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Designer Mice Made to Order
blackbearnh writes "CNN is reporting about the world of designer mice. No, not the kind you click, the kind that scamper around and eat cheese. An effort is underway to produce mice with each of the 20-25,000 individual mouse genes "knocked out", which could lead to novel new treatments for humans. It turns out that after fully sequencing the mouse genome, the little fellas are almost identical to humans. From the article: 'A mouse with arthritis runs close to $200; two pairs of epileptic mice can cost 10 times that. You want three blind mice? That'll run you about $250. And for your own custom mouse, with the genetic modification of your choosing, expect to pay as much as $100,000.'"
Oh, and Would you like to have fries with it?
...Priceless...
It's probably for scientific research... I seriously doubt that someone would buy mutant mice for fun.. well, unless they had frickin' laser pointers on their heads.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
How much for a pair of fast, reliable, self-sustaining mice that can keep my cats exercising and entertained each day so I don't have to?
Does not the deliberate creation of a living creature to have a specific disability of some sort seem in some way cruel or inhumane? Or is it just me?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Oh, those clever mice, letting their genes be manipulated, mysteriously developing arthritis, glowing in the dark.
How about a Logitech mouse, with a laser and a scroll wheel? I like to shop around for the best price.
How about a mouse in a leopard skin print to match my decour?
I'm partially kidding; but partially serious too. If today's california condor isn't well suited in the modern environment; wouldn't it be better to grow better ones more able to survive - rather than forcing the unfortunate few remaining ones to suffer in an environment no longer well suited to them?
If I wan't some blind mice, I can just poke eyes right?
Ever heard of scientific research?
1. Catch three normal mice somewhere
2. !!!!!!
3. Sell three blind mice for $250
4. Profit!
Why can't
Work with me here.. A mouse with laser beams for eyes!! And he flies, and with super strength shall lay the capitals of the world to waste! I shall call him.. MIGHTY MOUSE!!
Unless you pay me the sum of One Million Dollars!!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
...for a superintelligent white mouse? I want to be able to create my own three-dimensional sculpture with a living element before those things go out of style.
A patient Richard Gere is waiting for this technology to be passed on to hampsters.
Then I realized that given the makeup of /. (lots of "hard science" geeks), this could be considered new information to a number of people here. But still, news? I can only assume that when an old topic hits CNN, it suddenly becomes news again.
And no, I didn't RTFA very much.
You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".
Jeez - I am one of those tree hugging animal rights people but your post just screams "pratt" to me. Either that or <tinfoil-hat>agent-provocateur for pharma-com</tinfoil-hat>
.This is where the serious fun begins.
Can you make them with the cheese already inside?
That would really save me a lot of trouble...
I prefer Mozzerella.
Thanks in advance.
I mean, if they're that close to human beings in terms of genetics, couldnt we just turn them into uber-smart rats? (mice with massive brains, etc.) 100,000 is a bargain for a mouse with psychic powerz
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
At first you sounded like a knee-jerk animal rights activist. Then when I got to your last line, it became apparent that you're a trolling moron.
They're for pharmaceutical research. Or did you think that biologists don't have moral problems creating and testing drugs on humans without the benefit of animal models?
Does this count as intelligent design?
Based on the movies I've seen, they should be coming out around the year 2020 along with the flying car and complete meals in pill form.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule. -Randal
There is nothing cuter than a diabetic mouse.
I'm saving up and getting me two.
How much for a pair of reproducing "mice" that are a big as beavers, can chew through the aluminium siding, rip arms and legs off with their paws, and can run 100 yards in 10 seconds?
What is stopping anyone from making these ecological monsters? Is there some kind of scientific oversight group? Or a set of defined ethical and/or ecological guidelines? Like in Pierre Ouilette's sci-fi novel about plant-animal genetic hybrids that was published in 1993 and whose name excapes me.
The people here are a bunch of scientific illiterates who just want a pretext to bitch about patents and hold forth on how uneducated everyone else is. Honestly, when science news here isn't flat out wrong I consider it a win.
So now I can order some really cool altered mice for my pet snake! No more plain old food anymore. Designer gourmet altered mice coming right up. I wonder if he would like them spots or what? No more ghetto albino mice.
My humor is probably your flamebait
No, for cute I expect them to bred up to the size of Beagles. Of course, at that point I've recreated the woodchuck, so I'd be better off trying to domesticate an existing rodent, rather than getting one custom designed.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
I want a Christian Dior mouse, with pink floral ornament and letters "CD" on the belly.
You know, it was the "oh so cute" comment that gave it away. Somehow I suspect that anyone paying for a mouse with diabetes is probably more concerned about diabetes than "cute".
Although obese mice are pretty darn cute. Pic. More.
I work in a heart research lab where we cut the hearts out of the mice and attach them to a working heart machine and pump a blood subsitute through it. Then we test various drugs and load conditions on it. The question is would you like to volunteer so that we test the drugs first on you, or your older family members, instead of the mice so as to spare their lives? Or would you rather be assured that in hundreds of mamalian tests the durgs performed as they are supposed to and the effects are clear and reproducible.
We abide by the rules and anaesthesize the mice carefully, we don't torture them and try to do the best we can to minimize their suffering. Personally I wish we didn't have to do this, I don't like to kill things -- animals or people, but in this case it is worth it to save many human lives.
Ooooh, send me a little furry with the gay gene and dress him up in leather. I'll call him tiddliwinks.
Maybe a bit offtopic, but a friend of mine that was a huge reptile buff always had feeder mice around. After about 4 generations of inbreeding, he'd get mice with really long hair - like little guinea pigs.
The amount of "genetic design" (to borrow the phrase from Blade Runner) required to make condors or any other species "better adapted to a new habitat" is simply not possible with today's knowledge of biology. Every aspect of the condor's physiology - lung function, flight muscles, temperature tolerance and body insulation, sight - is the result of millenia of "tweaking" via natural selection. We can currently barely get a single gene to express predictably in a new species, and that requires a lot of work and money to do. "Re-adapting" the condor is something a Victorian pigeon breeder would have much better luck at than a modern molecular biotechnologist - but he'd still need decades to do it, one generation at a time.
