Re:"Boundaries"

[ari_j]

Yes, we should definitely either treat people as indistinct from animals or animals as people.

Anthropocentrism is not bullshit. It's probably a necessary component to human society, and other than extremely arrogant forms of it (such as global warming as being both human-caused and within the grasp of human control to stop) it is a healthy mindset for humans to have.

Re:"Boundaries"

[autophile]

How about if we cross a different barrier and drop the anthropocentric bullshit.

Personally, I'm all for the misanthropic principle.

--Rob

Re:"Boundaries"

[dmatos]

He may be talking about a more practical, rather than moral, boundary. I'm thinking along the lines of the species barrier, as it applies to disease transmission. Put enough human cells in a mouse, and perhaps the mouse-TB, that currently cannot infect us, will "figure out" how to infect a human cell. With no previous cases, we'll have no immunity to it at all, and the results could be devastating.

Yes, diseases do cross the species barrier now (cum the asian bird flu), but chances are very low that they do so. Imagine how much worse things could be.

Re:"Boundaries"

[vertinox]

Anthropocentrism is not bullshit. It's probably a necessary component to human society, and other than extremely arrogant forms of it (such as global warming as being both human-caused and within the grasp of human control to stop) it is a healthy mindset for humans to have.

I for one hope that silicon based sentient life doesn't hold the same views about itself when they show up.

Re:"Boundaries"

[ari_j]

There's no reason to believe that they won't, or for that matter that they shouldn't. That said, sentience is an important trait here - if we can convince them that we're also sentient, then we should be alright if they're cosmopolitan (bad pun! down, boy!) enough to consider all sentient life as being sacred.

The reason we're anthropocentric is not that we lack other life forms to consider our equals, it's that we lack other sentient life to deal with.

Re:"Boundaries"

[Anonymous Coward]

Define 'sentient' (you probably meant 'sapient'?).
  Many would say dolphins are sentient. Many animals are self-aware.
  But no animal is as egocentric as man.

Re:"Boundaries"

[MutantHamster]

"But no animal is as egocentric as man."

Uh, you're right, if you mean they're all much worse. Other animals eat their goddamned young in order to clean up the gene pool. If you're going to take the position that we should be nature's police force, looking out for all the other species, that's fine, but don't try to bullshit us with your ignorant view that we are the only species that doesn't act this way already. In fact, many species kill themselves just to perserve their genes over anybody else's. At least we've come together (for the most part) to act in unison as a unified human race.

The viewpoint that we should be less anthropocentric is legitimate enough in my book, but espousing stupid idioms like "no animal is as egocentric as man" is simply false and amounts to nothing more than propoganda.

Re:"Boundaries"

[StikyPad]

Except the full quote is:

"The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries," said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics.

Re:"Boundaries"

[iamplupp]

Congratulations! You just lost the argument. :)

why dumb them down

[Anonymous Coward]

They are already a higher species. They created the Earth. Why dumb them down with human brain cells -- they have more than enough of their highly-compact molecular memory.

Wow...30 minute hangtime

[StressGuy]

Ya kinda knew Pinky and the Brain would be instantaneous, I was waiting for the first NIMH reference. 30 minutes though.....long time

Re:Wow...30 minute hangtime

[Jeremi]

I was waiting for the first NIMH reference. 30 minutes though.....long time

And there's still been no mention of poor Algernon. Shame, people!!!

No human inside mice

[Dekortage]

From the article: "It's true that there is a huge amount of similarity, but the difference are huge," Snyder said. "You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body."

Just remembering people I've worked with, I think we already have mice and monkeys trapped inside humans.

Re:97.5% genetically identical - ah yes, but

[kfg]

Compare a brick house to a brick factory building.

Mice and men are made of the same bricks, assembled in the same manner, ending with much the same results, which is why they can use mice for medical research in the first place. Above poster has it right, God is in the details, but the details are really very, very tiny. Sometimes those tiny differences are critical, but it doesn't make them any less tiny.

I'm sorry if it insults your sense of humanity to be compared to a mouse, but I don't exactly see the point of gaining your "stature" by denigrating mice either.

You're "smarter" than a mouse, of course, but being "smarter" isn't even of any particular value if you don't act smarter, and the mouse can do something you likely can't. . .

Take care of itself.

KFG

What's with the interest in super mice lately

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too long ago there was an article about making fearless mice. Now there is an interest in humanizing mice. Hmmmm.
Is the goal to have intelligent mice not afraid of anything? What's with the interest in super mice lately???

"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[PhotoBoy]

...you cross certain boundaries."

Personally I don't really like experimentation on animals, so you can try to dehumanise the animals being experimented as much as you want, it won't change my objections.

Re:"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then Rejoice! According to the article, they're even now busily humanising them!

Re:"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[hesiod]

> I don't really like experimentation on animals

So would you prefer experiments on humans, or do you just not want any more medical progress at all?

Re:"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[werewolf1031]

...you can try to dehumanise the animals...

Er, kinda hard to dehumanize something that's already, well, not human, ain't it?

Re:"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[utuk99]

The US has a large prison population to experiment on. If you are opposed to that we can always experiment on terrorists. At least in the US we have handy prisons where they have no rights anyway. If we run out of them we can move on to open source developers since they are obviously communists. Oh, and file sharers.

Re:"The worry is if you humanize them too much...

[hesiod]

So mice are more valuable than humans... You should have said up front "I'm an idiot" and saved us both some time.

I'm frightened now.

[meringuoid]

According to recent /. coverage, mice are now

- fearless
- immortal
- regenerating
- mighty

and now it seems
- they have human brain cells

We could be in trouble here. I believe the word 'kamehame-ha' would form an appropriate response to what we're creating...

Re:I'm frightened now.

[Anonymous Coward]

"believe the word 'kamehame-ha' would form an appropriate response...."

What would the old kine of Hawaii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha) have to do with mice?

Re:I'm frightened now.

[meringuoid]

What would the old kine of Hawaii have to do with mice?

Well, there's an old guy on this tropical island who has a nifty martial arts technique named after the famous Hawaiian, which ought to be powerful enough to take down even a regenerating, cellular-enhanced, fearless, super-strong mouse...

Re:I'm frightened now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's an old guy on this tropical island who has a nifty martial arts technique named after the famous Hawaiian, which ought to be powerful enough to take down even a regenerating, cellular-enhanced, fearless, super-strong mouse...

Oh, you mean Higgins?

Re:fp

[PakProtector]

jews did 9/11 and TOOKIE REALLY DID HIS MURDERS. loooooooooooool. lameness filter aborted.

