[HN Gopher] 'Dancing molecules' successfully repair severe spina...
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'Dancing molecules' successfully repair severe spinal cord injuries
Author : wasi0013
Score : 336 points
Date : 2021-11-22 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.northwestern.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.northwestern.edu)
| sidlls wrote:
| The last section about generalizing the treatment is a bit
| underwhelming. Have they seen any evidence it can be used outside
| this sort of repair? What about for neuropathies, as from
| diabetes or surgeries? Stroke? Other dysfunctions (e.g.
| erectile/genital) having nervous system issues as a contributing
| factor?
|
| Any treatment "might" have more general applicability--but surely
| there is some specific direction/class of these conditions that
| are indicated to be more appropriate to apply the treatment to
| than others. I wish they'd gone in more depth here.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Nice, I've added a link to my calendar to check up on this work a
| year from now.
|
| As described, it seems as though it would work just as well for
| traumatic brain injury as well. Either way it would be a huge
| boost in the quality of life for a lot of people.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| > The therapy also induces myelin to rebuild around axons and
| reduces glial scarring, which acts as a physical barrier that
| prevents the spinal cord from healing
|
| This gives the impression that this would need to be administered
| before any scaring takes place. It is probably not a remedy for
| people with old injuries.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Maybe a dumb question but....
|
| If scar tissue forms after an injury and blocks the area (on
| both sides of the nerve, I assume), like this ---x x--- . Could
| you then cut the scarred area away, creating "new" injury that
| this treatment could cure?
|
| ----x x----
|
| ---| |---
|
| ---**---
| gus_massa wrote:
| I remember reading a story many years ago a about a boy that
| got a nerve severed and later they opened the wound to remove
| the scar in the nerve and reconnect the nerve, so it regrows.
| The problem was that after cutting the scar, the nerve was
| shorter, so they have to take a shortcut in the elbow.
|
| I can't find the story, but these links have info that is
| similar enough to be confident my memory is not too bad.
| http://www.rebeccaayers.co.nz/procedures-and-
| information/han...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerve_allograft
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Cool! I am glad that it might be possible and that this
| might even be able to help those who have old injuries
| then!
|
| My wife has internal scarring and adhesion(filaments of
| scar tissues) from appendicitis. This causes complications
| and her intestines can get twisted instead of moving freely
| over each other like they normally would. I asked if the
| adhesion could be cut to allow free movement but
| unfortunately it's sort of like a hydra, you cut one and it
| will form more/new adhesions.
| irjustin wrote:
| Yeah, but this is incredible if it works at the human level.
|
| My friend was in a car accident and a subwoofer that wasn't
| tied down ended up striking in him the back paralyzing him from
| the mid-back down. Years and years of heartache for both my
| friend, and the other friend who installed the subwoofer
| without tying it down.
|
| There was a lot of things wrong that allowed this to happen,
| but knowing future people with injuries like my friend whom
| this therapy could save or alleviate makes me incredibly
| excited.
| jgilias wrote:
| This, however, seems to suggest that the therapy actually
| reduces pre-existing scar tissue:
|
| > the breakthrough therapy dramatically improved severely
| injured spinal cords in five key ways: (1) The severed
| extensions of neurons, called axons, regenerated; (2) scar
| tissue, which can create a physical barrier to regeneration and
| repair, significantly diminished;
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| I've always wondered... and so far have been unable to Google
| this: Does the non-nucleus part of a severed nerve cell die? If
| so, that would mean we only have a small window to "rejoin"
| severed CNS nerve cells, right? Nerve cells can be very long, I
| think up to a meter. I'd assume this includes spinal nerve cells
| of the CNS, which don't regrow. If the cells are severed, like in
| a spinal injury, that means there's a half-cell fragment with a
| nucleus, and the other half is the axon that's been cut away
| without a nucleus. Wouldn't the fragment without a nucleus
| shrivel up and die? That would be my intuition because I'd assume
| the nucleus is necessary to keep a cell alive.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Yep. The nerve soma(the cell body) does not die when the nerve
| is cut. The axon distal to the cut dies. The living axon tries
| to grow into the 'scaffold' of the axon part that died. This
| can take months and doesn't always restore full functionality.
