Thursday, August 24, 2006
Mice have feelings?
A study about mice is getting much media attention at the moment.
The study claims to have found a gene that is linked to moods/depression, and that by "knocking out" this gene, they were able to breed mice who were not succeptible to depression.
Given that this is pretty similar work to what Laura used to do at her old lab, I'm comfortable with all these ideas.
What I'm a little less sure about is:
i) mice have feelings?
ii) the article mentions "chemical and behavioural tests" used to measure the mouse's happiness level. Wow. People have determined a "scientific" way of measuring a mouse's feelings?
iii) if mice do indeed have feelings, then doesn't it make it much less 'acceptable' to do all this weird testing / mutating on them?
The study claims to have found a gene that is linked to moods/depression, and that by "knocking out" this gene, they were able to breed mice who were not succeptible to depression.
Given that this is pretty similar work to what Laura used to do at her old lab, I'm comfortable with all these ideas.
What I'm a little less sure about is:
i) mice have feelings?
ii) the article mentions "chemical and behavioural tests" used to measure the mouse's happiness level. Wow. People have determined a "scientific" way of measuring a mouse's feelings?
iii) if mice do indeed have feelings, then doesn't it make it much less 'acceptable' to do all this weird testing / mutating on them?
# posted by Greg @ 5:48 AM 
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they've also found that expressing a certain protein in neural precursors in mice has led to transformation of hte mouse brain into one resembling that of higher mammals. the next step might be mice capable of abstract thought!
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