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MIT Engineers World's First Schizophrenic Mice

Posted by kdawson on from the beautiful-little-minds dept.

Frosty Piss writes "MIT researchers have created a schizophrenic mouse that pinpoints a gene variation predisposing people to schizophrenia. Research with the mouse may lead to the first genetically targeted drugs for the disease, which affects 1 percent of the population worldwide. This is the first study that uses animals who demonstrate an array of symptoms observed in schizophrenic patients to identify specific genes that predispose people to the disease."

5 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. I'm conflicted by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm all for animal testing and all. I'm no animal rights advocate by a long shot; but intentionally giving mice schizophrenia seems a bit wrong to me. Schizophrenia runs in my family and I want to see a cure as much as anyone else. Therein lies the conflict. I suppose the mouse gets it if the experiment can do some good.

    --
    The game.
    1. Re:I'm conflicted by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Schizophrenia runs in my family

      That's a tough one. I think it would be worth trading a lot of mice for a cure.

      In the meantime it might be helpful to bring attention to the absolutely abysmal state of mental health care in this country. Something you won't know about unless you or a close relative has a serious mental illness. Half the people you see living on the street are there because they have mental illness and can't navigate the byzantine legal process to get disability benefits. Apparently the right wing thinks they're faking so they not work and drink all day. Even if they could stop trying to self-medicate with alcohol, most wouldn't be able to manage a checkbook even if they could get through the process and there's nowhere for them to go. Your options around here are the crisis line, which is useless, or primary care (the mental hospital). If they don't have health insurance they'll get a T&R (treat and release) and that's how they end up on park benches.

      Most states have closed their assisted living centers and state mental hospitals because of cutbacks in federal funding. Where to you think those people go? They usually get lumped in with people with AIDS and criminals. Great atmosphere for recovery. The druggies steal their meds and they're right back to having street lights sending them messages from the mother ship. It varies. Some states are better than others, but overall mental health care in the US, if you don't have health insurance, sucks ass. That doesn't get much attention, but let them leave "In God We Trust" off a dollar coin and people are all up about that. Hypocrites.

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      That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
    2. Re:I'm conflicted by ChrisA90278 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Have you ever watch a wild mouse in the field? Not an easy life. Almost all of them die young. If you watch, they live a life trying to balance fear and starvation. They will go out and forage but they are always looking all around and up. they know instinctivley that they are prey for cats, hawks, foxes and whatever. They have to come out if hiding to eat but if they do the chances are nearly 100% that one day they will be killed and eaten. Mice may actually like cages -- an enclosed space where food magically appears -- heaven _before_ you de, what a deal. Mice are fearful of open spaces and open sky overhead. they prefer to be inside a small enclosed space near a supply of food.

      Humans are built to cover much ground while using little energy. Bipedal locomotion (walking upright on two feet) means you can search a lot of area and don't use up much food/energy in the process. For a million yars our ancestors were hunters and gatherers that search large areas for food. Humans tend to have an instinctive need to move around and don't like confinement.

      We make the mistake of thinking all animals are like humans. Animals that are on the bottom of the food chain are not like us at all.

  2. Not all schizophrenics are dicks by Moraelin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, being schizophrenic isn't the same as being a sociopath, or even the more fuzzy "being a dick".

    A paranoid schizophrenic for example has (at least according to one theory), a pretty fuzzy line between fantasy and reality. At any rate, stuf originating purely in their imagination or beliefs gets mixed with the reality. They might hear voices, see stuff that isn't there, or feel or smell stuff that noone else can perceive. Where you might just imagine telling someone where to shove it, a schizophrenic might actually perceive it as having happened or as in progress. They might become convinced it's telepathy, or some kind of astral projection, or whatever. That is, either that others are able to project their thoughts into their head, or that they themselves have some telepathic or clairvoyance powers. Others might see stuff that's not actually there (e.g., ghosts) or distort their perception of real stuff (e.g., seeing a piece of string on their skin as some mysterious new parasite.)

    Well, that's just one of the kinds of schizophrenia, and what I've described there is more like the extreme cases that get sent to a mental institutions. Most people are a lot more mild than that, and either never get diagnosed or are considered harmless enough to just give them some medicine and let them go back home. Plus a lot are intelligent and socially aware enough to know that everyone else will think they're crazy if they go around saying that they see ghosts, and that carries a major social stigma in our society. So they do their best to hide it, and might never get diagnosed at all.

    That doesn't, however, mean that they're necessarily "a dick". The cases where the voices told them to do something nasty are actually quite rare, and most might not even hear voices at all, but have some other form of sensory delusions or distortions. A schizophrenic might just as well be a very nice guy or gal, who just happens to see or hear something slightly different than you do. Just because someone sees ghosts, for example, doesn't mean they will go and tell everyone where to shove it and how deep. That ghost might as well tell them to be nice, or do some great work of charity, or reinforce whatever other belief that spawned that bit of imagination in the first place.

    The cases where the voices told them that everyone is their enemy and must be elliminated, are actually quite rare. The 1% of the total population being or having at some point been schizophrenic is a _lot_. Plus, as I was saying, there are a lot which never get diagnosed at all. If they all went and did nasty stuff, you'd notice.

    So, basically, chances are you've met or interacted daily with one or more people with schizophrenia without even knowing it. And chances are they weren't the obnoxious "dicks" either.

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    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  3. What if ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    As devil's advocate, I need to raise the question: are we sure a "cure" for schizophrenia would be a good thing? As a scienctist it is imporant to consider the potential consequences of our discoveries. The same 'gene' that predisposes people to schizophrenia might also be related to volition and genius and creativity and what fundamentaly makes people human. If curing people of schizophrenia eventually means something akin to giving at-risk fetuses a localized shot of some protein or amino acid or whatever at a strategic time in development, we might risk losing some potential brilliant minds as well. Moreover, a cure for schizophrenia could also mean a technology that allows governments to turn populations into zombies and robots. That might make the world easier to govern, but, at what cost?