If only we could add 100,000 brain cells to you.

Why waste those 100,000 brain cells in such an inhumane manner? I have the cure for stupidity right here.

A loaded revolver.

Mouse Brain Library

[tomalpha]

Anybody reckon they can tell the difference between a human brain and a mouse brain? Check out the Mouse Brain Library and the Human Brain Library. There are a couple of obvious difference in shape, but the individual structures are remarkably similar.

Re:Mouse Brain Library

[packeteer]

Have you noticed the striking similarities between a Wooden bridge and a Concrete bridge? I mean they both kinda look the same but are a little different. I am also sure that the parts are as easily swapped back and forth as cells of two different species' brains.

so far...

[Gravis Zero]

so just for the record, we can make super strong fearless immortal mice that can sing, regenerate body parts, sniff out landmines, and have partial human brains. scientists don't mod their computer cases, they mod their mice!

Re:so far...

[dosquatch]

You forgot that they can also glow in the dark
http://digg.com/science/Genetically_Enhanced_Glowi ng_Mice

Re:so far...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget, they've got that funky glow in the dark effect, too!
Picture: http://www.forbes.com/2001/07/26/0726gfp.html

Re:TOOKIE WILLIAMS: MURDERER, NEGRO, PHP PROGRAMME

[msdschris]

So what, they had enough for two or three mice?

Genetic Similarity

[ajs318]

Some genetic similarity is overstated. If you took two samples of DNA that were different in every way they possibly could be different, they would still have 50% in common.

OTOH, some genetic similarity is understated. The human genetic code consists of 23 chromosome pairs, in which a single chromosome differs between the sexes. Therefore, at the lowest biological level, men and women have 45 similarities for every one difference.

Re:Genetic Similarity

[tpjunkie]

Thats not really true, when biologists talk of genetic similarity, we're not speaking about the proportions of cysteine, guanine, adenine and thymine that make up DNA, but rather how well the specific order of genes is conserved between species. For the overwhelming majority of genes in mice and humans, the exact sequence differs by only a few base pairs here and there, over a sequence that can be thousands and thousands of base pairs long. Additionally, this single base pair difference might not even cause a change in the final protein product, due to the redundancy of the genetic code.

And as far as the other hand, men and women are a lot more the same than 1 difference in 45, its more like 99.99 percent identical in fact. The number of genes that the Y chromosome encodes can be counted on your fingers, and they all deal with the male reproductive system.

Re:Genetic Similarity

[cnettel]

It's even more than that, as Y is a very small chromosome, and even the "missing" copy of X in a male isn't extremely large.

BUT, it provides a powerful enough mechanism to possibly allow divergent evolution within the species, regarding physiological and phsychological properties. If it's really been fitness-increasing to do so in specific cases is the interesting question.

Re:Genetic Similarity

[ajs318]

And as far as the other hand, men and women are a lot more the same than 1 difference in 45, its more like 99.99 percent identical in fact. The number of genes that the Y chromosome encodes can be counted on your fingers, and they all deal with the male reproductive system.

I'm not disputing that -- I'm agreeing with it. Men have nipples {that can actually produce milk} because it would just be too much bother not to. Today we seem to ascribe far more to this one little difference than it explains {there is barely room for enough bits of information in the whole human genetic code to store all the supposed gender differences, let alone in the sex chromosome alone}.

Of course not everything that makes up the human being is in DNA. To use a computer metaphor, babies are born with a mostly-blank flash PROM containing a simple firmware BIOS and a bootstrap loader which is used to download a more sophisticated firmware version piecemeal.

The fact is, we play up the differences from birth by giving boys and girls different clothes, different toys, different foods, different treatment and different expectations -- and mostly so that companies who exploit workers in the third world can sell overpriced and unnecessary crap in pink and blue packs so people buy twice as much. Before disposable nappies, everyone was brought up in washable terry towelling ones {so was my ex's little one, who will be ten next year} and they didn't last for two or three hours a time -- they lasted for two or three children a time. Up till the 20th century, baby boys wore dresses. Kids' duffel coats invariably used to have universal fastenings which could be done up boys-side or girls-side {but why is there a difference anyway?}. Primitive cultures probably would have been a lot less sexist than today -- if there was a job to be done on pain of death, then anyone who could do it would have been needed. So there would naturally have been some women hunting with the men and some men doing the sedentary jobs around the camp. Shame they were too primitive to leave any notes .....

President's worst fear.

[unknownideal]

"But the brain poses an additional level of concern because some envision nightmare scenarios in which a human mind might be trapped in an animal head."

Someone kindly explain to President Bush why this is impossible. And don't laugh. He doesn't like being laughed at.

Re:President's worst fear.

[StikyPad]

Someone kindly explain to President Bush why this is impossible. And don't laugh. He doesn't like being laughed at.

Good luck convincing a rat brain trapped in a human body that the opposite is impossible.

But seriously, the implication is that this is necessarily a bad thing. I mean, God forbid we have intelligent creatures that aren't people...

The myth of the poor mouse

[SimianOverlord]

Mice and Rats in research are supposed to be pitied, by the usual pathetic ways that humans impart everything around them with the feelings or emotions which we possess. Actually, you should look at some facts.

FACT: Mice in the wild live about a year, in the most stressful, difficult and inhumane conditions you wouldn't like to imagine. Should they be unfortunate to gain access to one of the animal rights protestors habitat, middle class suburbia, the self same protestor, full of indignation at experimental killing, will of course call in someone to rid them of their little problem, or condemn them to freeze to death in wooded areas with humane capture traps. In the lab, mus musculus live on average about 2 years in controlled, warm conditions with regular feeding and exercise.

FACT: Rats in the wild live about 2 years max, again in stressful, disease ridden cramped conditions. In the lab, Rats can survive double that, again in nicely ordered, well controlled and comfortable conditions.

So don't bring up that ignorant rubbish about how animal experiments somehow harm rats and mice: unlike Joe Public taking potshots at rats and mice in his backyard, everything WE do is sanctioned, pored over and refined each and every step of the way to minimise suffering. Hell, our animals are no use for experimentation if they're unhappy or agitated: they get difficult to handle. We go to see them and handle them a couple of weeks before expts even start to get them used to our presence, smell, voices etc.

Rats and mice are far better treated in our labs than in the wild or in your homes, and they are also better treated than the conveyor belt of cattle fattened and slaughtered for your own diet. I get angered by the hypocrisy of people opposed to experimentation while conveniently overlooking the animal suffering inherent in large scale production of meat in all the developed world, with cattle stunned with bolt guns wandering into saws. It's so much easier to criticise someone else than look at your won behaviour, isn't it?

