The 21st century mouse is in a fantastic position: he's able to stroll into a medical clinic and take his pick from a variety of cancer cures.
Although a cure for certain cancers in mice is old news, in a highly significant 2006 study at Wake Forest University, researchers used white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice to cure a wide-ranging selection of other cancers in their sick brethren.
Advertisement
And cancer isn't the only thing mice can relegate to history. According to recent research:
Baldness:
Earlier this year, University of Pennsylvania researchers discovered a cure for baldness in mice. Apparently the mice grew new hair follicles when their skin was scraped off.
Blindness:
Researchers at the University of Florida have managed to restore the sight of mice with a hereditary form of blindness.
Erectile dysfunction:
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have managed to reverse erectile dysfunction in mice using gene therapy (though why we might want mice to become even more virile is an open question). It is, of course, worth noting that the researchers did not recruit mice with ED using newspaper ads or clinicaltrials.gov. The depressing reality is that the mice were first made dysfunctional before they were cured.
Immunity to bird flu:
A small group of mice will however not be made sick before they are cured. Even though they will be exposed to some horrible things, they will first be rendered immune to them. So, for example, researchers at the Institute for research in Biomedicine, in Switzerland, have managed to make mice immune to bird flu; and
Hypertension and diabetes
University of Washington Medical School researchers have found a way to prevent hypertension and diabetes in mice by switching off nerve signals to the liver.
Now the bad news for mice
Even though this fantastic array of cures exist, they are not likely to reach mice outside the confines of the lab anytime soon. And mice that do make it into the lab, do so at their own risk, since scientists are much more inclined to the enlist them as volunteers than to cure them.
Indeed, in research conducted at John Hopkins University in the US, scientists reported recentely that they had engineered mouse genes to turn them schizophrenic. Apparently the mice lost interest in swimming, had trouble finding food, and got agitated when in open spaces, HealthDay reported.
Meanwhile, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researchers have bred mice to have a severe form of autism, while a second MIT team bioengineered mice to have a form of Alzheimer’s disease.
If a mouse is lucky enough not to end up in the control group, he may, on the other hand, get the kind of cure of which humans can only dream. You take your chances. Some of the Alzheimer’s mice showed significant mental improvements when kept in a stimulating environment. In contrast, their unluckier counterparts kept in unstimulating surroundings typically got lost and failed to complete tasks, HealthDay reported.
So near, but yet so far
If you add it all up, the 21st century mouse should have eternal health within its grasp. Yet, it is not going to happen.
The problem, of course, is a social one. Humans aren’t going to help them unless they can pay, and pay big. Since mice do not have medical schemes, their options are severely limited. In fact, their situation is the exact opposite of that of wealthy humans, who have the money, but not the cures.
So, rather than going to the nearest medical clinic, sick mice have to bite the bullet, role the dice, and report at the lab. And once there, who knows what may happen. – (Marcus Low, Health24, August 2007)
Bookmark with:
What are social bookmarks?