| mattlondon wrote:
| I would assume that the entire cell would die without the
| membrane to hold everything together.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysis
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| PNS nerve cells regenerate axons:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846285/
| bawana wrote:
| so we just have to inject stem cells into the area where
| there are a lot of damaged nerve cells without nuclei and
| have these cells fuse with the damaged remnants. Just throw
| some PEG in there with the stem cells?
| markdeloura wrote:
| I find myself wondering whether a useful testing step between
| mice and people might be the community of small dogs with IVDD.
| French bulldogs, dachshunds, and corgis seem particularly
| susceptible and many of them wind up with rear paralysis.
| https://www.thedogsdown.com/how-can-ivdd-cause-paralysis/
| yread wrote:
| My wife works on regenerative medicine for spine and they use
| dogs (and horses) a lot. Cells are similar and they suffer from
| the same problems. It's mostly dogs who die of natural causes
| though as dogs are too cute to experiment on...
| GordonS wrote:
| It's not unusual for dogs to be used in medical research. Aside
| from the more well-known use of rats, rabbits are also commonly
| used.
| iandanforth wrote:
| IN MICE.
|
| Seriously, mice are _really really_ good at healing these
| injuries. You can find dozens of 'heals spinal cord injuries IN
| MICE' articles.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Fingers crossed.
|
| I suspect Christopher Reeve had a hand in this somehow. Creating
| awareness and motivation to work on this.
| rocqua wrote:
| Based on this stimulating Axon growth, it sounds like it might
| help to repair the damage caused by MS. That would be amazing
| news. Not a cure per se, but a way to actually treat symptoms
| rather than just surpressing. Worryingly, they mention a few
| neurodegenerative diseases but not MS.
| _Microft wrote:
| BioNTech is working on a vaccine against MS that is supposed to
| untrain the immune system to no longer attack own tissue. It
| should at least slow progress of the disease and even seems to
| have allowed to reverse early damages in mice. Let's keep our
| fingers crossed.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305956
| steelframe wrote:
| Through the years I've seen dozens and dozens of "cures" for
| "MS" in mice (I put MS in quotes because, at this point, I've
| grown skeptical that the induced encephalitis mouse model is
| all that helpful in predicting drug performance for humans
| with MS). The closest thing we have to a "cure" is actually a
| medication that's been on the market for a while, but it was
| used to treat certain types of blood cancer before they
| discovered that it works really well for MS too.
|
| It's now available generically: Rituximab. There's another
| hack that Genentech was able to patent and approve for MS to
| produce Ocrelizumab, which does the same thing as Rituximab
| but costs an order of magnitude more. Because that's how the
| world of big pharma works.
|
| In essence, wiping out your plasma cells (a.k.a. B cells or
| lymphocytes) seems to stop MS in its tracks. Where my
| neurologist would typically see 2 or 3 new lesions in any
| given patient per year, instead now my neurologist is seeing
| 2 or 3 new lesions per year in the population of all their
| RRMS patients who are on Rituximab (or Ocrelizumab). And it
| turns out the immune system can get along pretty well with
| all the other cells types it has, such as T cells.
| pilotneko wrote:
| Just noting that -mab therapeutics are not synthesized
| directly, they are produced in cloned cell lines. It's
| practically impossible for one pharma company to replicate
| another companies -mab, since they will never have access
| to the exact cell line used to manufacture the original.
| Also, Rituximab hasn't been fully characterized, hence the
| discovery of new uses. There is no such thing as generic
| when it comes to -mab therapeutics.
|
| Point is, the cost to create Ocrelizumab may be
| legitimately higher than Rituximab.
| therein wrote:
| Interesting point raising regulatory questions for sure.
|
| Should the government compel drug companies to share
| their cell lines to preserve the same market dynamics as
| generic drugs once a monoclonal antibody line product
| hits the timeline to go generic?
|
| After all, otherwise it would be somewhat similar to a
| drug company rejecting to share the chemical synthesis
| pathway and precursors saying "an ex-employee built this
| chemical synthesis machinery and we just put the raw
| ingredients and comes out the drug from the other end".