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[cycledance]

i applaud you for the effort of writing and the understanding u gave me but there is also the difference of the mice that are born in the wild and those that are born/grown in the lab.
we(humans) abuse a species therefore, more specifically we abuse an artificially modified organism for our own reasons. u could talk about symbiotic now...i guess.
ya and...i dont eat meat. (fruitarian)

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[CmdrGravy]

We aren't abusing mice, we are using them to further our understanding of how things work. Finding out how things work seems to be a natural and powerful drive in our own species.

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[atomic_toaster]

It's amazing how many people will protest the use of mice/rats for scientific research when many of them would lay down poison or steel-jawed traps to get them out of their house.

We had a family of mice take up residence in our garage, so my father laid out traps. My younger brother found out about this and confronted my father in the garage, protesting the fact that my father would "kill the poor mice". Then one of the little critters ran towards him, and my brother whacked it to death with a broom.

To me, that's a great analogy for people who are against animal testing.

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[red990033]

FACT: The mouse and rat do live a nicer life, until the zoophile scientist applies the lipstick he stole from PETA and skull-fucks the animal to death. Ok ok.. maybe not FACT per se...

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[cycledance]

someone mod the parent up plz?

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

So pretty much what you're saying that you're a moron. You eat fruit, and probably smoke a lot of weed, which also shows to reduce the intellectually capability of a human.

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[cycledance]

i dont smoke weed or tabacco or take any medication or other drugs or addicting stuff.

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[mungojelly]

This is a very compelling argument. The terrain gets tricky so quickly, though. The implicit moral argument here is: If you could ask the mice for consent, and they had accurate knowledge of the options, they would choose to live in the lab rather than in the wild.

I think this is at least very close to the truth. Laboratories are just one of the places in the world to live-- at times wonderful, at times terrible, just like anywhere.

But since we are manipulating the entire existence of each mouse-- its genes, its diseases, its cures, its food, its challenges-- it's very difficult to really fix a frame on who is being imagined to give consent. If laboratory mice had to give consent in some particular way, we would write their genes so that they'd do whatever it was.

We're leaving the realm where these questions make normal reasonable moral sense in terms of "individuals" and "naturalness" and so forth. We use cloned strains of animals to run the exact same program over & over in different circumstances-- hacking out a momentary bit of code from the ongoing soup and prolonging it. It's difficult to stretch any moral understandings across this discontinuity.

<3

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[zCyl]

The implicit moral argument here is: If you could ask the mice for consent, and they had accurate knowledge of the options, they would choose to live in the lab rather than in the wild.

But is that a relevant moral argument if the "if" portion is impossible? The fact is, mice can't make a choice using a human scale of knowledge and awareness because they cannot have it. The argument first anthropomorphizes the mouse, then tries to speculate what it would choose if it were a human rather than a mouse. But if it were a human, we all agree we wouldn't put it in that situation in the first place, so the whole argument falls apart.

There's a moral argument to be made, perhaps, but I don't think that one works very well.

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[mungojelly]

The idea is that mice are incapable of understanding the situation well enough to give consent or to withhold it. Mice just act micey. It's our job therefore, since we have a bit more of a clue what's going on, to figure out whether or not laboratory life is acceptably pleasant for them. We have to make the decision for them.

It does inevitably require some anthropomorphizing, since we're incapable of really fully experiencing mousehood in the process of our deliberations, but we can try to formulate theories of what it's like to be a mouse, and incorporate everything we know about how mice experience life into our decision.

<3

Re:The myth of the poor mouse

[SimianOverlord]

we can try to formulate theories of what it's like to be a mouse, and incorporate everything we know about how mice experience life into our decision

In fact, our animal welfare systems are just another name for this. We anthropomorphise the mouse 'experience' and try to reduce pain and suffering the same way we would try to reduce pain and suffering.

Read the summary

[ion_]

I thought mice - being pan dimensional beings - were far more advanced than humans (ranked 3, just after dolphins). This is like modding an xbox 360/ps3/whatever with a Z80 - why whould you want to do that?

Well, duh, the summary answers your question:

"Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice in an effort to create realistic models of disorders like Parkinson's Disease."

If you want to research human diseases in such advanced beings as mice, you need to put stuff from humans to the mice.

Mouse?

[dreadpiratemark]

So typical of Logitech to toss out a new mouse with *great* new features (human like response!) two weeks after I buy their latest dual-laser bluetooth model. Anyone know the DPI on this new mouse?

Religious Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

A basic thought among most people in the world is that humans are greater, in some form or another, than all other entities. A basic thought in many religions is that humans have souls and these souls goto heaven when we die. If we make a mouse "human" enough, where it behaves, and thinks like a human, does that mouse now have a soul? Imagine if the mouse is capable of interacting with humans, where the only real difference is that the "souless" mouse is still physically a mouse, but with the metnalcapabilities of a "soulful" human. Will this mouse goto heaven? The religious consequences could be so drastic that they could crumble many belief systems around the world. I, for one, would love to see how human we can make any animal. We must push these limits. Many go through life wondering why? why are we here? where do we go afterwards? Unfortunately, certain people come up with ridiculously outrageous theories but believed by many who cannot think for themselves and are desparate for a "path" in life.

Re:Religious Consequences

[TripMaster Monkey]

Only creatures that possess souls possess the capacity to be worried about them.

Re:Religious Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

So, according to your train of thought, when we somehow give the mice the ability to "worry", they will suddenly have souls. That doesn't say much for "souls".

Re:Religious Consequences

[TripMaster Monkey]

And you get an F for reading comprehension. Thanks for playing, though.

My original post read,

Only creatures that possess souls possess the capacity to be worried about them.

I wasn't referring to their capacity to worry in general, I was referring to their capacity to worry about their souls...to worry about why they are here, to worry whether or not a part of themselves goes on after death....basically, to fully apprehend and worry about any of the four ultimate concerns of life, which are expressed as paradoxes: Freedom/ responsibility, death/striving for life, meaning/meaninglessness, isolation/desire for connection.

In short, the capacity for true existential anxiety.

Re:Religious Consequences

[thesandtiger]

Is it possible to have a conversation about science that doesn't bring in unprovable spiritual stuff, like souls etc?

There are plenty of reasons for doing or not doing stuff that aren't based on spirituality/religion/moral beliefs - reasons that can be expressed in terms that are related to the actual universe we inhabit, terms that are more or less empirical and objective, rather than based on purely subjective beliefs that vary from person to person based on whim and caprice.

