Muscle Mice

SilasMortimer writes "Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder have accomplished that for which humankind has been desperate since the dawn of civilization: turning sad, injured regular mice into angry, beefed-up super-mice. Well, okay, there's no official word in the article about the rodents' emotional states, but certainly when stem cells were injected into mice with leg injuries, the muscle grew back... almost twice as big as it was before the injury [abstract, supplemental material (PDF)]. This has many exciting implications, from better healing after injuries to slowing down the aging process to a spike in the number of cases of Generalized Anxiety Disorder among cats. I, for one, refuse to perpetuate outdated memes. (But feel free to make up for the lack.)" If these mice are bred with those given previously discovered treatments to make them smarter and fearless, we might be in trouble.

Comments

Clinical trials

[Anonymous Coward]

Stem-cell-enhanced fingers may lead to first posts.

Mighty Mouse

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally!

Re:Mighty Mouse

[adamofgreyskull]

Forget that. I want my Biker Mice from MARS !

an oldie

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new fearless super intelligent roid rage mice overlords

Re:an oldie

[Anonymous Coward]

traitor

Re:an oldie

[jgagnon]

I figure this will turn HHGTTG into Scripture.

Viagra Spam

[oldhack]

All medical research PR sounds like a viagra spam to me.

Re:Viagra Spam

[ultranova]

All medical research PR sounds like a viagra spam to me.

When all you have is impotence...

Re:Viagra Spam

[rtb61]

It still brings to mind the thought, if they inject brain geared stems cells into the testicles of jock straps will they be able to think more clearly and that's with or with out an erection, the mind boggles, or in the case of jockstraps, instead of thinking giving them a headache it will trigger a braingasm.

Re:Viagra Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is that a stem-cell enhanced mouse in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?....WHAT? It's BOTHH? ...I...gotta go...."

Re:Viagra Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

All medical research PR sounds like a viagra spam to me.

When all you have is impotence...

...everything is impossible to nail.

- T

Possible professional sports abuse?

[apn_k]

So once this is perfected will steroid use by professional athletes go down? And will it be possible to detect usage of this enhancement technique?

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[Que_Ball]

I predict they won't even wait for this to be perfected.

Someone in a third world country is likely brewing up a batch of stem cells in their "lab" as we speak.

Maybe they will have it ready in time for London. Weight lifting, you were a sport once. Now it's just magic show where everyone wonders how they make the trick work.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure just throw some cheese on the field, and see who goes for it.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[angiasaa]

Technically speaking, it should be fairly easy to customize muscle clumps in humans.
We just need a little more research in terms of how to deliberately injure muscle fibers before introducing the stem-cells.

Before long, we'll have muscles in shapes and sizes than are dreamt of in your philosophy. :)

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[angiasaa]

*Gags!*

I can't believe I mucked up there..
The last line should have read: "Before long, we'll have muscles in _more_ shapes and sizes than are dreamt of in your philosophy." :|

Don't ask what I was doing when I was supposed to be previewing. :P

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[phantomfive]

The reason steroids are illegal in sports is because they are damaging to the health. People think you should be able to compete in events without doing weird, unhealthy stuff like that. A lot of performance enhancing substances are perfectly legal, and everyone does them, like powdered protein, or creatine. If you don't use protein, it's really depressing how many cans of tunafish you have to eat to make up for it. These are so unlikely to damage your health that anyone can use them without special help from a doctor, and without health problems.

There is a scale, and of course steroids of course are on the extreme end of the spectrum, and have a lot of negative health effects. Other things, like blood doping, is mostly safe, but still carries risks and is hard to do by yourself, so it is kind of in the middle. Diet drugs are in the middle, but are legal. Protein is on the safe side. If this new technique ends up on the safe side, it will be legal. If it ends up on the unsafe side, it will be illegal. If it ends up in the middle, other random factors will end up determining what side it ends up on.

