So it is the standard preliminary test subject. Preliminary being a key word, things get tested in them first for plausibility but those findings usually need to be reconfirmed in an actual human study.
The first thing is that they're mammals. You might be able to get cheap chickens for example, do experiments on them, but they're birds, they're not mammals. In terms of how similar to us they are, the most similar thing is he could find would be chimpanzees or so, and great apes in that general category, dogs and cows would be more similar to us than mice, mice and rats are probably about the same, and then there are things that are older like opossums, they would be a worse fit than mice. And they are social animals like we are.
Mice are cheap because they are good at making more of themselves, and at this point you can buy them fantastically inbred—genetically nearly uniform, a bunch of them all the same age.
The short life span is the third killer feature, obviously when you do human studies you have to follow us around for 40 years if you want us to get old, free mouse you just follow him for 2 years. Other than that, it's mostly just that they're mostly domesticated, so you don't have to worry about them biting you or anything. They are small and easy to handle and when you need a larger creature there are rats available.
You will notice that they are less used for certain other things, so for example if you wanted to test biomedical devices that you insert into a body, maybe something that you clamp around an artery, for those sorts of things the smallness really gets in the way... Then you might see cow or horse studies or whatever, something with bigger arteries that you can clamp this thing on.
It would be irresponsible to decide what supplements you are supplementing with based only on mouse studies. It would not be extremely irresponsible—there is a decent chance that if it were actively going to kill you then that would have appeared in the mouse studies—but it's still generally irresponsible in a milder fashion. In the sense that you are kind of throwing the dice with your health rather than making an informed decision. But I mean it's a better habit than smoking I guess so do whatever floats your boat?
We often see therapies that work on mice but that don't translate to humans, but I wonder how many treatments that would be super effective for humans were discarded because they didn't work in mice.
We would probably see some effect on the mice even if it was not a strong one. When we say that something worked on mice but not humans, it usually means that the effect on humans was insufficient to be worthwhile, but we can see it. It may be worthwhile exploring further. If we saw even a small effect in mice, it might suggest an area to do further research.
The first thing is that they're mammals. You might be able to get cheap chickens for example, do experiments on them, but they're birds, they're not mammals. In terms of how similar to us they are, the most similar thing is he could find would be chimpanzees or so, and great apes in that general category, dogs and cows would be more similar to us than mice, mice and rats are probably about the same, and then there are things that are older like opossums, they would be a worse fit than mice. And they are social animals like we are.
Mice are cheap because they are good at making more of themselves, and at this point you can buy them fantastically inbred—genetically nearly uniform, a bunch of them all the same age.
The short life span is the third killer feature, obviously when you do human studies you have to follow us around for 40 years if you want us to get old, free mouse you just follow him for 2 years. Other than that, it's mostly just that they're mostly domesticated, so you don't have to worry about them biting you or anything. They are small and easy to handle and when you need a larger creature there are rats available.
You will notice that they are less used for certain other things, so for example if you wanted to test biomedical devices that you insert into a body, maybe something that you clamp around an artery, for those sorts of things the smallness really gets in the way... Then you might see cow or horse studies or whatever, something with bigger arteries that you can clamp this thing on.
It would be irresponsible to decide what supplements you are supplementing with based only on mouse studies. It would not be extremely irresponsible—there is a decent chance that if it were actively going to kill you then that would have appeared in the mouse studies—but it's still generally irresponsible in a milder fashion. In the sense that you are kind of throwing the dice with your health rather than making an informed decision. But I mean it's a better habit than smoking I guess so do whatever floats your boat?