"Knockout mice" are altered to reduce or eliminate a single gene's function, in a simple binary fashion. They are an extremely reductionist technology, used to answer quite reductionist questions of how molecular pathways behave. They are, despite their cost and sophistication (and usefulness), a very crude development.
Freedom: "I won't!"
...welcome our disabled rodent overlords.
How can we raise animals just to kill and eat them? How can we raise animals just for leather? The world is a messed up place. But you can't really point fingers at any generation because humans have been doing crap on the same level as this as long as we have exsisted. I mean think about it we used apes for radiation tests to see how it would effect humans. We sent chimps into space as a test and if they didn't come back alive we would have just done it again and again until they came back alive.
How soon until I can order one of these?
$100,000 is a small price to pay for finally kicking some script kiddie ass in Counter-Strike...
- Genetic diversity. Great, so you've got 34 condors now instead of 0! Except, oops, they all have the exact same genes. Look forward to a brief period of what evolutionary biologists call "Founder Syndrome" and the rest of the world calls "inbreeding".
- Pack sustainability. It may not be enough to just make 2 or 20 condors. It may be that without a certain critical lower bound of population, social, mating, etc behaviors will fail to kick in and the species will just die out again a week after you reintroduced it.
- Social behavior. Many species cannot effectively or cannot be raised in captivity. You need existing members of the species to do things like teach it social behaviors. You can't do that if you've just killed off all the "in the wild" animals of that type and all you've got is born-in-captivity clones.
I mean, it's maybe an idea worth looking into. But don't expect it to solve problems or anything....can I get one hell-bent on world domination, and one with the IQ of a North Dakotan Winter?
I just dunno what I'd call 'em...... NARRRF!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Well if you care so much for mouse feelings donate your body to science and let them experiment on you instead. Think of the mice!
Be sure to donate all your granola stores to the starving children.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
A lot of recent research that's interesting to me includes designing siRNA and miRNA "virus" packages to target cancers and other tumors in mice specifically bred to have increased, decreased, or normal (control) reactions to certain diseases.
...
It's fun to watch the tumors glow red, green, blue, yellow, or a mixture of two or more.
The best part is if you squish the mice a bit but not too much, held flat to a transparent plate, you can see the glow without killing off the mice.
Sadly, this doesn't work with humans, they're too dense (can't see thru them easily), or we'd be further along with methods of locating and killing or at least targetting for excision (surgery) the tumor cells, especially when they have designed receptor tags (an offshoot of HIV research, actually).
Now if we could just design glow-in-the-dark instant tattoos for humans, that would change color if you started to have certain diseases (say HIV or TB or whatever), now that would be super cool.
I'd get mine as a standard-light invisible one, with a green serpeant that had red fangs if I had whatever disease, and maybe a blue afro if I was coming down with something common
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or for $50 bucks you could get one of Apple's designer mice.... but it will probably suck. It'll either have one button or it won't be able to register a right click 10% of the time. It may also include uncomfortable squeeze buttons.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
What gives us the right? How can we do these things to living creatures with minds of their own?
...).
You do realize that they eat dogs, which are much smarter, in about half of the world, don't you?
Or even pigs - they're smarter.
Or goats.
Don't even get me started on force-feeding duck livers to make foie gras (fat liver
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Had your polio vaccinations? Happy that you'll never get smallpox? Thank animal research.
Consider it a necessary evil.
Does this count as intelligent design?
... why yes.
If you consider grad students intelligent
.
.
.
please note that's a joke told by grad students, not of grad students
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Just out of curiousity, do you take immune system impairing drugs? Because your body regularily produces white blood cells that kill other living things.
I'm not bloodthirsty and definitely am against random injury and killing to animals, but for the purposes of improving our knowledge of medicine and life in general I am all for animal testing. As long as it's as humane as possible, I value human life over animal life. Much the same way those animals value their lives over mine and yours.
What gives us the right? I think that getting a step closer to finding a cure for (pick one: arthritis, AIDS, cancer, blindness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, etc etc etc etc) in people is worth dedicated scientific experimentation on any number of animals. Are you suggesting that we halt all medical experiments on animals? That is animal nut-esque. I do some work occasionally with pigs that will eventually lead to much lower incidences of heart attacks for certain people. The pigs we use have to die in order for us to carry out our experiments. Im no fan of senseless murder and inducing pain in animals, but if you know anyone with a debilitating illness, you will understand why we do these experiments.
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch.
here I was all excited that I could get gold-plated mouse with hand-tooled authentic leopardskin sliders, and then the article's all about curing other people's debilitating diseases
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Mmmmmmm, fresh baked mozeralla stuffed mouse!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Odds are that you eat meat, that's many animals a week just for your continued existance.
Whereas hundreds of mice saving thousands of people is a better ratio.
Not to be annoying, but... it may be time to take a small trip to Logic 101.
I claim this act is wrong!
You fool, these other similar acts are going on today and are in my view worse!
Sorry, but that doesn't discredit the initial claim. It does discredit your ability to argue effectively though *ZING*.
./revolution
Yup, this gives an entirely new meaning to the old challenge "Are you a man or a mouse?"
/F
Stupidity... has a habit of getting its way.
No no no, you've got it all wrong! It's the mice that have genetically reprogrammed us to have arthritis, epilipsy and/or obesity! It's all part of a long running experiment to discover the true nature of the universe! The fact that the scientist think they're the ones performing the experiments just proves how ingeniously subtle the mice really are!
Holy shit! Mice eat dogs in about half of the world ?! How big are they? or do they work in numbers?
Exactly--put yourself in their position. They are mice. They lack self-awareness. You would be completely oblivious to your circumstances. You would not be aware of ethics, and unable to make judgements or to suffer anguish over your fate. You could not protest any more than a tree can protest. Sure, you would squirm when the big animal grasps you and jabs you with a pointy thing. You would do so because you could not choose to do anything else.