I don't have the knowledge to comment on whether it will be easy to detect or not.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[Sowelu]

You kidding? I've seen an article about a crazy doctor in an ethically-vague country who already killed someone with stem cell treatments: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/06/18/danger-stem-cell-tourists-patient-in-thailand-dies-from-treatment/

"According to a paper about the case just published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the woman went into a decline soon after her treatment. Within three months she required dialysis, within a year one kidney had failed, and within two years she was dead. A team of Thai and Canadian researchers performed a postmortem analysis of the kidneys, and found no evidence at all that the treatment had benefited the woman–and they found strange lumps and lesions at the sites of injection. Further investigation revealed that the masses were tangled mixtures of blood vessels and bone marrow cells."

Oh man, if that's not nightmare fuel, I don't know what is.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[SuricouRaven]

Every death is a lesson learned. I wouldn't be surprised if China ends up leading the world in advanced medicine, as they have two vital advantages: The money to pay for it, and the willingness to press ahead with potential technologies rather than spending ten years on five types of animal study and regulatory bickering.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

and the willingness to press ahead with potential technologies rather than spending ten years on five types of animal study and regulatory bickering.

Oh, you mean a lack of ethics.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[Stooshie]

" ... deliberately injure muscle fibers ... "

That's what exercise does. I damages the cells which are then repaired by the body's normal systems. I suspect stem cell treatment just speed this up.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[angiasaa]

The problem with this stem cell stuff, is that there needs to be enough damage to repair. Small damage from ripped muscles (through workouts) will have a small muscle increase. Big damage (perhaps surgically ripped), big increase. :)

Of course, it would still work on lightly ripped muscles, but the dosage would have to be over a long period of time. Surgical rips would be loads quicker and a smaller window of exposure.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[sempir]

Fuck professional sport abuse! I'm 70 years old and have a few very pressing needs of this technology myself, and one of them involves.....ahhh.......never mind, it'l come to me.....but I need it!

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

"No evidence at all that the treatment had benefited the woman" is a lot different from "killed with stem cell treatments".

People can have chronic kidney disease without ever reaching kidney failure, so if she was worried enough about it that she was willing to risk getting some crazy treatment, it must have been pretty bad already. If someone who's going to die soon wants to risk their already poor health volunteering for a new untested treatment which may or may not cure them, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be allowed to?

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

Unethical? Look at it the other way round; is it ethical to let a million people die an early death just so that one person who is already dying the same early death can live a little longer?

Personally I think taking calculated risks that could help all of them is worth it. The potential test subject and anyone else dying from lack of a potentially working treatment in the next ten years are already going to be dead by the time you've gone through all the "animal study and regulatory bickering".

It's easy to say it's unethical as long as you're in good health, but these people know that they will soon be dead. If any of us were in the same position, we'd probably want to take the risk unless we were already tired of living. As long as the test subject has consented, there is nothing unethical happening.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[irtza]

Well, the issue is more that most of these people who are "dying" are no where near dead. It may take a year or more for them to die. Furthermore, many of these "advances" add only one or two months of survival to someone with a one year survival to begin with. If animal testing is skipped, you may well reduce the time that these people have and for what?

Also, many therapies such as say aspirin during myocardial infarction offer great benefit; however, a new medication that may be "better" than aspirin may only be marginally better. So say only one in 10 above those already taking ASA will benefit. This can be proven to be statistically significant, but if it comes at a high cost, skipping animal studies may harm or kill a lot of people to find out. What if twice as many had life threatening bleeds? No animal study to base this on. Researcher saying likely better than aspirin? I think the US model as slow as it may be - was built out of a good understanding of safety needs as well as patient needs. And yes, there are exceptions made for emergent therapies. For example novalung (http://medgadget.com/archives/2007/02/novalung_ila_me.html) has only been used twice in the US - despite it not being approved. These were true life threatening situations.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

you may well reduce the time that these people have and for what?

If it's only giving an extra month then yes I don't see the point - but if it can give years to many people who otherwise would die before a new drug is available, then that's the sort of thing I consider worth testing. For example drugs that are aimed at curing something as widespread and damaging as AIDS would be well worth testing as soon as possible.

Yes a system like that could easily be abused, though people are already stupid enough to buy "fat pills" and the like..

