ext_114666 ([identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] urbpan 2006-03-09 05:49 pm (UTC)

Well, it's personal in that I work in a research lab which uses mice in experiments. I'd hazard to say that these animals are kept in a better state than the majority of pet mice. Our techs (who do the majority of mouse work) are made up of a group of 6 animal lovers, one of whom is a vegetarian (we had 3 veggie techs at one time). If I hadn't thought long and hard about this issue and come to the conclusion that at this point in time, mouse work is unavoidable, I wouldn't be working here.

As mentioned in my comment above, working with live animals is extremely expensive. They cost money to buy (especially if you get specific mutants bred from scratch) and a whole lot of money to house. Although everyone in the lab is working toward a common goal (curing leukemia), not all of them do mouse work. Quite a few just stick to signal transduction/molecular biology in vitro stuff.

I'm unclear as to which comment you feel was opinion and not fact? That mouse models of human diseases and therapies have benefitted mankind as a whole? That seems pretty factual to me.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
No Subject Icon Selected
More info about formatting