That is why animals do not have civil rights. They are objects. Yes, I understand how people can get disgusted by some of the things done to animals, but don't confuse a natural disgust with moral righteousness. There is no rational moral basis for conferring rights on animal, that doesn't pretend that they are basically humans. To illustrate: which animals have rights? If you grant mice rights, then do flies have rights? There is no reasonable ethical distinction between mice and flies, yet I wager few people (Jainists aside) who have qualms over swatting flies. Lacking a criterion for distinction, you have to assume their rights are equal. Being competent to distinguish myself from other animals, I put myself and humanity in one class and the rest in another. Thus, indeed a mouse and a fly have equal rights--equally nonextant.
we're 'intelligent' (by our definition)
We designed them. So, yes, this is ID by pure definition of those two words.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
How much would it cost to get a mouse with Tourette Syndrome, and what would that cost me? I would love to have one of those. That would be too much fun at bars. "Calm down, dude, it wasn't me, it was my mouse."
Yum.
But even more importantly, how much for a mouse than learns Visual Basic as its first programming language?
But what I *really* want is a USB mouse that will go where I tell it to and click itself. How much for that?
Until then, we'll just continue to learn things as we become aware of them.
End transmission.
...the cats would have a blast, then a meal. And for that price? catnip and the back yard is way closer to my budget;-}
Sig Hansen?
Almost Identical eh? That's a pretty misleading statement. Even Joe Sixpack will call bull. He won't be too far wrong.
There a little thing called Chaos Theory. Without getting into details, what it means is, even the slightest change in the initial state of a chaotic system can lead to vastly different results, and the differences will grow as the system evolves.
What's more, complex unpredicable properties will emerge as the system evolves further. Order of a kind may emerge, but only on a general level. Locally, a chaotic system is usually completely unpredicable from the initial variables.
Basically, over time, the system just changes too much to keep track of. None of this is anything Joe Sixpack couldn't have told you anyway, albiet phrased differently, and only when he was inclined and sober, or possibly drunk.
So when you say that one genome is "Almost Identical" to another, that's pretty misleading. Phenotype maturation is undoubtedly a chaotic process in the initial stages, and observe the differences (and similarities) between individual people, let alone different species.
So a mouse genotype might be "Almost Identical" to a humans, but don't expect the end phenotype to be in any way human looking with even 98% genotype "similarity". Unless you consider chimpanzees to be human looking.
May the Maths Be with you!
Find three normal mice and poke their eyes out.
Course, that fork would have to be pretty small.
Fine, are you willing to donate your body, while alive, so we can investigate potential treatments for diabetes?
... no promises.
... speaking of that ... you have a very good chance of being selected for premature autopsy after, say, six months. We can't give you a shot for that, as the chemicals might interfere, and we'll be slicing your brain into really thin pieces. And showing pictures of it for the next 100 years.
.. by this I don't mean adding human DNA, just altering their fairly similar DNA to include some extra bits so it matches human DNA in the sequence being investigated.
Oh, and we'll be managing your diet - if you're in the control group, we'll give you a preselected combination of food - if you're in the experimental group,
And we might decide to have you live in 50 degree Fahrenheit temperatures, if we think temperature might induce apotosis.
And
Well? It's either you or the mice. If you can't volunteer, we're willing to have you give us sperm or eggs for us to modify (we won't tell you how), your DNA sequenced, and we'll implant you or your spouse (depending on gender) at a random time chosen by us, after which you'll bring the child to term, and then we'll raise it in an experimental environment where we carefully control everything.
Let's get real. That's how things work in research. It's you or the mice.
Note we also use earthworms, various bugs, and other fun creatures. Mice are a good choice because, genetically, they are a lot closer to humans, grow up fairly quickly, don't have large brains so ethically it's not as bad as experimenting on say dogs or cats, and can even have human modifications of their DNA sequences
Well?
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its sort of sad that we are creating, intentionally animals with disablities..
i know they are 'just mice' but still....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Go to the pet store and puchase three healthy mice for a buck fifty and feed each feed them a diet devoid of vitamin A and keep them away from sunlight. Bingo three blind mice for 4.50 plus tax. Savings $245.50. You can create your own, large varity of custom mice through changes in diet environment and selective inbreeding.
I work at the Jackson Lab, but as a software engineer (working with computational biologists to write parallel code). It's pretty facinating place. we have over 1200 employees divided into two major groups - pure research and JRS (Jackson Research Systems) which breeds and sells about 3000 different mice to the scientific community. Many of our 3000 strains of mice are available only from the Jackson Laboratory - surplus money from mice sales goes to pay for research support (research scientists apply for grants but the mice sales surplus helps pay for operating costs). It's the worlds largest mamallian research facility
just get me a mouse that pisses beer and shits canabis.actually on second thoughts make it an elephant
With agorophobia so it doesn't get upset about being stuck in a cage all day? And maybe some sort of reverse hypochodria so it's constantly in denial about whatever weird illness we gave it.
Watership down!
That is why animals do not have civil rights. They are objects.
./, but you've hit a nerve. I'm sick and tired of people basically torturing their "property" and getting slapped with a $50 fine. People who torture animals should be sent off to Bellevue for extensive psychological testing.
Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. Its not often I get pissed on
For the truth in advertising, I eat meat. It is wrong to eat meat unless the animal from which it came was slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
There is no rational moral basis for conferring rights on animal
How about it is wrong to inflict unnecessary pain on a living creature? Animals are not simply property anymore than people are simply property. You're right on there being a cutoff and I don't know exactly where the cutoff is, but speaking purely objectively, there is a difference between torturing an animal of higher order and killing some bacteria on a countertop. I think the average idiot can understand that.
Even then, civil rights are an entirely human creation. There is nothing inherent in being human that says we have a right to free speech, but not a right to kill each other. All rights are based in social contract.
I saw films in college of dogs bred to have narcolepsy. They were hillarious. I would love to have a narcoleptic dog.
Funny. Your dog had a similar request for a narcoleptic human.
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Could I order 5 female and 5 male kick ass mice that would kick ass on all other mice and then set them loose in the wild to take over the world?
Muhahaha
- Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't
What color is the sky in your world? Black or white?
Really, when Cthulhu comes to swallow your soul and the only thing you can do is contort your face in terror and scream like a helpless girl, I hope you remember you have no rights.
An animal is no more an "object" than a person is an "object." You lack any sort of scale, or sense of insight. Some animals exhibit more altruistic behaviors than your post does. Moral absolutism like yours is not the only way. I can decry stepping on mice for nothing more than relieving stress as unethical and still feel its ok for a cat (or desparate human) to kill one to eat it. There's a whole "scale" truly unethical to mildly unethical to thats ok, to thats a really good thing to do. Animals do exhibit sentient behaviors on a varying scale (just like people do) it's loosely proportional to the size complexity of its brain, but its there. Have you never read any Douglas Adams or any Lovecraft or any thing that has caused your imagination wonder for a moment what if? Have you ever even questioned your own beliefs?