I am not saying that people shouldn't have their own morality - they will or they won't, and it's none of my business if they do or don't - but I am saying that attempting to apply an individual's moral framework that is, by definition, personal and subjective to something that is, by definition, impersonal and objective, is pointless at best and lethal at worst.

Re:Religious Consequences

[k1773re7f]

Not when the scientific issue in debate deals with the merging of human with animal as this does. There are many rational thinking people, myslef included that do beleive that the main difference between humans and other animals is our concept if not possesion of a spirit or soul. This dabate, which can and in many universities, especlially in the pyshcology and philosphy departments, is framed whith in the context of science.

Since morality is the set of those things that deal with ethical and spitiual aspect of such matters, an open honest debate is warranted, if not indeed necessary. If for no other reason than to prevent us as humans from inventing the object of our ultimate demise.

It is our sense of morality that has kept us, so far, from already employing available technology suach as nuclear to the extent of our own demise.

And I for one do welcome our supreme being creator over lord.

Re:Religious Consequences

[thesandtiger]

I reject the very premise of your statement.

I don't care if many people believe they have souls - until they can provide some empirical evidence to back up that belief it is absolutely irrelevant to any discussion of scientific and technologic issues.

You say that morality - a sense of good/evil - has kept us from destroying ourselves. I say bullshit - I can cite numerous reasons for not engaging in various "immoral" acts that are based purely on empirical evidence and things that don't rely on hand-waving and the invoking of some supreme being.

If your beliefs comfort you, then that's wonderful and nice for you - but your beliefs, in the absence of evidence (your faith, in other words) has absolutely nothing to do with science, has no relevance to science, and has no place in any sort of scientific discussion. Nor do mine. Nor do the beliefs of any one person or any group of people.

Just because "many people" believe in something doesn't give it validity. Many people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and yet one man with a telescope was able to prove that it isn't.

You state that because this recent development involves humans that it is somehow special and thus necessitates discussion. Why? What makes humans so special? Don't wave your hands and say "souls" - I'm not buying that. Make an argument based on facts, on things that impartial observers can agree on, that can be demonstrated to have at least some basis in the objective world.

Re:Religious Consequences

[jdigriz]

Humans are special because they are the only animal that both has the capacity for rigorous, logical, evidentiary, empirical thought and rejects using that capacity by babbling about nonprovable concepts in preference to it. No other organism is known to do this.

Presumably the danger is that we might contaminate mice with our religiosity if we make them too human. And then people might look silly for believing the same things that mice do.

I am waiting for the mouse with large brain.

[Inyu]

If human and mouse differs genetically so little (97.5% similar), then having a human genome, is it difficult to make a mouse with the brain, size similar to that of humans? I think that wouldn't be bad if their intelligence was a little bit superior than those of us who do evil.

Where are these experiments being done???

[jroate]

The laboratory conducting these experiments wouldn't by any chance be the Nihm Research Institute would it??

It has already gone too far...

[vistic]

"'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

There are those of us that thing animal experimentation is already an example of crossing the boundaries of what science can do ethically.

(I always get flamed for saying this on slashdot...)

Re:It has already gone too far...

[masnare]

(I always get flamed for saying this on slashdot...)

So why should this time be any exception? We are people, they are mice. We are, by any metric or measurement you could possibly choose, superior. There was a comedian who once said something along the following lines:

"If hooking a car battery up to a monkey's brain will help find the cure for AIDS and save somebody's life, I have two things to say... the red is positive and the black is negative."

Here, here.

Re:It has already gone too far...

[JaredOfEuropa]

There are those of us that thing animal experimentation is already an example of crossing the boundaries of what science can do ethically. (I always get flamed for saying this on slashdot...)

Flamed, or presented with counter-arguments?

I think it is fine to kill or hurt animals to provide clothing, food, to test medications, and to advance science in general. I also think we should keep the suffering of the animals in question to a minimum, and that our use of animals should stop when there are good alternatives. (No, vegan diets and human test subjects are not viable alternatives)

In this case, there is no good alternative to tinkering with mice, and the knowledge gained is valuable enough. Let them continue, I say.

Brain in a jar

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to keep a brain in a jar, I think you should add a slice of lemon, for freshness.

Yuck Factor / Prior Art

[SeanDuggan]

*rolls eyes* Why should there be a "yuck factor" associated with it? I mean, the way they get the brain cells there is by injecting dead baby into them.

As for the comment made in the article that there has never been a case where embryonic stem cells have been injected into humans, I cast aspersions on that assertation. I remember reading a Discover magazine article about 5 years ago where they were experimenting with injecting stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinsons. The article was actually about a recent experiment where they took half of the people and gave them the stem cell injections and the other half just had the needle stuck into their brain. The improvement rate was increased for both over the control group with no treatment, but the rate was the same whether or not the stem cells were present.

...and airborne

[Anonymous Coward]

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/0 6/229200

what about the librarian?

[MadJo]

"You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a [..] monkey's body."
never call the librarian 'monkey'

Re:what about the librarian?

[john83]

never call the librarian 'monkey'

OOK!

While we're on the literary references trail, they're not scientists and mice - they're witches and children!

Haven't seen mice with human brains yet

[roman_mir]

But quite often on my contracts I see humans with mice brains.

They are called managers.

Ethics

[zoeblade]

Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the "yuck factor."

Yeah, because causing brain damage on purpopse, then killing the animal a few weeks later, often for no apparent reason, is usually ethically fine.

Re:Ethics

[CmdrGravy]

"Often for no apparent reason"

Apparent to whom, the scientists running the experiments or fundamentalist activists unwilling to see anthing contrary to their extremist viewpoints ?

Animals are animals, humans are human and don't actually need any justification to hunt, kill, torture, eat or experiment on animals.

Re:Ethics

[zoeblade]

Apparent to whom, the scientists running the experiments or fundamentalist activists unwilling to see anthing contrary to their extremist viewpoints ?

Well, quoting an example from the article I linked to in my parent post:

Two rhesus macaques were implanted with brain electrodes in order to record activity during sleep and whilst awake. This is despite the fact that non-invasive imaging techniques yield vast amounts of information about how the human brain functions while people are slumbering or awake.

So, two rhesus macaques were needlessly tortured to extract information about humans (which they're clearly not) that we already know.

Animals are animals, humans are human and don't actually need any justification to hunt, kill, torture, eat or experiment on animals.

If you don't feel the need to justify torture, I'm not entirely sure that I'm the one with the extremist viewpoint.

Re:Ethics

[CmdrGravy]

I can't actually access that web site at work. However all that piece you have quoted tells us is that non invasive techniques can yield information as can implanted electrodes.