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[antifoidulus]

Except for the fact that OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of drugs fail, not some, not half, an overwhelming majority, fail. You also seem to think that the worst thing that will happen is that the drug will have no effect. The worst that can happen is that it can kill you faster AND make your last days as agonizing as possible. There is a reason scientists do animal tests first, it's not because they just really like killing mice.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

The worst that can happen is that it can kill you faster AND make your last days as agonizing as possible

I know this, and I wasn't suggesting they do no animal testing first, it makes perfect sense to at least try that (though our bodies can react differently to mice in many cases). My point is that for those that are going to die a slow agonizing death anyway, the option of 1) cure or 2) faster agonizing death seems like a good one. I'm not suggesting that people who have a little bit of a headache try going into Walmart and try eating washing up capsules.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[dr2chase]

It's not just damaging to health. It's the cheating.

As far as "damaging to health" goes, the dose makes the poison. There's natural variation in testosterone levels; how do you argue damaging to health, if the least-chemically-manly merely doses up to the same level as the most-chemically-manly in an event? The result is the same as a naturally-occurring level, but it was obtained by doping, therefore it's illegal.

You could credibly argue, also, that any level of testosterone is hazardous to your long-term health (we do die sooner, statistically speaking), so clearly, we should just ban men's sports, right?

Similar arguments can be made for red blood cell count and EPO -- EPO's illegal, camping out for three months in La Paz or Quito (thin air), that's ok.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[irtza]

Well, lets take your example - AIDS.

There are over a dozen medications on the market that very effectively control its symptoms and long term effects. This does come at a cost and is currently a lifelong intervention.

There very well be a drug that will one day cure this disease. The issue is - do you try it when there is currently an alternative? Perhaps two decades ago before AZT proved effective, this may have been true. Is it reasonable to float a possible cure to someone when there is known effective therapy available?

So, lets go to something like metastatic cancer. Most therapies for this do not propose to be a cure. Furthermore, anything that can kill far spread cancer cells will invariably have major side effects. Is it reasonable to put someone through this therapy? Maybe. That is the reason that they make exceptions for certain drugs. This is usually not classic "testing" but made on a compassionate basis. Effectiveness of drugs or other therapies are not well studied like this. It becomes a - it worked once before so lets try it again approach.

Sometimes, this can have a detrimental effect on understanding a therapies effectiveness.

Going back to your AIDS example. Someone has end stage AIDS. You decide to try new therapy X ignoring known entities such as immune reconstitution - or perhaps for another disease an equally devestating curative effect in late stages. The patient dies from massive immune response as do all other people who you try this therapy on. Now, this therapy looks rather dangerous and the media takes this and runs. You look bad. The drug looks bad.

Perhaps if you were more thorough and conservative, this drug could have been brought forth as a drug to use after suppressing the HIV infection.

Proper research takes time, resources and money. Rushing something to market would lead to missteps much worse than something like Vioxx (which only adversely affects a small percentage of users - just that when usage is very high, things get noticed).

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[irtza]

BTW, I do largely agree with what you are saying - I am just saying that the safeguards in place may not be as bad as public perception makes them out to be. There are many more unethical people that would drown out the good research and fair use - even in a field where it takes years of study and a multitude of tests to enter.

If you ever find yourself or a loved one in a situation that they have a disease that local docs can't figure out and they don't refer you out. You need to look into research programs that have industry connections. These are the ones that can lobby the FDA to allow use of an experimental agent and have safety committees to ensure they don't abuse this.

If other nations move ahead because of the removal of safety testing in animals, it would come at a cost that I don't think the American public would be willing to accept to maintain parity.

If anything, American companies will move investment overseas thus maintaining some semblance of ownership over these ideas.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

Now, this therapy looks rather dangerous and the media takes this and runs. You look bad. The drug looks bad.

Actually that's a really salient point with me after reading the history of how fat was demonised in the 1950s, and the world is still taking its time to realise that not all fats are bad for you, and they don't make you fat, etc. If people perceive some good substance as bad for 60 years, it will do a lot more harm than waiting 10 years for full testing and refining of a drug..

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[pitchpipe]

Don't ask what I was doing when I was supposed to be previewing. :P

Building up your right forearm muscles since you had learned that they could now compensate with stem cell injections in the left?