|
| But I am guessing for generic drugs, the generic
| manufacturers are expected to come up with their own
| synthesis pathway anyway and the original manufacturer
| has no obligations to help.
| BrandiATMuhkuh wrote:
| That was exactly my first thought as well.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Recently every thread on HN about life and death has been
| devolving into a debate with people who insist that these things
| need to be addressed in the comments and those that simply don't
| care. It's honestly exhausting.
|
| It's sort of like making food and having someone at the table try
| to discuss the morality of the meat you're using.... Except it's
| every. single. time.
|
| Lab mice are killed off everyday after experiments end even if
| there's nothing wrong with them. Excuse me if I don't lose any
| sleep over this experiment.
| marcodiego wrote:
| A provocative and bad argument in favor of animal
| experimentation I heard is: "Animal experiments increase our
| life by X years. What each does with this extra time is a
| personal question."
| atian wrote:
| It's a sanity check. Can we afford to not do X? because thank
| God there is some commonality in disgust. Clearly not at the
| moment, but I doubt even the original authors of those comments
| care more than you do.
|
| It's a feature and not a bug.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| The people insisting on this just want to use HN as their
| megaphone. There is no debate. They have already made up
| their minds.
|
| It comes off about as well as an insufferable teenager at
| Thanksgiving dinner. Some feature.
| modeless wrote:
| I mean, that's 99% of internet comments. There are many
| topics I disagree with the HN majority (or vocal minority)
| on, and it becomes tiresome to see the same old stuff
| rehashed in every article when it's mostly off topic. But
| if we didn't allow people to comment unless they were
| genuinely open to having their mind changed about
| something, there would be no comments.
|
| If you debate someone on the internet, you will never
| change their mind. But you might influence the opinion of
| someone else who reads your comments, and that's the best
| you can hope for.
|
| Also, when a large number of people are wrong about
| something, there is often an opportunity of some kind
| associated with that. An investing opportunity, a career
| opportunity, a startup opportunity. When you see what
| others don't it can be a big advantage. So, embrace it.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| You said in your first comment it "devolves into a debate."
| Now you're saying there is no debate. Poor consistency/word
| choice also lowers the value of HN discussion.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| Person A: this is not a good venue to have a debate.
|
| Person B: yes it is
|
| _debate ensues_
|
| Person B: I thought you were against debates.
|
| _Picard facepalm_
|
| You know I dated someone with bipolar disorder once. It
| went exactly like this. It's funny that HN threads
| exhibit the same behaviors.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| antiterra wrote:
| Who cares if it's every single time? It's not exactly a feat of
| mental endurance to handle it.
|
| I have a mental debate about animal-based testing/clothes/food
| on a regular basis, as I do about many choices I make that have
| a potential moral cost. I still often make those choices, and I
| don't lose sleep over it. However, I believe regularly
| questioning one's own viewpoints, habits and situation is a
| strength.
|
| The assumption that it's being done simply to draw attention is
| an unreasonable and condescending dismissal.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| So we shouldn't care that a site for techies has turned into
| a megaphone for people with obsessive compulsive disorders
| encouraged by a mob mentality? It's a medical science thread.
| Why does someone with nerve damage have to justify themselves
| to you in every single thread about this? Do you go into food
| related threads and argue with people in there too? These
| arguments are tone deaf and like I said earlier; exhausting.
|
| They have no place here. Go to /r/philosophy or something.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| I truly, truly hope this works as described, even partially, on
| humans. It is so frustrating to see someone who would be able to
| walk if only the signal could get to their lower extremities.
|
| My grandfather is a paraplegic, and man how much I hope this
| isn't just faery dust.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Again mice models...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| "We are going straight to the FDA to start the process of
| getting this new therapy approved for use in human patients,
| who currently have very few treatment options."
|
| This is not a cheap process in terms of money and manpower. I
| think they probably have reason for confidence.
|
| IIRC, the motor CNS in mammals is pretty similar across the
| board.