Most all major research institutions these days have their own transgenic core in-house. As long as you provide the vectors, they'll subsequently transform the stem cells and generate the chimeric mouse. From there it's the PI's responsibility to back-cross the mouse and maintain the colony.
Exactly. The lab I worked in was genetically modifying mice back in 1998.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Maybe we could put these things in happy meals so /.ers could collect the full set of disabilities and disfigurements. Of course, it wouldn't take many to do it.
- Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't
Can't you see the truth in your own words? When Cthulhu is swallowing your soul you certainly have no rights - your very soul is being eaten and your mind shattered!
Besides, you say it's ok to eat a mouse but not to stomp on it for the sake of it - guess what, everyone has a different idea about what's ok and what is not and there is only one viable solution to this problem: I will do what I think is ok and you can do what you think is ok. So if scientist habitually breed strange mice and kill them, or if cruel kids stomp on mice and kill them... they're free to do it. Maybe I won't do the same, maybe I will.
Global warming is a cube.
Although I consider research on animals an unfortunate necessity, I do have some issues with your argument. For example, you say that animals can be treated as objects because they lack self-awareness... but what about animals that are more intelligent/aware than some humans? A mentally retarded child might be less self-aware than the average octopus, but an octopus is food, and a child somehow fits in a special moral category even though, logically, he/she might be more oblivious to being eaten/used for experiments/otherwise abused. It would also be possible to intentionally engineer humans to be less aware than animals, but would that be ethical? They would feel no pain and be unaware of their suffering, after all, so wouldn't that make them better test subjects?
It just irks me when people try to claim that it's ok do experiment on animals because of their mental capacity or whatever but refuse to apply the same arguments to our own species. If your perspective is that humans are automagically better/sacred/whatever, that's fine, just don't try to justify it with arguments that make no sense.
It is interesting that this thread sparked a discussion of the morality of manipulating the genes of these mice to cause deliberate malformations that are not in the best interest of the mice.
..
Why would we suddenly have attitudes towards mice that are any different from other animals in our charge? We selectively breed pigs specifically for desired ratios of fat to flesh; breed chickens using hormones that result in an "adult" chicken in a fraction of the conventional time; inject bovine with hormones to stimulate lactation and production; all in an effort that is not in the best interest of the animals, but in the best [immediate] interest of the purveyor.
Looking to the human world, and we turn a blind eye (I apologize for that really mixed up metaphor) from rampant genocide (genocide: a friendly name for killing everyone of a particular genus) in The Sudan because it's in the best interest of Chevron, we never did hold Union Carbide/Dow Chemical to task and provide meaningfully relief to the citizens of Bhopal, but let Texas jail Dianne Wilson for hanging a f*cking protest banner all the while
we don't even raise a whisper about the human genetic mutilation caused by chemical contaminations in Vietnam, Halabja, Toulouse, Venice, Midland - MI, New Plymouth - New Zealand, etc..
Since we clearly do not care about our fellow man and child, but are content to let the corporations dictate the new morality, why the hell should we give a rat's ass about the welfare of a mouse ?
If we accept the theory that we may take liberties with the members of the Mus genus, since we are the superior beings and our benefit outweighs the detriment inflicted, then it is an easy step to rationalize the ill treatment of the third world, and anyone living in Michigan, as justifiable if it in any way benefits the upper middle classes, and that is exactly what we have done.
How we treat our animals today is how we will treat each other tomorrow.
Well, I dont know about you, but I for one welcome our new biotech aware overlords.
This is not particularly new or interesting to researchers. This kind of thing has been possible for more than 10 years. You didn't really need the full DNA sequence in order to make mice with the gene you want removed. These so-called "Knock-Out Mice" have been around, and were bread-and-butter for PhD students looking for a thesis project. It was a gamble though: Scenario 1. Your gene-deleted mouse actually lives and has a phenotype (characteristic of the organism) that is interesting and worth publishing a research article about. You get your PhD and get to go on with your non-well-paying career in research. Scenario 2. Your gene-deleted mouse dies before they are born. You have just wasted 2-5 years of your life. Scenario 3. Your gene-deleted mouse lives, but you can't find anything wrong with your mouse. Apparently, the gene you selected to delete is not important. You have just wasted 2-5 years of your life, but because you invested the time, you will probably waste another 2-5 more years. Knocking out a gene in a mouse used to guarantee your a research paper. These days it's old, and not interesting unless the results are spectacular.
You could just get a cat. They are all narcoleptic.
Sorry to be a stickler here but it can't be inhuman treatment because they're not human, they're mices.
I've got a bunch of friends in various biology majors. Although they are all animal lovers (one wants to go to school to be a vet when he graduates), they have all worked in the labs doing a lot of experiments on mice. And they all agree, that the more time you spend around the things the less you feel that they are cute little animals that we shouldn't be experimenting on.
They are cruel, cannibalistic, disgusting animals. They will breed constantly and eat their own children, or perhaps just nibble off half of an ear and leave them to live. Anyone who's kept mice as pets know that having more than one only really works out with two females - a mixed pair will breed a million babies (and then eat them) and with two males one will eventually kill the other over territory.
So, yes, while I think it should be done in as painless of a manner as possible (and to actual justifiable scientific benefit), I think that killing a few of them to save human lives is completely worth it.
Of course, I'm sure anyone looking at humanity from a far enough vantage point would feel the same about us. Doesn't make them wrong, though, from that viewpoint.
Just a question, wouldn't a mouse be rather out of proportion to humans for testing heart-machines? How about something larger like a pig, etc? As a bonus, you could make bacon afterwards provided you weren't using weird chemicals on the animal too. :-)
You would cut off their tails with a carving knife???
Narf! I think so, Brain, but where are we going to find two pairs of epileptic mice at this time of night?
Also, cyborg Condors that, on being shot, fly into the shooter and explode.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, that sounds like a pretty damn cool idea. Any reason one couldn't use a tattooing dye/ink that absorbed daytime light to glow in the dark/night? Has anyone ever heard of something like this being done?