How you manage to extrapolate this to accusations of needless torture is interesting but has no basis in any of the facts you have quoted.

It is probable that the scientists know what information they are wishing to gather from this experiment and have decided that it cannot be gained through non invasive techniques but can be gained through using implants, this is a perfectly rational decision and does not make the scientists involved "monsters", or "torturers" or "evil people".

Your entire justifcation for saying that the monkeys have been needlessly tortured is that firstly you have no idea what the scientists are actually studying and secondly you believe experimenting on animals equates to torture.

The vast majority of people believe that experimenting on animals is an acceptable practice and does not consitute torture.

If from reading the text you have quoted you have arrived at the conclusion that needless torture is being carried out then you are basing your opinion on prejudicial belief alone which makes you a fundamentalist.

Personally I don't enjoy torturing or killing animals for fun but I can't see any reason why I shouldn't do that if I wanted to and you haven't given me any good reason why I shouldn't.

Stuart Little

[SWroclawski]

[Insert Stuart Little Joke Here]

Re:Stuart Little

[cciRRus]

Did I go to the wrong website? This is Slashdot, right? News for nerds?

Stuart Little... You mean you watch that?

Re:poor humans

[dinomo]

This reminds me of the poignant Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keyes. http://tinyurl.com/d8obl going one step too far in making mice more intelligent and the fragile state of the human condition.

Animal studies

[idhindsight]

are innefective. Animals are simply too different from humans. Placing human brain cells in them to make them more similar is like putting a hat on them and saying "Look, they're little cowboys!"

Mice don't exist so that we can use them as disposable commodities.

Re:Animal studies

[Anonymous Coward]

But we exist so we can post on slashdot?

Re:Animal studies

[tpjunkie]

So you're saying that for example, a study involving oxygen binding rates on animal hemoglobins, some of which differ from the human hemoglobin by a single (small, neutral) protein are completely innefective because they're "too different from humans"? Many animals, and especially mammals share many genetic similarities with humans, particularly for things that are necessary to life, like the metabolic pathways. I am a biologist, and I can assure you that animal studies have provided immeasurable benefits to humankind despite their slight genetic differences.

Re:Animal studies

[cnettel]

Mice exist because they were able to procreate before they were killed. We just keep it that way for inbred lines that wouldn't survive for a day in "reality".

BTW, it's kind of strange to see the same people asserting that (while you didn't do so, explicitely) mice etc are "thinking", feeling creatures just like you and me, while they also state that they are useless as laboratory models, because of "all the differences".

Re:Animal studies

[idhindsight]

BTW, it's kind of strange to see the same people asserting that (while you didn't do so, explicitely) mice etc are "thinking", feeling creatures just like you and me, while they also state that they are useless as laboratory models, because of "all the differences".

I think you miss the point. They are creatures capable of thought, and they feel pain, but that does not make them "just like you and me". It makes them deserving of compassion. Merely because some might make the claim that an animal deserves compassion and a decent level of respect, that doesn't mean they are human-like or that they are being placed in the same realm as humans.

Re:Animal studies

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't talk about compation, please. There is no compation or respect.
Why some people don't kill other ? because they fear the reaction of other people.

Why do you help the old women to cross the road ? Because you want other people recognise you as a kind person.
Why some people want more and more money ? to get more power in the society.
Why those people want to get more power ? to "get the girl" more easily...
Why people protect they children ?

Why ? ... to propagate there own genes. because when doing all this brain generate some neuro-trasmitter which procure some plaisure. this is the final response to all questions.

We act all as animals, we follow our instinct. but we are more pragmatic and we can do it many many many ways.

All acts are "interested", when we think that an act is not, it is just because the WHY is not clear and the benefit is not immediate.

I don't says it is a good or a bad thing. this is the the way the things are.

NERD VIEW : Propagate genes is the Problem, the brain is the computer computer and "Live" is the time we all have to build a program which solve the problem.

Re:Animal studies

[nojomofo]

What's your background? What's your basis for saying this? I know people who work in the pharmaceutical industry, and from talking with them, it's very clear that there's a large body of knowledge about how mouse models translate to human models for pharmaceutical treatment. Not that it's perfect, but your blanket statement needs some backup. I would, without other evidence, tend to trust that the researchers performing these experiments have some idea of what they hope to achieve (and a reasonable idea that it's possible to achieve) much more than I would believe some random person on the internet who states that it doesn't make sense....

Dolphin gang rape

[SeanDuggan]

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.
You, sir, have just blown my mind. What a wonderful mental image to start my day off with...

o/"Transporting young gulls across a staid lion for immoral porpoises... o/"

Re:Dolphin gang rape

[PakProtector]

If you think that's bad, well. I guess you think it's bad.

No match for my cat

[Maljin Jolt]

Even with full humain brain, these mice would be no match for my cat Katerina. Humans are not. I wish I could build an AI model of her.

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?

[tumbleweedsi]

Umm, I think so Brain, but me and Pippy Longsockings? I mean what would the children look like?

All this will lead to...

[Dante Shamest]

...a mighty mouse that will cy "Here I come to save the day!!!".

Who's Brain exactly?

[bohemian72]

Abby Normal - Mice tap dancing around bellowing "Puttin on da witz!"
or maybe
Samuel L Jackson - "Who the fuck moved my goddamn cheese, motherfucker?!"

New opportunities for mice!

[HikingStick]

Wow! That means mice have just as much brain power as most politicians! Herbert the lab mouse for president!

Transplant Brain Cells?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know all you have to do is genetically engineer the mice to be bigger, which will have bigger brains and thus act more intelligent and human like? Furthermore, eventually these mice will find a way to escape the titanium cage and sink the ex-subpen which has been converted into a lab to study these terrifying mice...

You WERE pondering what I was pondering!

[Anonymous Coward]

...and I haven't even gotten around to that Pippi Longstocking thing yet.

There is a difference

[Shihar]

At least, they wont be too "human" and so, they will not destroy and kill other species only for fun. This right, we cannot give to any other animal, because we can easily lost our "superiority".

You have never owned a cat, have you? You could have the fattest and most well fed cat on the earth, and that vicious creature will still merrily kill anything smaller then it just for shits and giggles. In fact, not only do they kill the poor critter, but if they can, they will terrorize it before they kill it. You have never seen sadism until you have seen a cat corner a creature smaller then it.

If anything, the poor critters of the earth should be thankful that they got smart monkeys with some level of empathy towards each other and other critters rather then a race of smart cats.