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[phantomfive]

Dude, your arguments seriously look like someone who has an idea and is looking for anything to support it. Don't do that. Instead look at all the evidence and try to figure out what is the most likely conclusion. Don't be like the drunk man in the saying, who used statistics for support instead of illumination.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[dr2chase]

Not sure what you're saying. I've never done any of that stuff, if that's what you're implying, but it's entirely possible to enhance performance with drugs in ways that are not a health risk. So, that can't be the reason it's banned. Athletes could use testosterone and EPO to bring their personal levels right up the medically defined "upper limits", therefore not a health risk, yet under current rules it would still be illegal.

So it's about the cheating, not the health risk.

See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarne_Riis#Doping_allegations . He doped, but it's clear that there's a range of normal hematocrit, and that one could use EPO to titrate right up to the limit. And strictly speaking, high hematocrit is not dangerous till your blood starts to sludge up (quick internet research suggests, 70%, where 50% is the old threshold for a racing ban).

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[phantomfive]

I discussed blood doping in my original post. If steroids weren't a health risk, athletes would be using them as much as they use protein now.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[angiasaa]

Haha! Pretty close, but not close enough. I was choking on a mouthful of carbonated water. :)

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[angiasaa]

I'm guessing you have'nt tried lifting weights with whatever it is that will come to you. :)

You sure have a great sense of humor for a 70-year-old. I always thought 50's humor would'nt tickle me, but I stand wowed!

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[ebuck]

The problem is that you don't know how much time it is going to give you until after you do the testing, so arguing that skipping the testing to get the cure out faster because it might give you years of extended life is wishful thinking. It could also kill you in the next week. Without the testing all you will have is anecdotal evidence.

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[somersault]

My reasoning wasn't that it would give one person years of extended life, my argument was that if it worked for that one person it could then potentially save hundreds of thousands. Not amazingly likely to happen very often of course, and as someone else pointed out, it could lead to demonising of a potentially workable drug..

Re:Possible professional sports abuse?

[sjames]

I wish they had a few more details there. It's clear enough that the treatment didn't help and produced lesions. What isn't clear is that the kidney failure wasn't simply the unabated progression of her disease. What finally killed her was an infection, not the after-effects of the treatment.

It does show a need for caution and that stem cells aren't some sort of magic bullet.

Say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think every once in a while Geeknet forces the /. editors throw in an incomprehensible summary just to get us to all click through to the comments to commiserate thereby increasing page views :)

I disagree

[ILuvRamen]

I disagree with that last statement. A turbo-strong mouse that's not afraid of anything and was pretty clever would get its ass kicked by humans. We're still a little bigger and smarter than them and fearing us is what kept them alive for thousands of years. If they don't fear us, there's already a shotgun shell on the way to its head ;-)

Re:I disagree

[toetagger]

Don't be too sure! Imagine they enhance the "right" kind of muscle to improve the mice reproduction rate, let's say by 10x fold. Soon we won't have any food left to eat and will be dying of diseases transmitted by mice in a quantity that could displace an ocean.

Re:I disagree

[SuricouRaven]

Mice evolved to survive by breeding. They are already running at the limits of reproduction rate for an organism of their size. Twenty day gestation, and ready for a new litter to be concieved almost as soon as the previous is out. A female can pop out upwards of a hundred offspring each year easily, all of whome will be ready to breed themselves in three months. It's just not getting any higher.

Outdated Meme

[N1AK]

I, for one, welcome our new angry beefed-up super mice overlords.

Re:Outdated Meme

[Anonymous Coward]

What was with the retarded summary anyway?

Damn. . .

[MagusSlurpy]

. . . thought that article was going to be about how my PC could build up my right bicep.




(Because my right needs help catching up to my left)

Re:Damn. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends what you are surfing for on your PC.

Re:Damn. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

whoosh sound effects

You left out the zombie ...

[Anonymous Coward]

and mutation part

The question must be asked

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, what do you want to do tonight Muscles?"
"Same thing we do every night Pinky, PUMP SOME IRON!"

Re:The question must be asked

[MoeDumb]

Supermouse to scientist: "Build a better mousetrap and I'll punch your lights out."

Re:The question must be asked

[game kid]

I didn't know Carl Paladino donated stem cells.

Re:The question must be asked

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know Carl Paladino donated stem cells.

He was just getting in their face, per the directions of one community organizer in WAAAY over his head.

Re:The question must be asked

[unitron]

Congratulations!