Is there a substance that would, if applied in a tattoo-like manner, be non-toxic to humans but have a lifetime glow effect (even if it did need to charge in the sun). Hell, I'd pay extra for that.
...are busy designing Earth II, owing to Earth I being loaded with the wrong Operating System.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, if Cthulhu keeps up that sort of behavior I think he'll find himself on the wrong end of some economic sanctions with respect to his violation of basic human rights. Rule of law, people.
All that will happen is that it will steal a bunch of your farming equipment and run away.
"I will do what I think is ok and you can do what you think is ok. So if scientist habitually breed strange mice and kill them, or if cruel kids stomp on mice and kill them... they're free to do it. Maybe I won't do the same, maybe I will." Thats pedantic and obvious. The question is do you feel the same about both situations? and does society? It doesn't, which is why one is legal and the other isn't. Do you feel the same if oh say your mother was raped by a stranger as you would about your father having sex with your mom, or possibly your mother having sex with strangers at a truckstop? What I am and was trying to express was their is a whole range. And that the GGP post was missing out on that completely.
I thought glofish would be a natural with techno-nerds:
http://www.glofish.com/pictures.asp
But about the closest store near me that stocks them is in the far exurbs near the nuke plant -- which I guess is poetic.
How the hell do you know mice - or any other 'animal' lack self-awareness?
I'm kind of amazed that at no point is the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) Mouse House mentioned anywhere in the article. ORNL has been in the mouse genetics business for decades with a large number of genetic variants available on site.
Not long ago, they relocated to a new facility.
http://bio.lsd.ornl.gov/mgd/news/MH/Sept2003.html
I'd like an Algernon model. Does that come with flowers?
Either way, necrophilia is disgusting!
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
I have nothing more to say beyond what I wrote in the subject field.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
Seriously, the use of tracers - dyes and radioactive isotopes - are fairly common for seeing where things go, so should be usable in cases where something concentrates. In either case, there will be a unique absorption frequency that would identify where concentrations were building up. That same frequency can then be used to literally cook that region and not affect anything else. It would be less damaging than radiotherapy, because it would be targetted.
Why isn't this done, if it's such a neat idea? Because finding something that will concentrate only in the target area is HARD. People have been working on targetted chemotherapy for decades and if there's been a breakthrough, it's not exactly been an Earth-shattering one. If the targetting mechanism could be figured out, then targetted radiotherapy would be better, as nothing away from the target compound or isotope would be affected at all, but it would be much more expensive. (Picture a bunch of microwave lasers, tuned exactly to the resonance frequency of a specific molecule, first scanning the body then blasting all concentrations, where ANY errors on position, frequency or intensity could be lethal.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As the point of this article seems to be for the general enrichment of the /. community with respect to the state of biological sciences, I'll point out an interesting related point.
Genetically engineered knockout mice have existed for nearly 20 years and have been in common usage for more than a decade. While generally extremely useful, knockout mouse technology is limited by the fact that some genes are necessary for survival during development, and hence can't completely knocked out.
The ingenious solution to this problem is to use a variety of genetic tricks to make mosaic mice that are genetic knockouts only in certain tissues. This is accomplished by incorporating special recombination sequences in the DNA flanking your gene of interest. You also integrate a foreign gene encoding a viral-derived recombinase gene that will effectively excise any DNA sequence flanked by the aforementioned recombination sequences. You drive the production of this recombinase gene only in the adult mouse (often in a particular tissue, such as the ear) by including "promoter" sequences upstream of the recombinase that activate transcription only in the tissue of interest.
It's often disappointing for me to read these news releases about 20-year old technology, much in the same way it would be aggravating for many of you to read about the release of a powerful new programming language called Python. Except knockout mice have been around for longer.
Then I guess this kind of mouse shouldn't be too much of a problem!
While I can understand the basic point you're making, I am not willing to draw the line where you do. I find it a rather strong position to take that mice lack all self-awareness -- they are, after all, rather high-level organisms compared to flies. They certainly are able to react to their surroundings and even show some rudimentary intelligence in negotiating mazes and the like.
Your argument can be extended upwards and not downwards too. How about chimpanzees and dolphins? I would hate to torture either one of those, as I am almost completely certain that they do have a fairly advanced consciousness -- a "soul" if you will. What about low-functioning homo sapiens? People with Down's syndrome?
I would be extremely careful in making summary judgements over what is aware and capable of suffering and what not, as we can't, in the end, get into another being's head to check out how things look in there.
That is a rather incomplete criterion still, btw... Peter Singer, in his ethics, is big on the concept of whether something is capable of suffering, and this reasoning produces his infamous ideas about infanticide. Essentially he believes that it's ok to kill a baby as it is, according to him, "non-aware" and unable to understand or object to its killing.
IMO, it follows that killing a sleeping or unconscious person is perfectly ok, as long as they aren't at any point aware of what is happening...
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Actually, for humans we do use tracers, because visible light is less effective inside the body. So fluorescence isn't as useful.
...
...
But for mice, it's way easier to just mod their receptors for a specific organ to include fluorescent add-ons that attach to that specific receptor, and are activated by that receptors biochemical pathway.
And it's actually a lot cheaper than having to kill off the mouse earlier, and isn't toxic.
Imagine it this way:
Mouse A: So, how come you're glowing purple, Fred?
Mouse B: Oh, dang, I knew I shouldn't have eaten that purple pill they put in my food today. It didn't smell right, but they've got me on half rations
Mouse A: Bummer. So, do you think it's cancer or just a proof of concept trial?
Mouse B: Well, the wife says she thinks it's just a Grad student in BMSD doing proof of concept, but I have a nagging feeling it's cancer. My left leg is acting all funny ever since then
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We'll get the drugs and the anaesthesia ready. See you then. Word of warning, there have been very few studies about opiods and heart attack and use of the specific opiod recepter blocker drug we have. We will induce a heart attack, then try to see how our drug works to help your heart recover. So, yearh, see you tomorrow (might want to write a will first, just in case, you know...)
Okay, I've put myself in the place of the mouse.... I'm being offered a handful of seed in exchange for pressing a switch that causes you to die a slow, lingering, agonizing death...
Boy, that seed sure is good!