| gus_massa wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but I guess this part is similar enough in
| mice and human to be optimistic. But IIUC the treatment only
| makes the regrow of the cut axons faster, it does not reconnect
| one part with the other part. So the time you should wait until
| the axon grows to the initial length in humans will be much
| longer than in mice.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| Over the last 25 years or so, there have been at least a dozen
| announcements of the latest miracle cure that works to repair
| spinal cord injury in mice. To date, none of them have
| translated to human efficacy. It's almost a meme at this point
| - like net-positive fusion being only ten years away. There
| appears to be a fundamental difference between mice and human
| nervous system injury repair modes that leads to early
| confidence. The spinal cords in mice essentially repair
| themselves if you so much as ask nicely.
|
| The real litmus test for claims of effective spinal cord repair
| treatments is primate testing. If you see mice and not chimps,
| the treatment is probably a dead end.
|
| Not to say this research doesn't have value - I fully support
| continued and rigorous research in this area - but hyperbolic
| claims like: "it works in mice, so it should also work in
| humans" aren't helping the cause.
| StrangeClone wrote:
| What does "Again" refer to? Was something similar already
| published? Or you meant "Yet another mice models?
| FrameworkFred wrote:
| ...as if some sort of future rodent time travelers went back in
| earth's pre-history and tasked countless human-filled labs with
| unlocking the secrets of rodent medical science so they could,
| in their own time, mine the wisdom of the ancients and ensure
| their immortality.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Would be a shame if some Vogons blew up the earth 5 minutes
| before their project was finished.
| mattko wrote:
| Those mice were in car accidents.
| eganist wrote:
| > Again mice models...
|
| Do you have a viable alternative for early stage research?
| MrDresden wrote:
| Yes, as a logical first step.
|
| Now we at least have hope this might work for humans.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Mice models have a very bad track record when it comes to
| humans. Too much junk publications out there to push papers
| and get credits.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| You have to start somewhere though.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Yes, but publication of hopeful articles should be near
| the end, not the start.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I would guess things like how nerves and bones work is
| more similar across species than, say, how drugs might
| work on the brain, where a mouse brain is a hell of a lot
| different to human. Is that a reasonable assumption?
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| If there is a difference, we'll learn what the difference
| is, and if there's another one after that the same, and
| so on.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| I was wondering the same thing. Pluses and minuses...
|
| _Rodents represent readily available models that can be
| used for a deeper understanding of basic biological
| mechanisms and for proof of concept for preclinical
| research hypotheses. However, attempts at direct clinical
| translation to humans have proven problematic or even
| impossible to date, principally due to issues of scaling
| and complexity._
|
| https://clinmedjournals.org/articles/ijscrt/international
| -jo...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I thought the main point of mouse models was mostly to be a
| "first pass filter" for substances before moving onto other
| animals usually, sometimes humans if the straits are
| desperate enough. Cancer drugs in particular have little
| concern for long term side effects in their approval
| pipeline because the alternative may be having no long
| term.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I wonder if this would work with something like Guillaine-Barre
| syndrome (to wit, an autoimmune disease where the body attacks
| its own nerves, causing demyelination)
| bilekas wrote:
| These kind of studies and experiments always sound so amazing,
| but how long would something like this take to be applicable for
| at least human trials ?
|
| I understand there are so many precautions to take etc, but is
| there any kind of 'complete consent' one could sign to jump start
| stuff like that ?
| numbsafari wrote:
| Would you, as a researcher, want to make your first attempts on
| human subjects? Even if someone gives you "complete consent",
| it makes sense to ensure that that consent is informed and that
| those administering are prepared to give them care when things
| inevitably go wrong. At the very least, leaving all the ethical
| concerns aside, someone will have to pay for that care.
| dpcx wrote:
| Do I want to know how they get mice with severe spinal cord
| injuries to test on? I'm guessing it's exactly what I think it
| is, but I'm wondering if there's another way that it happens.
| vmception wrote:
| the player is instructed to attack the weak point for maximum
| damage
| stephencanon wrote:
| It is exactly what you think it is.