Claims that humans are any different in their destructive impulses from other animals are down right silly. If any base emotion separates humanity from other animals, it is empathy. No other animal I know of keeps pets simply because we enjoy the company of other non-human species. No animal I know of tries to feed and help those outside of its social group. No animal I know of shows any sort of restraint or preservationist feeling when dealing with the environment.

If there is a difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom, it isn't in aggression or joy in killing. Many other animals merrily murder anything outside of its immediate social circle. Hell, many other animals merrily murder anything INSIDE its social circle. If there is some base desire that humanity holds that other animals appear to lack, it is the empathy to RESTRAIN from giving into base desires for aggression and destruction of those that are outside of our social circle.

Re:There is a difference

[ichigo 2.0]

Imagination is the thing that separates us from animals. If a smart cat race ruled the world then they would most likely also have imagination, thus being able to imagine how a mouse feels when they play with it. I'm guessing you don't have a dog, they are quite capable of empathy, i.e. sensing how others feel.

Re:There is a difference

[Suidae]

No other animal I know of keeps pets simply because we enjoy the company of other non-human specie

Meet Koko's kitten. In case you've been living in a cave the last couple decades, Koko is a female gorilla who asked for and was given a pet cat, which she named ('All Ball', because it had no tail) and cared for until it was killed in a auto accident.

It's not that animals aren't capable of many of the capacities that we humans exibit, its just that they have different social situations that cause them to exibit different behaviors. Much of what we think of as fundamentally human activities are not features of the human genetic code, they are features of our social context, something that has been built up over tens of thousands of years. Raising other primates with that social context tends to bring out those behaviors in them as well, to some extent. If human children were raised in a gorilla society they would likely have the same behaviors and values as the gorillas. From Wikipedia:

[...] Feral children lack the basic social skills which are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may eat with their hands at a great rate, be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language. It is essentially impossible to convert a child who became isolated at a very young age into a relatively normal member of society.

Feral Children

Culture is a major factor in what makes humanity what it is, not necessarily just our potential for intelligence, compassion, imagination and empathy.

Chimps that have been taught sign language have been known to reject non-signing peers, refering to them as "dumb monkeys" because of their inability to communicate. They teach sign language to their children, and might be expected to form more complex societies if there were enough of them interacting.

It would be a facinating experiment to create a nature preserve of tens of signing chimps and keep presenting them with challenges that require them to hone their communication and cooperation skills.

Re:There is a difference

[Anonymous Coward]

No other animal I know of keeps pets simply because we enjoy the company of other non-human species.
Pets are just symbiotes, and there are incredible numbers of natural symbiotes in the wild. One might argue that pets aren't symbiotes, but we learn things and gain emotional companionship from pets and in return we feed them. It's by definition symbiotic, despite any philosophical notions we humans may have about it. Whether animals in the wild feel emotional attachment to symbiotes, I have no idea. I could imagine that where one-on-one relationships develop, there could easily be emotional status attached to having a symbiote present or not. The example I can think of is the blind shrimp that lives with a fish. I imagine both the fish and the shrimp feel safe when together, and either fear or "loniliness" when apart that makes them seek each other out in the first place. "Lower" animals seem to have shorter memories than humans as well, which probably reduces the emotional attachment to ones of immediate fear or comfort instead of long-lasting companionship, but who knows?

If there is a difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom, it isn't in aggression or joy in killing. Many other animals merrily murder anything outside of its immediate social circle. Hell, many other animals merrily murder anything INSIDE its social circle. If there is some base desire that humanity holds that other animals appear to lack, it is the empathy to RESTRAIN from giving into base desires for aggression and destruction of those that are outside of our social circle.

Empathy is not the natural state of humanity, it's simply one of our many tools for surviving. You'll note that whenever survival is on the line, empathy generally falls rather low. The people who are ruled by empathy are almost always in the minority when the shit hits the fan. Not very many people helped Jews or Native Americans (or any other endangered group) escape certain death, and we celebrate people who help homeless people or orphaned children simply because few people actually do that. We all feel the empathy, which is essentially an application of another person's situation upon ourselves, because it's a learning experience. We strive to avoid pain and suffering, and hence feel empathy when we see another being have pain and suffering in order to avoid the situation they've gotten into. Animals feel the same thing, especially social animals like dogs. The difference is that people have devised ways to limit or eliminate pain and suffering.

The only real difference between humanity and the rest of the animal kingdom is the advanced tools we possess, and the knowledge to use them. Don't forget that homo sapiens has not changed appreciably in the last few thousand years, but only recently have we actually been able to do something about helping poor, starving people and curing disease with modern medicine. The tools we use to do that are ephemeral, they would be totally lost in two or three generations without the continuous education we pass on to our offspring. Without our tools we'd be walking, talking, chimps with the same problems they face, and maybe a little more intelligence in solving them, but we'd probably revert to a lot of their behavior out of necessity.

Wrong Dept

[Stopher2475]

This should have been posted in the Secret of Nimh dept.=)

Watching TV right now...

[4Dmonkey]

"Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice in an effort to create realistic models of.........." "Meanwhile CEO of Holy Earth Inc Mr GOD (aka Mr I. M. Almighty) has moved to the courts accusing scientists for reverse engineering their product, copyright infringements and disrespecting patents. He was addressing an emergency press conference in Kansas, in which ....." "In other news, many nuclear missiles were found missing from a secret Russian base. Investigators are still trying to find the cause of hundreds of mice footprints in surrounding area....."

Somehow

[stuffduff]

Somehow the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy doesn't seem quite so far fetched as before.

Mice Created With Human Brain Cells

[SupaKoopa]

My first impression, from the title of the article, was that they took a human brain cell and made a mouse out of it...I think that crosses the "yuck factor".

Another prime example...

[lone_knight]

... Of /. misnaming an article. I scanned through the rest of the posts, and couldn't believe no one else had commented on this yet. But from the topic, I was expecting an article more along the lines of, "Scientists prove evolution, through the creation of a fully functional mouse from 100,000 brain cells!"

That aside, it's always fun to read a flame war consisting of "Stop mistreating the poor, cute little mices!" vs. "U R dum, mice R dum, neener neener, we gonna inject us some brains!"

It seems the real ethical question is, do we value ALL life, or just human life, or should we weigh the two differently?

If one believes that humans have a soul (and animals do not) from this premise you could conclude that human life has greater inherrent value than animal life, and in a laisse faire sense, the loss of the happiness of a few animals is far outweighed by the increased happiness for humankind (except for the whining PETA's, of course).