People worry about justification and things like right and wrong. Mice, and almost all other animals, don't bother with those niceties as they're incapable of doing so. Don't try to play the "but they're just little furry people!" game, please. It's certain that they wouldn't play it with you.
My feeling pity that the mouse will be incapapable of living a full, useful, productive long and healthy life is offset a great deal in knowing there's a chance its lack might mean that some -people- get to live their full, useful, productive long and healthy lives.
Hah... those prices are ridiculous. You could simply customize your own mice with a pair of pliers, a rock hammer and some straight pins.
It's probably waaaaay too late, but...
:)
:)
While I don't feel particularly strongly about the debate of animal testing (my father is a butcher, I spent several years on a cattle/chicken farm as a child, and more than once have I killed my food a few short hours before I ate it), I would like to raise a point.
Most of the arguments in favour of animal testing revolve around "they aren't sentient, they can't feel it, better them than humans, etc." First, it's obvious that they feel it. Go poke a needle in your pet dog and see how he likes it
But that aside, the fact that they aren't sentient (or at least the theory that they aren't sentient) is an argument *against* testing on them, as far as I'm concerned. If the options are "test on something which can feel it, but isn't as self-aware as a human" or "test on a human who has weighed the options and made a concious decision on the matter," I think the latter is definitely more ethical.
Now, I'm off to kill a cow, eat its muscles, and wear its skin
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Just add a strobe light and watch them dance!
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
If the mouse DNA is so close to humans... how long before we start seeing these?
Take it as part joke, part reality.... Add some "sex craving" DNA and "always submissive" (i.e. not aggressive) and the sex industry would jump on the occasion...
It isn't really news. It's just an interesting story that was published by a news vendor. This stuff comes up all the time, like the story about the pastor who's dedicated his life to helping drug addicts in the local paper: he's been doing it for 20 years, but it's still informative to most people.
Genetically modifying mice and other things has been happening for a while. This deals a little more specifically with the market that has emerged for them. Since it's about the market, which has developed continuously since the first mice were genetically altered (which was a single news event), it can't really be timed the same. For a more typical slashdot analogy, the difference is like talking about production of the first household wireless router, compared to talking about the prevalence of wireless routers in US households. We often see both types of articles here.
we should breed cats who can DDR.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Not to add more fuel to a fire, but the mice are being bred to have these diseases precisely because someone has already been put in their positin. These are diseases that humans have, and the mice are bred to try and find treatments or cures. So, to use your words, we are putting mice through "the equivalent of torture" precisely becuase people are already going through it and we wish to alleviate their pain/disability. So yes, people are put into that position, and that is the precise reason these mice are bred that way.
you think we haven't already? where have you been?
Absolutely, because if they enjoy torturing they probably pose a risk to the people around them. The actual animals I could give a crap about, one way or the other.
Rights are one side of the social contract, something that animals are not even capable of comprehending, much less participating in. You don't want to hurt animals? Fine. You want me not to do it? I can accomodate that (within reason), it costs me nothing. But applying "rights" to animals is just plain silly - morality is a human concept.
For the truth in advertising, I eat meat. It is wrong to eat meat unless the animal from which it came was slaughtered in the most humane way possible.
Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. If animals are so endowed with an abundance of rights, what gives you the right to take their lives for your own enjoyment, regardless of how humanely they were killed?
That's the plain truth of it - we kill animals, grind up their flesh, and turn them into nuggets. Every day. By the millions. And then we have all this handwaving about whether a few thousand lab mice enjoy being inbred to the point of being half-blind and generally barely aware of their surroundings (and growing tumors on top of that).
sic transit gloria mundi
I'll call you Lymphoma... cause that's what you do!
Most of these so caled dieseases we are trying to cure through, already have cures. Theres just too much money to be made off "research" and partial cures.
Why we even bother is beyond me, in the end we still suffer at the hands of diseases because those with the cure have manipulated you to think that we still need to test on mice!
Keep shoveling the money boys! thats right.
Is it playing God or using our natural faculties for the betterment of mankind? Where do you draw the line? Is it ok to make glow-in-the-dark mice, but not mice with 6 legs? What about glow-in-the-dark mice versus glow-in-the-dark E-choli (I did the latter back in high school)? Or glow-in-the-dark people?
Is inflicting some minor medical condition on a GM mouse any LESS cruel than raising chickens in wire cages, killing and eating them? What about cutting down a tree? Killing a small spider because they make you nervous?
All of the things I mentioned involve people killing things for their own ends. Pretty much every animal in nature, including humans, is willing to kill something weaker or powerless to sustain itself. Humans are the only creature that stop to think about it. (Note that we generally still do it, but just moralize over the decision on occasion.)
It seems to me that it is pretty moot debating about using mice to find cures for diseases, when you might be wearing wool, leather, silk, and eating a ham sandwich. I suppose that you could argue about the degree of suffering that is being infliced upon animals by the various fashions that we use them, but I think I'd much rather be a lab mouse that is bread to have cancer than be a pig in a stockyard. At least I'd have people pumping me full of drugs in an effor to cure me.
Interestingly, because of the central point of my poasting, that it seems a universal law that the more powerful species will prey on weaker species, I have to say that I am *glad* we have not encountered alien lifeforms. There is a good chance that when we meet them, we will size them up as dinner, they will do the same, and someone will get eaten.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
an octopus is food
People eat octopus?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Sometimes this gets a little ridiculous. One lab I worked with had "depressed" mice. You could see them sort of huddling inactively in the corner. It's amazing that drugs for depression work...We aren't as complex as we think.
I think that getting a step closer to finding a cure for (pick one: arthritis, AIDS, cancer, blindness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, etc etc etc etc) in people is worth dedicated scientific experimentation on any number of animals.
Yes, but the rumor is that scientists are ordering the blind mice not to try to cure blindness, but merely to see how they run. These frivolous experiments must stop.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
novel new?
Yes, in Asian countries, and to some extent in North America. I've seen it on menus, and when I went to the Tokyo fishmarket on a family vacation in Japan, and I saw plenty of dead octopuses amongst the usual fish.
I couldn't eat one myself, though. Not only do I not like most sea food, I've done too much reading about them, so I find them far too cute and I marvel at their intelligence. They're like little boneless ninja with their impressive subtlety, escape artistry, and hunting abilities. They can even change colour and body texture to better match their surroundings... they're far too cool to eat.