| genomer wrote:
| It's what you think it is, and it happens to more than just
| mice. I toured a bioengineering lab where they were actively
| severing the spines of chimpanzees to perform fiber rerouting
| experiments. I think the normal citizen never thinks much if at
| all about this kind of thing because they're never exposed to
| it. A few researchers have opened up to me personally about
| their personal psychological trauma caused by involvement with
| animal experimentation. A couple PhD candidates I know changed
| fields entirely. One to ecology and another to environmental
| engineering. I personally moved forward with bioinformatics.
|
| Edit: that isn't to say that this result isn't exciting for
| human welfare. We'll see if it translates...
| tkahnoski wrote:
| This is absolutely in the moral gray. The greater good,
| lesser of two evils, however you want to describe it whether
| it's right or wrong will get down to your personal beliefs.
|
| I had a family member involved in a cancer research that used
| mice and although he admitted it was sad, he did call them
| heroes. Understandably, I don't think that satisfies anyone
| strongly aligned with animal rights. In many other sciences
| we've been able to use simulation as a first step, but that
| is still out of our reach for biological systems.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I was originally a biology major and only ended up finishing
| the minor in part because of this. We had a lab assignment to
| do a live vivisection of a limpet to be able to view some of
| the circulatory systems in play in a still-living creature.
| We were supposed to paralyze them first, but whatever I did
| was incorrect. That thing was writhing and squirming and
| trying to get away and showing all the outward physical signs
| of being in pain the entire time.
|
| Limpets don't even have brains, just cerebral ganglia, so
| it's likely it isn't really a sentient creature that has any
| conscious awareness of what is happening to it, but man, that
| scarred me. It felt like I was torturing something horribly
| and I knew that was not the career for me. There is no way
| I'd have ever been able to do that to a mouse.
| bodge5000 wrote:
| Reminds me of "The ones who walk away from Omelas". Clearly
| not a one-to-one analogy, but close enough to make the
| connection.
| fbanon wrote:
| My brother was researching brain regeneration in rats, and he
| said they used cryogenically induced lesions as a test bed. So
| probably something similar.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I'm sorry you were downvoted for asking that. I think it's a
| fair issue to raise. Assuming the mice are intentionally
| injured to allow testing, it seems reasonable, to me, to
| question the ethics of that. Of course it's easy to say
| "they're just mice, who cares?" but it's not wrong to ask
| "they're living creatures as well, shouldn't we care?" I expect
| the response to be "it's justified given the benefits we derive
| for humans, based on this mouse based research", and probably
| most people would agree with that. But perhaps not everyone
| would.
|
| Also consider the number of really scary books/movies out there
| rooted in the idea of "medical utilitarianism." For one
| example, this issue is addressed in a show called Biohackers
| that I just started watching. And even in real life, people
| have tried to justify a lot of really sketchy stuff over the
| years, in the name of "the greater good".
| archontes wrote:
| I'm curious if you can elaborate on, "they're living
| creatures, shouldn't we care?".
|
| What about them being living creatures "ought" to lead to
| that? Why do you think that the base assumption is caring?
| ajuc wrote:
| Living creatures might be too much (see bacteria), but if
| you think we should care about other people - it follows
| that we should also care about other creatures that can
| feel and think. Mammals certainly qualify.
| adventured wrote:
| > but if you think we should care about other people - it
| follows that we should also care about other creatures
| that can feel and think
|
| It doesn't automatically follow. I can entirely
| correctly, subjectively decide which living things I want
| to care about and which I do not. I can separate living
| things by a hierarchy of importance. Which is exactly
| what we do all the time with other people and our
| relationships to them (example: hey HN, let me know how
| much you love Donald Trump and where he ranks on your
| hierarchy of importance).
|
| I don't care about mice. I care about puppies (insert
| reasons here). That is not an irrational position. It's
| entirely subjective either direction. Any attempt to
| apply logic or science to the premise is inherently
| absurd. What we each value and why is subjective, it's
| personal; it inherently can't be objective. Rat and mice
| fans might likely pick those over puppies or kittens for
| example, due to their personal experiences and their
| hierarchy of values.
|
| No, I wouldn't kill or injure the mice myself for a
| living. I think it's grotesque.
|
| I wouldn't perform abortions for a living, it's sometimes
| a very grotesque process. I'm entirely pro-choice.