If one believes that humans are equally of value as other animals, you still have the question, if you don't use animals for testing, what humans will you use for testing instead? If you believe in evolution, do you believe that humans have developed beyond other creatures, and should that give us preference on a rank of the species?

Once you have decided for a side of the major ethical question, there are of course a miriade of additional debates and arguments one could make, but you lose any common ground in which to argue with someone on the opposing side.

Since I have yet to see any tangible proof for souls (for the first argument), or a rational reason why humans aren't superior simply based on evolution (for the second argument), it really is entirely a matter of subjective personal preference which side you are on, and therefore all of the "you suck, i'm right" arguments on /. that I have seen thusfar are completely useless.

They've injected human brain cells into mice?

[Young Master Ploppy]

Scientists have added 100,000 human brain cells to mice

So when are they going to add some into my boss?

Re:That seems about right...

[trongey]

So are you saying that you have other people who do your cow orking for you? I wish I had that kind of luxury.

What about humanizing them?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still mice, not people. Why do all the ethical idiots have to find reasons to ruin extraordinary expirements?

that is easy, cat ai

[SmallFurryCreature]

while(true) sleep();

Re:that is easy, cat ai

[Maljin Jolt]

No, it is not. Example: When a visitor come, she decides to climb the coat down to pockets, pick significant item such as keys ring and put it in some other room under the carpet or in random drawer. Then, she enjoys watching humans seeking the item from the top position. That's game of unknown quests for humans. If you win, you are allowed to stroke her. But it can take hours until you recognize the game is on and more hours to win it.

Cat laziness is higly selective: she never walks over the keyboard when computer is powered off.

So I repeat, a mouse with a human brain would have no chance against her.

the obligitory....

[Spyder]

I for one welcome our new rodent overlords.

A boss with a brain would fire you for being on /.

[SmallFurryCreature]

Do not ask for a boss with a brain, the idiots are so much easier to manage and can be told that sites like /. are important tech information sites you need to visit to stay current in your field.

How about me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can they put 100,000 human brain cells put back in my head? I'm sure I killed that many on Saturday night alone.

Mice vs rats

[payndz]

If the mice get too smart, no problem - we can just send in the rat brain-controlled F-22s to wipe them out with an airstrike!

If we gave some humans some mice brains

[t35t0r]

..they might actually get a clue.

In other news...

[Solo-Malee]

...said mice establish a workers co-operative and corner the market for production of Cheddar Cheese.

Check these out

[kadathseeker]

http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=475 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=342 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=361 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=445 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=333 http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News .asp?NewsNum=275

Free will causes evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

And dolphins also commit gang-rape.

It is a common opinion among theologians that all suffering is caused by evil, which in turn is caused by free will. Humans have free will, animals don't, so therefore all the evil in the world is only the fault of humans.

Evidence such as this (animal rape) suggests that everything we deem "evil" is rooted in our own animal instincts. Not only are animals driven to do it, but so are we.

Free will, then, is the ability to think, "well gee, as much fun as gang-raping that dolphin would be, I don't think the dolphin will like it much, so I just won't do it."

So, I maintain, free will isn't the cause of evil, but rather, our only defense against it.

I know, offtopic. Free will and all that. Sue me.

First thing said by human/mice clones:

[airship]

"Kill meeeee.... Kill meeee.....!"

Is it the structure of the cell?

[otis wildflower]

IANAB, so I'm curious.. From what I know, it's not just the brain cell that matters, but how many, densely packed and networked they are together that make humans unique. I guess that's one of the things they're trying to find out..

Chimera?

[CokoBWare]

Sounds like these guys have been watching too many episodes of Full Metal Alchemist, and are making chimeras, albeit very little ones. Science takes things too far, and we'll suddenly have "smart mice" running the world!

Perspective

[beforewisdom]

"'The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,' said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. 'But I don't think this research comes even close to that.'"

Is this really a worry when we are using Chimpanzees like disposable toilet tissue for research -- who much closer relatives?

For that matter, does it matter considering what we do to other people who are 100% genetically identical to humans?

Re:Perspective

[k1773re7f]

That's silly, why would researchers want to wipe thier dirty butts with chimpanzee's? Toilet paper is easier to handle, doesn't fight you racket when you wipe your fecese on it and doesn't keep hopping out of the toilet and run around the lab tearing it up and throwing things at you when you try to flush it.

Beside, chimpanzees are much better for injecting with new drugs to look for lethal side effects and injecting with cancer cells.

Think before you post such preposterous things.

And you beat my AP score?

So if someone asks you

[VisceralLogic]

"Are you a mouse or a man?" you can say you're 97.5% a mouse

"The way things are" - the mice from 'Babe'

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, Snyder did it! We're Doomed.

"'You will NEVER have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body..."

As soon as you say Never,
well then it is fated to happen without fail.

The hard part will be getting the new mice jobs:
'Welcome to Wennnndeeeeys! May I take your order?' is hard to hear in that tiny cute voice!

A new rule for scientists:

If your test subject becomes smart enough to ask you not to do the experiment, you should stop.

Don't Kill 'em!

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be abortion, and that's wrong!

Silly scientists...., the MPAA has a smart mouse.

[CodeShark]

They just need to track down that mouse from the movie, whawazat?

Mouse Hunt, anybody?

or call Bill G. and ask for that new and improved mouse for XP from M$, Logitech, et al. I forget...

****grin******

I sorry.. couldna help meeself.... ;-)

Yuck Factor?

[glomph]

A demented illiterate moron from Texas wreaks havoc, and THIS is 'approaching the yuck factor'? Dude, we are wayyyyy beyond that.

RIAA?

[uberdave]

Rodent Intelligence Association of America?

Mice with human brain cells?

[Alpha_Traveller]

Next thing you know they'll be running for public office and trying to make a run for the presidency.

I personally welcome our Mice-of-Men overlords.

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

A loaded revolver.

Now I understand how you murderous Yids perpetrated Bolshevik genecide: having no defense against dissidence, you must off the opposition.

Woe to them who live under Judaeocracy.

Donors?

[kbielefe]

How does one sign up to donate the human brain cells? I only use 10% of mine at a time anyway. Would I be able to telepathically communicate with the mice? Why do the articles never answer the important questions?

Bummer

[PokerAndroid]

'You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey's body

Bummer, the mice would make great christmas gifts.

The mouse model might be able to fuck with the cat. Tease it somehow, piss in its' food, etc.

The monkey model would probably be able to service most of my needs (making coffee, lighting cigarettes, bumming condiments from the neighbors, etc). Might have to put a shock collar on it though. As I understand it, they are strong enough to rip off a persons arms. That would suck.