I was looking for the (I thought) inevitable Christine O'Donnell mice with human brains comment and you go with the much more subtle Paladino reference.

Re:The question must be asked

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dRSsnbvfVY

interesting possibilities

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if the mice become injured and receive stem cell treatment again? Can their muscle mass be increased to 2^x ? Or, if stem cells were injected into the brains of politicians, would they be cured of their disease or would they become doubly problematic?

Extensive testing...

[geogob]

I can only start to see how this could go wrong. From tumors to having a lung grown in the leg... I fear we might have face some interesting surprises during more extensive testing.

Re:Extensive testing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tumours, likely.
Lung, impossibly.
If you don't know any biology, use statistics- how many people do you know who've had cancer, and how many people do you know who've grown extra lungs?

Re:Extensive testing...

[geogob]

How many people do you know who've had cancer caused by the injection of stems cells done in a fashion that promote their growth?

Re:Extensive testing...

[houghi]

I fear we might have face some interesting surprises during more extensive testing.

The most interesting surprises will be in the field of sports as I am sure that is where most of the extensive testing will be done. Tour the France in three days instead of three weeks. 100 meters in under two seconds.

World records will be shattered.

Re:Extensive testing...

[hitmark]

As will furniture and faces?

Re:Extensive testing...

[Stooshie]

Not impossible. Many cancerous tumours have teeth, hair and other "normal" tissue embedded in them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teratoma

For all the humor...

[MarcQuadra]

For all the humor in the title, there's hopefully just as much promise.

My doctor recently told me that my twenty-something year old skeleton is basically aged like a geriatric's. The implications long term are not good. If they can make stem cells grow bone and muscle, I might not spend my fifties fighting infections in a wheelchair. It's bad enough not being able to ride a bike before I'm 30.

Re:For all the humor...

[guyminuslife]

That sounds awful. I hope they do make significant advances in stem cell research so that you and others can get the treatment you deserve. That being said, might I suggest you consider a career as a supervillain? I hear the pay is very nice and you get a cool lair.

Re:For all the humor...

[dr2chase]

Not even a bike? I am so sorry. Maybe a recumbent tricycle? That's as low-impact as I can imagine, that still uses muscles at all, unless you swim everywhere (and even then, sometimes you kick the side by accident).

A friend, because of congenital circulatory problems that should have killed her as a child, is now wandering around (and riding a bike) with 40% of the CV capacity of a middle-aged woman. She gets winded sometimes. You think, some of those performance-enhancing drugs, can't we use them for good? Seems like a speck of EPO would be a real help, goose that RBC up to the higher end of the normal range.

Re:For all the humor...

[Nos.]

Both my children have Duchenne muscular dystrophy, so these kind of advances have a lot of promise for people with degeratvie muscle conditions.

Re:For all the humor...

[MarcQuadra]

Thanks for the support. Right now it's not clear if it will stop where it is or get worse. Still, it sucks to have osteopenia when you're young.

I only found out because I got a slipped disc in my neck. My doctor asked what I did to mess things up so bad, and the answer was 'nothing at all', which triggered all sorts of tests to find out if I had nutritional or hormonal deficiencies, or even cancer. So far it looks like None of the Above, which is a good thing, I think.

Re:For all the humor...

[MarcQuadra]

I can still ride, but bumpy roads or jumping a curb puts me out of commission for two days. So does sprinting to catch up with my dog, or playing with the doggie pull-toy.

I just hope whatever caused my body to lose bone mass has stopped, there's no way to tell except for checking on it every few years.

Re:For all the humor...

[SilasMortimer]

I'm a satirical writer, hence the humorous tone in the post. But the very reason I keep up with this particular subject is because of someone I know and love very, very much.

While she's not as bad off as you are, her physical problem is such that it might prevent her from a career in her chosen field: microbiology, ironically or coincidentally, depending on how you look at it. And currently there is no form of therapy that will improve it. The current best hope is to retard its onslaught.

My point is that I'm behind you, however light my language is when talking about A's like TF one linked to in this news item. It's the whole point for me.

Just didn't want you to think I didn't appreciate the situation for what it is.

I'm going to write a science boook:

[fyngyrz]

"Machine-guns for Algernon"

Re:I'm going to write a science boook:

[a_hanso]

Or, Mighty Mouse!