|
| I wouldn't butcher animals for a living, it's often quite
| a disgusting process as far as I'm concerned. I have no
| problem with other people doing so. And I have no problem
| with eating a steak. That's not contradictory or
| hypocritical.
|
| I also would never want to be a nurse. I fully understand
| what nurses do. The human body can be quite disgusting at
| times. I'm glad nurses exist.
|
| Such things are not contradictory. You can find an action
| and outcome acceptable, while not enjoying (or
| glorifying) all aspects of the process in question.
|
| Once you cross the line of: all living things matter
| without exception and should never be killed, on to: some
| living things do not matter as much as others (eg plants
| for consumption) - then you're down to subjectivism as
| your argument across the board.
|
| The animal rights argument is entirely subjective (what
| should the protections be, should there be any
| protections, how many should there be, who decides, for
| which living things, and on and on). What that means is,
| the opposite position has as much validity, it's also
| subjective. What it comes down to is majority politics
| ultimately: how many people can you get to agree with
| you, such that you can pass legislation in your preferred
| direction.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| > The animal rights argument is entirely subjective
| (...). What that means is, the opposite position has as
| much validity, it's also subjective.
|
| The subjective aspects of a difficult question doesn't
| mean all takes are equally valid. That's the same as
| giving up and saying that nothing means anything.
| ajuc wrote:
| There's clearly a spectrum of consciousness between us
| and insects, there is no one clear-cut threshold, and
| some people are lower on it than some animals (see some
| neurological problems). Therefore arbitrarily deciding to
| put a strict care/don't care threshold on a species
| border is irrational. It makes much more sense to have a
| care/don't care spectrum, and not to limit it to one
| species.
| dahart wrote:
| Perhaps "living creatures" is a bit broad if taken too
| literally, but in context here it seems like the implied
| topic is clearly animals. One reason the base assumption is
| caring is because we have laws against harming, torturing
| or being cruel to animals, and laws against killing some
| animals. Another reason to care is the growing scientific
| and public awareness that animals have intelligence,
| consciousness, and feelings. A third reason is that we have
| a base assumption about caring for humans, both socially
| and physiologically, and seeking a moral consistency might
| automatically lead to the reasonable question "shouldn't we
| care about animals too?".
|
| Since your question implies some, are there reasons that we
| shouldn't care about animals or other living creatures?
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I 'm curious if you can elaborate on, "they're living
| creatures, shouldn't we care?"._
|
| No, because I'm not saying that is a position I personally
| hold. I'm merely presenting it as a position that I know
| that (some) people do hold.
|
| My position here is, roughly speaking, "this (intentionally
| injuring mice or other animals) is an issue where there is
| a legit discussion to be had around the ethics of same." Of
| course I have my own opinion, but I don't really care to
| get into it. I just didn't think that the parent poster
| needed to be downvoted for raising the question.
| tombert wrote:
| Not the poster obviously, but I'm going to give my two
| cents on this.
|
| Obviously the phrase "they're living creatures" is a bit
| vague on this; bacteria and molds (and arguably viruses)
| are also living creatures but I don't think anyone
| considers it genocide to disinfect your counter with
| alcohol or something. I think we generally start drawing
| lines with animals.
|
| Even within the scope of animals, I think we can still make
| reasonable concessions on things that are of sufficiently
| low intelligence to where we're not even 100% sure they
| feel pain in the same way that we do. Do I care if a
| mosquito suffers? No, not really, they're annoying
| dangerous little critters who aren't really having a lot of
| intelligent thought.
|
| However, when we start getting into mammals (and possibly
| birds), I think it starts getting into more questionable
| territory. Most mammals (as far as I know) do have enough
| neural development to feel pain, to feel fear, and actually
| _suffer_ in ways not completely dissimilar to humans. Since
| mice are mammals, there is an argument to be made that if
| we 're hurting them, it's adding a lot of pain to the
| world.
|
| -------
|
| To be clear, I'm somewhat in the camp of "they're just
| mice, I care about helping humans more". I just wanted to
| play devil's advocate for a bit.