And yes, I am a biology nerd. It's a lot harder to view animals as mere objects and automatically less intelligent or aware than every single human when I've read about countless studies that prove otherwise.
Then I realized that given the makeup of
heh. If only that were the case. The makeup of slashdot is computer nerds, who generally know very little about science, but think it's "cool". Just look at all the dumb jokes that get posted in every single science story. There aren't two cultures (science and the humanities), but three cultures, science, humanities, and technology. There's a little crossover between the sciences and technologies, with each group thinking they understand the other (but really don't).
AccountKiller
There is a lab near here that Designs mice like the above. We where talking to them about some bandwidth needs, and got on the subject of what happens if they breed a bunch of mice and they don't sell. The director said they become snake food. For some reason I just found this quite funny.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
Wait.. are you going for a mouse that doesn't have to eat? Or is your plan to eat the mouse?
"And for your own custom mouse, with the genetic modification of your choosing, expect to pay as much as $100,000"
That makes for a bunch of excited furry fans.
I have found that in regards to experimentation on animals/genetic alteration, the general opinion on slashdot is that it's ok. Another tendencies I have notedare a leftist inclination in regards to politics (which I like) and a preference por PC gaming instead of consoles.
Personally, I think experimentation on animals is an evil thing.
If you want to argue about it, you should investigate about what really goes on in those labs and for what purposes before writing a knee-jerk answer such as "you don't know how many lives would be lost", "would you prefer to get smallpox", etc.
Wow! Now thanks to science you can buy a three legged epileptic color-blind mouse, but you still can't get Apple to make a two button mouse.
No way would it be anywhere near cost-effective to produce individual mice with each gene in the genome knocked out as the original submitter suggests. About $100,000 sounds right, and the usual rules of supply and demand follow: the only reason the arthritis mouse is $200 is because many more people need it (and because there are numerous genotypes that can induce that particular phenotype but that's neither here nor there) than, say, a random mutation in a downstream signaling protein somewhere. There's no ROI on the effort spent to isolate that gene.
I completely agree with you. Something that from any logical and moral point to view escapes so easily the common sense of the majority of the population really reflects the primitive state of humanity.
As we see slavery today we might see animal cruelty in (maybe) a couple hundred years.
I want Pinky and the Brain. How much will that cost?
Think of the possibilities. MTV's got a hit show in "Pimp My Ride" with Rapper Xibit as the host. Take somebody's old beater, turn it over to West Coast Customs and spend probably up to a hundred grand (on the really really big custom jobs. Most are probably less than 50 grand.) film it all, some throw in some fancy editing and BAM! Hit show.
I say we hit up the Discovery Channel for the cash, find a bunch of struggling science labs and have Morgan Webb host the all new "Pimp My Mouse!"
"We know you guys were in to spinal cord research and the effects of degernative central nervous system diseases, So we hooked you up with a brand-new pair of Lou Gehrig's disease aflicted mice! They've got all the symptoms, a shortened life span, and the unchecked consequences of man playing God! Your lab has officially been pimped*!"
*and possibly relegated to being the epicenter for the coming geneticially engineered super-mouse holocaust......
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I heard Slartibartfast got an award for their teeth.
Your argument is flawed and ethically problematic. At our institution, the animal studies committee is very careful and diligent that every mouse that is killed for research purposes is accounted for and euthanized in the most "humane" fashion possible. Moreover, research must be conducted with adequate anesthesia with awareness that these creatures do feel pain, and are most definitely aware of their surroundings. We as researchers strive to find a model for disease that does not require sacrificing other organisms, yet no other non-animal models exist that can come close to predicting human phenotypic/genotypic relationships. I take no pleasure in killing these laboratory grown creatures.
Bullshit. And fuck you for saying so. If animals are so endowed with an abundance of rights, what gives you the right to take their lives for your own enjoyment, regardless of how humanely they were killed?
While my personal opinion is that we consume far too much meat, many animals eat other animals, and we are no exception. Life feeds on life. No matter how hard we try, we are a part of nature, not the masters of it.
I just set out the dcon traps and let that spring snap their little necks. I'll snap grandma's neck too if she shits on my countertop. Mice or old people I don't care, there are consequences to taking a shit in my kitchen.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Most of the comments are funny or insightful.
Just commenting about the thing, it's a fun article not a "Holy Crap" article.
If there were a story about an amazing and revolutionary thing called "open source software" where anyone can read the source code, it would get flamed to oblivion. Granted more Slashdot readers work in IT than in biology, so I guess you have a point..
Can we design a mouse with more than one button?
Find any tapas or sushi restaurant. Ocotpus tastes fantastic!
I want one shaped like Ana Kournikova..
The Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize), is the premiere effort of the Methuselah Foundation and is being offered to the scientific research team who develops the longest living Mus musculus, the breed of mouse most commonly used in scientific research. Developing interventions which work in mice are a critical precursor to the development of human anti-aging techniques, for once it is demonstrated that aging in mice can be effectively delayed or reversed, popular attitudes towards aging as 'inevitable' will no longer be possible. When aging in mice is shown to be 'treatable' the funding necessary for a full-line assault on the aging process will be made available. This is the true power of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, to demonstrate a proof of principle, and give hope to the world that decline in function and age-related disease are no longer guarantees, for us, or for future generations, if we work together now.
Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize)SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence)
I'm wondering where the urban myth about mice & cheese originated. It certainly doesn't fit with Danich mice. Possibly the myth could have originated from mice taking a bite or two from the cheese, then running away with a bad taste in the mouth trying to find something they would eat up completely, like nuts etc.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
And what I was trying to say passed way beyond your line of thought. There's no point asking questions like "how would you feel if X happened to you?" and trying to derive some kind of law or norm from the answer. All you end up with is a tyranny dictated by this "society" you speak of.
And of course there is a whole range of different situations: that's the reason why I do not stomp on mice (besides not having any running around my apartment). But it's useless to argue on such subjects. You might find mice-stomping entertaining; I hope not so but some people actually do. Letting everyone free to behave as they like is the only sensible way to handle (actually... *not* to handle) the situation.
Global warming is a cube.