Eeeek !

[smoker2]

See title ...

Fitting Slashdot Quote

[CrazedWalrus]

Am I the only one who noticed the quote at the bottom of the page and its strange relevance to the article?

Clarke's Conclusion: Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.

Here he comes to save the day.....

[jmcwork]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

97.5% but no cheese

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, not only do mice not love cheese, but it kind of messes them up, too.

Even now

[soupdevil]

the mice are probably not too happy about it.

Willard and Ben talk about being in

[davidsyes]

a RAT RACE.

Maybe So, where there's a WILL there's a WILLARD...

Will the real Ben be a HASBEEN?

Maybe Hollywierd will come up with Ben-2: The RAT IN YOU

and

Willard 2...

Right

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mice Created With Human Brain Cells"

No. They put human brain cells inside of mice, they didn't use them to create mice.

too far

[pyrrho]

unless there is no yuck factor... mice with human brains sound interesting to me.

um

[pyrrho]

think about this, do you think mice are not thinking organisms... and when they act, do they know they act? Do they know they eat, while they ear? i.e. are they not already conscious?

humans are just stupid animals as well.

Mice are not the answer

[writerjosh]

I don't think we have to worry too much about mice becoming our new overlords. What we do have to worry about is straight-out cloning. As for these mice, they are light years from ever become an ethical risk (unless you are against lab-testing on mice to begin with).

Re:fp

[PakProtector]

Dude. My last name is von Kleist. I'm German, you fuckwit. You got the killing order backwards.

Let me ask you this then....

[rubberbando]

If we removed the 2.5% of the DNA that is different and replaced it with the 2.5% that we humans have that they don't, what would we get?

Re:Let me ask you this then....

[KylePflug]

A dead mouse?

Yay!

[JohnsonWax]

Finally a mouse smart enough to be elected President.

Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?

295 comments

[appleLaserWriter]

And no one has mentioned Algernon?

Re:295 comments

[Poltras]

302 comments, and you did...

Now, ...

[DoktorTomoe]

... will the mouse be promoting KDE or Gnome?

In other news, human created with chimp brain cell

[CarpetShark]

Although it's fascinating that mice could be created with human brain cells, this is actually the second such experiment. Whatever the reason... something to do with DNA that I don't quite understand... it turned out to be easier to modify chimp genes than mice genes to this. The research team put up a site, here.

Who's brain?

[sgt scrub]

If they are cells from American humans I'm not worried about them taking over the world. They would most likely start hitting the beers by noon and pushing back bong hits soon after work.

This is Sc0re:5, Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saving the link and I'll mod it up as soon as I get new mod points.

In other words, MOD PARENT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

human rights

[ZhuLien]

Does that mean they fall into the human rights abuse category?

Re:human rights

[ZhuLien]

This brings in an interesting argument. What % of human do you need to be to be considered human? Is a human with prosthetic limbs and bionic heart and ears 70% human? As the gap narrows between bionic people human mice (or perhaps in future, monkeys), won't things start getting blurred?

Mouse Brain Podcast

[bluejack]

Ahoy. FWIW: I have just posted a podcast on this article, with commentary on the actual published paper. Although I tried to get the scientists of record to answer some questions, I'm sorry to say they declined.

The interesting thing about this study is that the human brain cells appeared to behave much more like mouse brain cells than they did like human brain cells.

The podcast is here: overclocked.libsyn.com.

Rats as pets

[dbcad7]

Up until a few years ago, I would never in my wildest dreams think about having a rat as a pet. My girlfreind thogh had had them before, so we went to the petstore and saved a little white baby from becoming snake-food. I still had my doubts, especially when it raised up with it's paws together and looked so "ratlike". However the 2 years that we had this creature were awsome. Rat's have a personality, show affection, and are smart. The drawback as a pet, is the lifespan. When our rat died it was really traumatic, because she was like part of the family.

I suppose that the reason people are opposed to animal testing, is because the relate it to the animals they care about. I think there would be even greater outrage if it were dogs and cats. Regardless of my story though, I think that if testing leads to safty and cures, well then I guess we gotta do it.

Mice Created With Human Brain Cells...

[Hutchizon]

What could possibly go wrong?

What's "human" anyway?

[Sashira]

I like animals. Animals are a lot like people - a lot of selfish bastards who fight for their own gain and that of their kin. Rats will do almost anything to survive, so if the tables were turned they'd probably be sticking their cells in our skulls to try and get an edge on death. The reason we can do it to them is because we evolved thumbs and frontal lobes and enormous size before they did. Does that make it right? I think not, because I'm fond of rats. They're intelligent and feeling creatures that are our kin by virtue of being mammals, and are enough like us that we think they have cute babies. Rats are not humans. Sticking our bits in their heads will not magically make them humans. But maybe they are people in their way, and it is wrong to torture people just to get an edge on nature. We have enough advantages as a species; we're winning. Let's just leave well enough alone - or at least have the decency to experiment on our own species. Let people sign release forms of their own free will, trading rights to their brains for $500 and a ride to the bus stop. I bet you'd get some takers. By the way, I've never met a monkey I liked, so you can throw those assholes under the knife if their ecosystems can spare them.

Bingo

[p3d0]

You got his point exactly.

Paging Mrs. Frisby...

[mengel]

Seems to me I've heard this idea before...

Typo:

[SimianOverlord]

We try to reduce pain and suffering in the way we imagine we would experience pain and suffering. Thus, from time to time, arguments erupt over how animals experience pain, for example is a caught fish in agony due to the hook through it's lip.

Easy to find that much computing power....

[woolio]

IBM BlueGene by thy name...

If you have a few million dollars and your own 10MW power plant, you'd be all set....

But I have a hunch that mice are smart enough not to attempt such feats.

Mice with human Brains escape!

[Kakodeva]

Genetic altered Mice with human brains escaped the confines of the scientific community and after weeks of searching were found and arrested by police. Most were being pursued by female mice in angry paternity lawsuits, nearly all of them were obese from drinking large amounts of beer and cheese puffs. Violent mouse gang activity between black mice wearing Oakland Raider clothing agianst a rival white mouse gang wearing the San Diego Charger logos. A red furred mouse was arrested after a fight with a tranvestite mouse hitchhiker. Several other mice were seen standing on soap boxes speaking long dialoges of lies an innuendo attempting to gain political office. Half were dead in wars fought over territory and vauge ambiguous mouse gods. A small group had kidnapped some humans and were performing medical experiments involving placing mouse brains into human bodies, with some very positive results. One mouse changed the color of his fur, joined the Jehovah Witnesses and began moon dancing.