| i_haz_rabies wrote:
| I'll try: we have absolutely no idea to what degree any
| given living thing can feel pain, in the subjective sense.
| We know that mice, for example, react in a way that looks
| like pain to painful stimulus, but we don't know if there
| is anything that it feels like to be a mouse in pain. We
| care when humans feel pain, in a large part because we
| know, almost for certain (although not quite), that they
| are feeling pain... why should the same not extend to a
| creature that may be having a similar experience?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The the answer in the science and medical communities is
| Almost Never "they're just mice, who cares"
|
| It is rather that this is an important experiment that can't
| be done any other way and can have large benefit for humans
| taylorius wrote:
| It's funny how this cost benefit calculation is considered
| valid when applied to research on mice, but any such
| calculation used to try to justify research on humans would
| give a "divide by 0" error. I think there's an
| inconsistency there somewhere.
| klipt wrote:
| But there absolutely are clinical trials on humans. It's
| just the humans generally have to volunteer.
| mental1896 wrote:
| "it can't be done any other way" strikes me as pretty thin.
| Whereas we may not be able to conceive of another way at
| this point in time, it does no good to imagine that this
| condition will continue in perpetuity.
| comrh wrote:
| Like the bleeding of horseshoe crabs for LAL it's always
| reevaluated based on current technology.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If you feel that the statement needs to be future
| proofed, feel free to add "at this time" when you read
| it.
|
| I think the point still stands with this condition and
| will for the foreseeable future.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _The the answer in the science and medical communities is
| Almost Never "they're just mice, who cares"_
|
| That's fair. My comment above was maybe overly glib in that
| sense. But I was just trying to capture the general spirit
| of the thing, not write an essay, due to limits of time,
| interest, and knowledge on my part.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It's really only a good question after we stop slaughtering
| animals for essentially entertainment.
| belorn wrote:
| We do have an alternative to animal testing. We can use
| humans who are desperate enough to volunteer to a medical
| experiment knowing that it might not work and could
| potentially make things worse. The purpose of animal testing
| in situations like this is to catch early problems before the
| final human testing. Computer simulation can do a lot to
| minimize the need for animal testing, but I don't think we
| are there yet where we can go directly from a simulation to
| human testing.
|
| I do not however like to view it as medical utilitarianism.
| The testing will happen regardless if the test subject are
| human or mice, because people do still want the medical
| cures. People are however less sad if an experiment
| accidentally killed a bunch of mice than if a bunch of human
| test subjects died. Historically people tend to use military
| service men as test subjects, which is why much of medical
| knowledge is based on test subjects of a specific gender
| (male) and age group (20-35). Not that long ago (~1950)
| people also used people with mental disabilities and orphans.
| Going just a decade earlier and people used prisoners and war
| and people deemed unwanted. Hopefully computers will one day
| replace the need for testing.
| rlpb wrote:
| > We do have an alternative to animal testing. We can use
| humans who are desperate enough to volunteer...
|
| This situation would presumably only arise because somebody
| else previously made the decision not to perform that
| experiment on an animal, but instead wait until a human
| suffers enough to become desperate enough to volunteer.
| That decision resulted in human suffering (albeit in the
| form of the trolley problem). Was that decision acceptable?
| How much human suffering, and/or how many humans suffering,
| is equivalent to one animal? Does sapience make a
| difference to this calculation?
|
| I'm not saying this makes animal testing OK. My point is
| just that testing only on human volunteers isn't a magical
| solution to this ethical problem.
| belorn wrote:
| I agree, its not a magical solution. Some might even call
| it exploiting to use people when they are at their most
| desperate point in their lives, and for pediatric
| research it would basically involve a situation where its
| the parents that agrees to the medical experiment.
|
| Its a difficult decision to make, experimenting on either
| animals or people.
| Evidlo wrote:
| At least with animal subjects, you can ensure that the
| health, age, and severity of the 'injury' is exactly the
| same with all subjects.
|
| You'll never get that with humans even if you have plenty
| of volunteers.
| [deleted]
| kevinsky wrote:
| Another good question is whether mice are a good analogue for
| humans as far as spinal injuries
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| Could this work on degenerative discs?
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