WTF!!!
boooorrrinnnnnggg.....
So you are saying its ok to torture a living creature for your medical gratification? You are sick.
And who ever modded me as a troll should be used in research themselves, for the same reason.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
*ducks* *runs*
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Whoa, hold on there puppy. LEt's not pee all over the carpet by getting over excited to use the stereotypical verbal bashing with the word "moron". I know it's culturally and popularly accepted around here but really it's unnecessary.
/sarcasm
Activist, no? Testing on animals, fine by me. Just as long as it's not me/your/anyone else -or- my/your/anyone's kids.
The image I had on here was one of our beloved A-Listers with their own designer pets and their genetic defects^H^H customizations for what I called an "oh so cute" factor just to make them look good.
Must have forgot to put that in there, verbal cue's and sarcasm don't come across well without the oblig.
So you're an anarchist? We have a "tyranny dictated by this 'society'" its called government. All sorts of laws are derived this way, welcome to the real world. "There's no point asking questions like 'how would you feel if X happened to you?' and trying to derive some kind of law or norm from the answer " You couldn't be more wrong and thankfully. " Letting everyone free to behave as they like is the only sensible way to handle (actually... *not* to handle) the situation." Wow just wow. That sounds really nice in theory to bad it isn't that way and certainly isn't sensible. You really think people should be free to rape/murder/rob? I guess were lucky that people in society decided to "freely behave" in such a manner to create an agreement amongst themselves such as to not tolerate certain behaviors and derive laws/norms from their conceptions of "how they felt if X happened to them." You're free (everyone is) to behave however you want, you're just not going to be free from the consequences (no one is).
You really think people should be free to rape/murder/rob?
It looks to me like rape, murder and robbery are very common indeed - they happen everyday. And how is your tiranny solving these problems? And, yes, you are lucky when people decide to "freely behave" like god guys are supposed to - in fact I take part in such good behaviour. However, you say:
You're free (everyone is) to behave however you want, you're just not going to be free from the consequences (no one is).
and this is bullsht. I am not free to behave how I want as long as an external, ad-hoc created entity uses its power to force me into/out of things. As much as you like to think so, a government is NOT some kind of being that spontaneously arises from the common good will of the people. That's called a shop, a company, a service provider, etc.
I will submit to the consequences that society chooses to inflict upon me for my sins (which BTW amounts to burping from time to time, while you're almost depicting me like a serial rapist) as long as such rules arise spontaneously from the people around me. Not that I respect them, not at all... I simply am not trained/armed/powerful enough to behave with utmost disregard for those around me. Therefore I have to keep myself at bay and behave sensibly. That's called a social contract. But a government is certainly not a part in a contract - unless you think unilateral contracts can exist.
Finally, you just have to look at how well government-run services, violence, *whole economic systems* work (need I quote?) to realize the only way to handle things in society is not to handle them at all. What people want bad enough will happen.
Oh and you should really try to chill out. The mockery and attempted subtlety found in your post reek of repressed anger from miles away.
Global warming is a cube.
Yeah, it would be a real pain in the ass to have a diabetic mouse... the continuous insulin shots, carefully managing sugar intake, testing glucose levels all the time.
Reviews with a twist! http://www.sardonicbastard.com
I have worked at Jackson Labs and seen the work done and the treatment of the animals. BTW Jackson is primarily a mammalian genetics research lab, they sell mice to stretch their grant money a bit further. The mice are well kept and killed painlessly (they break their necks). And while I would prefer that this practice wasn't necessary I much prefer that treatments for my loved one's ailments be researched.
haven't had time to steal a good sig yet
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
most humane way possible
And while I agree completly I must say that there is a problem w/this statement.
The "most humane way possible" can be very, very, very subjective depending on the point of view.......
This is a double of a story ran yesterday.
We are looking for:
- 2 mice that are thoroughly versed in Windows C++ and Assembly programming
- 1 mouse with good AI coding and design instincts
- 2 mice with proven level and gameplay design skills
- 2 senior character animation mice
- several mice for character and environment modeling and texturing
- several mice for level design testing and debugging
- 1 PR rat
- 1 legal advice rat
=)
I know a nurse who was on the surgical team!
And here is the result of the Epilogue: God exists by two falls to a submission
No sig for you! Come back, one year!
We'll call one mouse Alan, and the other mouse Parsons...
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
I can't think of a joke here, but I am re-reading THHGTTG for the nth time.
Perhaps the 10 million year program is nearly complete?
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
"(which BTW amounts to burping from time to time, while you're almost depicting me like a serial rapist) " Your whole argument rests on the fact that burping is no different than serial rape. That neither is inherently worse than the other and any sort of system that judges an individual's behavior and imposes its will on you is somehow wrong, when according to your own arguments shouldn't be judged. "Oh and you should really try to chill out. The mockery and attempted subtlety found in your post reek of repressed anger from miles away." mmm... I love the smell of irony in the morning besides I'm probably the most "chill" person you'll talk to all day, you just wouldn't know b/c you haven't even talked to me =)
I'm equally disappointed. When I read the headline I was expecting to hear about a company that would send you a box of good that you could press your hand into and they'd send you back a mouse that was custom-fit to your exact ergonomic requirements, like an orthotic shoe.
Slashdot - a weblog where everybody lists the ways they're disappointed with the articles.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
s/good/goo/
(and after nearly a decade editing posts is still on the TODO list)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Pro-Test is "a UK based group with the aim of promoting and supporting scientific research and debate including animal based research" (and will take donations via pay-pal). They've a list of issues they DO support but note that this does not include "animal testing for cosmetic purposes".
The best I can think of is to first anesthetize the animal (ie. "put them down") and then slaughter them.
Virtually always they're wrong.
I'd hesistate to call technology a culture on par with the other two. Most 'technology' workers are merely the white collar equivalent of the lathe operator of a century ago. Both are jobs that require skill and experience - and the world depended utterly on each in it's turn. But both are utterly dependent on the tools provided to them by others. And both are utterly replaceable. Only the 'technologist' continues to convince himself that he is something 'special' and deserves treatment above and beyond the norm in compensation for that.I'm not buying til I can get flying mice, or better yet flying monkeys.
Is it just me or is the very notion that humans could play at anything other than humanity pure arrogance?