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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.'"
its sort of sad that we are creating, intentionally animals with disablities..
i know they are 'just mice' but still....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Genetic engineering does raise some ethical questions, but it's not like they're raising these mice to laugh at them.
Being raised intentionally crippled for scientific purposes or for someone else's amusement... does it matter to the mouse? No. So why should it matter to the humans doing the raising? I should have as much right to grow mutant gerbils for my sick pleasures as scientist does for his perverse "curing disease" fetishes.