Dye Used In Blue M&Ms Can Lessen Spinal Injury

SydShamino writes "Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center have found that the dye used in blue M&Ms and other foods can, when given intravenously to a lab rat shortly after a spinal injury, minimize secondary damage caused by the body when it kills off nearby healthy cells. The dye is called BBG or Brilliant Blue G. Given that 85% of spinal injury patients are currently untreated (and some doctors don't trust the treatment given to the other 15%), a relatively safe treatment like this could help preserve some function for thousands of patients. The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue." The researchers are "pulling together an application to be lodged with the FDA to stage the first clinical trials of BBG on human patients."

Comments

Sound Methods?

[eldavojohn]

"... so every year we have a bring-your-child-to-work day where we inject some M&M dye into the lab rats and let the kids play with them. And Gunderson's kid has this nasty tendency to just baseball them into the wall and, well, we noticed the blue colored mice were recovering much better from the wall impact injuries ..."

Seriously though is there like a lab out there giving rats spinal injuries and jacking them full of chemicals? Cause if there is, I've got my resume handy!

Re:Sound Methods?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The funny thing is, if you want to poison a rat for scientific reasons, or (as in this case) break a rat's spine for scientific reasons, there are all sorts of rules to be followed, standards to be upheld, forms to be filed, etc.

If you just have rats in your house/warehouse/store/(or heck, even your lab, as long as they aren't lab rats) you can put out backbreaking traps, glue traps that cause slow death by dehydration, warfarin baits, whatever you want and nobody will say a thing. No standards, just the maintanence guy hittin' em with a shovel if they are twitching too much for the garbage.

Same thing in other areas: You don't need to deal with an IRB to raise feedlot pigs. And, for human testing, you (ostensibly at any rate) need informed consent, and various safeguards, IRB oversight, etc. If you need to spray your nerve toxin/probable human carcinogen on your crops, you just hire some undocumented mexican for $3.50 an hour, and throw him away if he breaks...

I'm not arguing that science needs less scrutiny(unethical conduct is always bad, and "trust us, its for the greater good" doesn't have an especially noble history; but I do think that science draws flack well out of proportion to its relative ethical risk, for reasons I don't fully understand. Numerous fields of human endeavor kill, maim, or cripple far more animals and humans, to far less benefit, than science, and somehow get away with less scrutiny and opposition. Why is science the target?

Re:Sound Methods?

[interkin3tic]

Why? Are rats less deserving of our sympathies than "intelligent" humans?

Yes.

Wouldn't it be /more/ humane to test on those creatures that can give informed consent?

No.

Re:Sound Methods?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of those procedures are less about caring for the rats and more about proper bookkeeping, budgeting, specimen tracking, etc. It's procedural controls to keep it science instead of just injecting rats with food coloring.

As to why science is the target: probably because it's so procedural, and done for reasons many people can't understand properly or deem to be wasteful. A dozen rabbits getting maimed in a wheat thresher is just an unfortunate side effect of your vegan diet; a dozen rabbits getting experimented on for a reason you don't understand is torture and unethical, even if it may alleviate pain and suffering for untold numbers of fellow humans.
=Smidge=

Re:Sound Methods?

[Tubal-Cain]

You may not even use my rat. Buy your own, or go to your local animal shelter.

Re:Sound Methods?

[PopeRatzo]

No, they're rats. Bred specifically for scientific purposes.

I agree with your conclusion, but not your argument. The fact that they are "bred specifically for scientific purposes" doesn't have any impact on the moral aspect of animal testing. We've had people who were specifically bred for farm labor but that didn't make slavery moral.

The reason animal testing for medicine is OK is because we agree that the life of a human is more valuable than the life of a lab rat. Whether or not I may agree with that assumption doesn't change the fact that it has become a consensus. The best we can do as far as creating a moral framework for human society is to accept such a consensus. It's imperfect, but I don't see another way, unless you're willing to abrogate moral responsibility to the pronouncements of an imaginary deity, which really means "a bunch of guys who wrote moral pronouncements and then claimed they came from god". I happen to prefer the consensus method to the imaginary deity method.

Re:Sound Methods?

[rantingkitten]

Your answers are coming off as really, really callous. Strictly speaking, you are probably right -- a rat is not worth as much as a human from a purely objective ethical or moral standpoint (though I suspect there are some who would debate this, and the discussion could get interesting).

But even if you're right, that does not mean we should be completely carefree about inflicting harm against creatures that can feel pain or fear or both, merely because they're not human. Tossing off one-word yes/no responses to that guy's questions makes it sound like there is nothing further to discuss, when in fact the issue of animal testing is a hotly contested one and not so easily answered.

And all this time...

[jbarr]

...I've been focusing on the green ones!

Re:And all this time...

[TinBromide]

But have you been injecting them intravenously?

Re:And all this time...

[SnarfQuest]

I tried, but couldn't get them to squeeze out the little needle. Tried using a caulking gun, but that was just extremely painful.
Turned out as badly as when I tried snorting coke. The bubbles just about killed me.

Blue Rat Group

[HTH NE1]

The best part is that in lab rats the subjects given the treatment turn blue.

Do they also start taking part in voiceless percussion stage performances?

Re:Blue Eyes? Blue Vision?

[NFN_NLN]

Notice that the eyes have completely changed color as well. I'm thinking I do not want my eyes filled with blue tint.

Yeah, given the choice between blue tinted eyes and spinal injury most people will chose spinal injury, I know I would.

Re:Mobsters, the new clinical trialists.

[VxMorpheusxV]

That is the nature of research with animals. There is regulation (here in the U.S) that attempts to minimize pain when possible and guidelines that must be followed to acquire animals for research, but there has been substantial progress made through animal research. If you've got a viable alternative I'm sure it would be considered. Take a look at the wiki page for more info.

Why M&M?

[Relic of the Future]

Why are M&Ms getting attached to this story? This dye is used in all kinds of foods, not just M&Ms.

Maybe M&M/Mars, thanks to all the free and undeserved publicity, would be willing to help fund the necessary study, since no drug company seems interested in doing so (after all, there's no profit in selling a commodity food coloring.)

Re:Blue Eyes? Blue Vision?

[Anonymous Coward]

The spice must flow!?

This is going to be a can of worms

[overshoot]

Apparently this is one of those things like clotbusters after a CVI or MI where time counts -- only more so: waiting an hour or two can make the difference between walking and not walking.

Which means that restricting it to use in trauma centers is going to end up with a lot of nonurban victims left paralyzed for life. Trouble is, administering it outside of a trauma center is going to cause a lot of problems with licensure etc. Which causes me, as a nonurban first responder, to simultaneously stress out and reach for the popcorn.

So conflicted

[symbolset]

Are these humans lawyers, music industry executives, or Microsoft programmers? Context is key.