Re:I'm going to write a science boook:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Embed this supplement in pizza, and you'll have a slashdot army!

Then, short circuit their "fear center" and we'll be sending muscle-bound, super-geeks on one-way-trips to Mars, by the thousands!

I'm going to start...

[Anonymous Coward]

developing super-cats. We're soon going to need them....

Imagine that

[Anonymous Coward]

Even bigger bodybuilders...

Re:Imagine that

[SilasMortimer]

Fist of the North Star, anyone?

Oo! When the first "Tetsuo from Akira incident" happens, I want video.

Twice as big?

[Anonymous Coward]

"[W]hen stem cells were injected into mice with leg injuries, the muscle grew back... almost twice as big as it was before the injury"

So they were trying to restore tissue to size 1 but instead made it twice the size they meant to?

This would be helpful to restore cardiac tissue of "The Grinch" for his heart is two sizes too small.

Re:Twice as big?

[SilasMortimer]

Wait, now. But the Grinch's heart was swelled by receiving Christmas cheer.

Perhaps we've been wasting a lot of time and money with unnecessary research.

They may not be Vogons but

[Anonymous Coward]

If Douglas Adams is anyone to go by, then we are in serious trouble

The Incredible Hulk - new & improved.

[nomad-9]

From the article: "These cells not only repaired the injury, but they caused the treated muscle to increase in size by 170 percent."

Here comes the New Incredible Hulk. No need for gamma rays, nor anger feed to turn into a green monster. Gone the urge to get new large clothes after each transformation..

The New Hulk version 2.0 doesn't turn green. He has gone through several stem cells injections, he stays big, and doesn't need anger management classes... But it will be still quite unwise to piss him off.

They must have dosed the cheese!

[allaunjsilverfox2]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxoake3YY2s Nolan Cheese Commerical

Of Men and Mice

[Anonymous Coward]

Or. perhaps the mice are performing incredibly subtle experiments on the RESEARCHERS....

There is a little hurdle to clear....

[rts008]

World records will be shattered.

Many more bones will also be shattered as well.
Tendons, ligaments, joints will be rupturing, snapping, popping.
They will sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies...SNAP! CRACKLE! POP!
Then there's the pesky cardiopulmonary support upgrades needed.

Obligatory car analogy:
In my misspent youth, I watched two guys install/hack an 1800 horsepower Allison V-1710 (V-12) form a decommissioned P-51 Mustang fighter, into a 1967 Ford Mustang.
To make a long story short, they ended up with a piece by failed piece custom drive-train. Then came the suspension/tire mods to actually use all that power.

The fateful test run at the drag strip started...the christmas tree turned green, the car launched...tires smoking, the car reared up about a foot when the wheelie-bars halted the rise. So far, all is well.
Then too many things happened at the same time: the rear tires shredded, the body/frame twisted so fast and to such an extent that both doors popped opened, the rear glass and windshield shattered and flew outward, and the hood came unlatched-but was held by the safety cable.
They never got the doors to stay shut after that and scrapped the project.

Re:There is a little hurdle to clear....

[dr2chase]

Similarly, at a lake near where I grew up, kids with more money than sense would put ever-larger motors on tiny motorboat hulls (13' Checkmate, official limit was 55HP). Apparently, with a large enough motor (135HP) and the right prop, when you goose it from a standstill, the bow comes up, and just keeps on coming over. Oops.

Re:There is a little hurdle to clear....

[BranMan]

So, in other words they were idiots who tested this contraption for the first time at a drag strip by doing a full-power, pedal to the floor, stomp from a dead standstill? Brilliant.

Re:There is a little hurdle to clear....

[Power_Pentode]

In my misspent youth, I watched two guys install/hack an 1800 horsepower Allison V-1710 (V-12) form a decommissioned P-51 Mustang fighter, into a 1967 Ford Mustang.

An interesting endeavour, if somewhat foolhardy. I vaguely recall that "standard practice" back in the day was to put the V-12 on an industrial bandsaw and (sob) saw it in half to make a relatively lightweight 6 cylinder race car engine. I definitely recall seeing one such bandsaw with the two engine halves nearby. On a brighter note, I recently visited a facility in Florida and sat in a shop with what looked like 50+ Allisons, Merlins, and possibly other assorted V-12 engines lined up on the shelves, so at least someone is preserving and refurbishing them.

