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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?
Meow!
Why the hell would you want to do that to the little creatures? Permanently disabling them for your "oh so cute" factor? I'm not one of those tree hugging animal rights people but this just screams animal abuse in a way. And no, I didn't RTFA very much.
...Priceless...
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?
This is really sick! How soon could we see similar genetic market for humans?
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.
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/
Does this count as intelligent design?
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.
...But I find this absolutely disgusting.
I'm not some knee-jerking animal rights nut. I'm just a human being. The thought of deliberately breeding living creatures so that they'll become arthritic sickens me.
What gives us the right? How can we do these things to living creatures with minds of their own?
Put yourself in their position. I know that's laying it on a bit thick, but it's at this point that most people start turning away from what anyone says if it's against this kind of thing. They dismiss it as a "silly idea" without actually doing it.
Are scientific advances really worth the equivalent of torture? It depends upon your point of view, I know, but from a moral standpoint, is there any way of justifying this?
(Slashdot being Slashdot, I look forwards to being modded down for this.)
workinG on various
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
I want a Christian Dior mouse, with pink floral ornament and letters "CD" on the belly.
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 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.
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!"
Does this count as intelligent design?
... why yes.
If you consider grad students intelligent
.
.
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please note that's a joke told by grad students, not of grad students
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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
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!
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!
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
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
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.
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)
All that will happen is that it will steal a bunch of your farming equipment and run away.
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.
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?
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!
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
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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...)
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.
I'll call you Lymphoma... cause that's what you do!
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!
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.
novel new?
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 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.
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?
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.
WTF!!!
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?
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
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
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".
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?