Re:There is a little hurdle to clear....

[rts008]

On a brighter note, I recently visited a facility in Florida and sat in a shop with what looked like 50+ Allisons, Merlins, and possibly other assorted V-12 engines lined up on the shelves, so at least someone is preserving and refurbishing them.

Good for them! Those were amazing engines, especially the Merlins.
I had the good fortune(as a car nut) to grow up in Southern Maryland and saw some incredible stuff at Budd's Creek dragstrip. 'Jungle Jim' Liberman (with Jungle Pam--HAWT!!!), the 'Green Monster jet car, the 'Draggin' Wagon', 'Big Daddy' Don Garlits racing his dragster against a US Navy fighter launched from a steam catapult on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and other fun stuff was happening all the time.*sigh*

As a side note, I saw in HotRod magazine that someone had successfully integrated the Allison V-12 into a Ford Mustang that 'worked' about two years later.(if my fuzzy memory is still working, or the timeline has become distorted from huffing too many nitromethane fumes!)

I always wanted one of those Allison V-12's to hack into a drag car!

Biker mice from Mars!

[zwarte piet]

It's ............... Biker mice from Mars!

Another Example of Government Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to spend millions of dollars creating super mice when you can buy a rat off the shelf for next to nothing.

Reversing the polarity...

[ignavus]

I guess it could put a new meaning into the question: "Are you a man or a MOUSE?"

Re:"Machine-guns for Algernon"

[TaoPhoenix]

Diary Entry:
"... But then I needed to gain pure knowledge of the destruction I had wrought, so I shall kiss the lead. Goodbye."

Really though fyngyrz, you touched on a hobby project of mine, let's call it the "Algernon curse", which in storylines means that we can't stand to see someone get a pure enhancement, so it always gets written with a deadly downside.

Bonus points if you can dig up the obscure episode of 6 Million Dollar Man with William Shatner on this exact theme.

don't worry about the mice getting out

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSF is funding a project for six million dollar cats too!

"Here I come to save the day!"

[Hohlraum]

That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Has noone considered the chance that we might end up with Mighty Mouse and he might save the day?

cant wait to get some...

[hesaigo999ca]

How long before they bottle this up and sell it to the public?

Make up for lack

[ciotog]

I, for one, welcome our outdated meme perpetuating overlords!

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if an injection into the testicles would have the same effect?!

Re:Hmmm

[SilasMortimer]

Actually, whether or not you're joking with that statement, it might be something very interesting to infertile people who wish to have children. As these are stem cells, I imagine they could fabricate gametes as well as anything else. In fact, it might even be a safer exercise to start out with. Gametes are fairly simple, they aren't dependent on connected cells for life, and since they don't divide on their own, I imagine there'd be less risk, as well.

It seems more ethically clean and if it worked, it would make tons of money that could further fund research. And what we'd learn even from this would be invaluable research in and of itself. I'll be surprised if no one is already looking into this.

As far as the joke goes, I know from experience that having large testicles isn't all it's cracked up to be. Mine, for instance, have the very uncomfortable habit of always bouncing to the left and to the right. Though I might feel a bit better if they were held every night.

\m/,

Cool for the mice,

[Progman3K]

the cure for the anxious cats was discovered long ago, it has something to do with giving them cheezebugers,,,

Re:"Machine-guns for Algernon"

[h4rm0ny]

Hah! Algernon's Curse. That is a really good name for it. I don't know which is worse - the more literal versions, where someone physically suffers for their enhancement, or the old cyberpunk-y style metaphysical ones where people become less "human". In either case, it sounds like the twin brother of Caveman Science Fiction.

Very useful information

[suckhoenct]

Very useful information, many thanks!

Does Umbrella Corporation know about this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wesker!!!

Pinky and the Brain!

[Maalstrom Aran]

One is a genius the other is insane.

Re:Pinky and the Brain!

[Justin.Rudebaugh]

Pinky: Gee, Brain. What are we going to do tonight? The Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.

For those interested

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists have already created muscle mice by decreasing the amount of myostatin in their bodies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin

Re:an oldie (Animaniacs)

[Anonymous Coward]

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!

Re:"Machine-guns for Algernon"

[Muad'Dave]

...the obscure episode of 6 Million Dollar Man with William Shatner on this exact theme.

Is that the one where Shatner is wearing the bigfoot costume and Steve runs around in an ice tunnel with aliens?

Sorry, that was Andre the Giant, not Shatner. You mean this one.

Ahhnold!

[Anonymous Coward]

"...when stem cells were injected into mice with leg injuries, the muscle grew back... almost twice as big as it was before the injury..."

What this means is that after 6-7 iterations many of you geeks could even start to look like Arnold used to look.

Mike

No pain, no gain!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Notice that the growth only occurs if the muscle was injured. This implies that there's a valid biological mechanism inspiring the body builders' slogan "No pain, no gain!"

How much you want to bet...

[roc97007]

...the first clinical trials will be on football linemen. Or professional wrestlers.

*disclaimer* Long reply warning, at request of P.

[rts008]

You are assuming too much, and doing too much 'reading between the lines'.
The pair I chronicled were successful semi-pro drag racers. They did not have Engineering degrees, formal or factory training, but had a proven track record for 'making cars go fast' to the drag racing community.

The purpose and focus of my posting the comment and car analogy was on topic for the 'Muscle Mouse' discussion, so I purposely did not go into long detail.

So, for YOUR narrow minded and OFFTOPIC comment reply, here goes:

The two guys, Dick and Al Jamison, were semi-pro drag racers. They earned their living by drag racing, and supported their hobbies by building Chevy race engines, drivetrains,
suspension mods, drag car frames, etc. for the region. (Hint: they made their primary means of living from WINS at the racetrack!)

I 'worked' there as a 'gopher' in 1972. I say 'worked' as I spent all of my spare time there...cleaning up the shop, fetching drinks, whatever.
In 1975 I was hired as an engine builder, following a blueprint...by 1976 I was designing the blueprints.
We were reliably getting 3.24 hp/cuid with a normally aspirated Chevy small block.
For example:
My 1969 Chevy Malibu with a 350 cubic inch displacement engine(cuid) dynomometer readings under load was 1138 horsepower, which run a best 1/4 mile time of 10.98 seconds. I usually ran in the 11.0-11.1 second bracket by unbolting the exhaust, installing the 5.56:1 gears in the Dana-60 'Quick change" rear-end, changing the rear tires for a pair of 'racing slicks'(one in the back seat, and one in the trunk to get there), and re-jetting/retuning the carb, and using a 50% H20/Chlorox bleach solution for the burnout in the staging lane. The driveshaft permanently had a restraining loop, a clutch shatter pack shield was in place around a highly modded TH400 automatic(well, semi-auto, heh!) tranny, with a Lenko Ratchet shifter, and a Line-Lock system on the brakes.

We(Jamison's Racing) had a 1964 Chevy II with one of our 454 engines running sub-10 second quarter-miles.

It was a 'what if' project to them.
BTW, the Ford 9" rearend was state of the art at the time, and 'bullet-proof'.

The Allison was later sold at an extreme profit.

Way to make assumptions, post 'offtopic', and confuse the facts...
The 'first time' that you allude to came after the trials and tribulations of the prototypes, and after they had only considered legal aspects for the Super Stock class of drag racers, using the best technology of the times.
Yeah, they could of applied this to the Unlimited class and succeeded, but they were competing in the Super Stock class.

It was a meant to be a basic/generic ONTOPIC car analogy, assclown.

obligational

[Zex_Suik]

I for one welcome our Hulkified squeaky furry Overlords

Re:*disclaimer* Long reply warning, at request of

[BranMan]

My apologies - I didn't intend for my post to be a bash of Dick and Al, though in my defense your post didn't do much to make them sound like they knew what they were doing.

Drag racing is a dangerous and exacting sport, pushing mechanical and material science to the hairy edge and beyond - I wish you well with it.

Assclown was a bit much though.

Re:*disclaimer* Long reply warning, at request of

[rts008]

Assclown was a bit much though.

You're correct, and my apologies also.

I had left a lot of info out just to keep it short and ontopic. Sorry for the confusion.