[HN Gopher] The Case for Free-Range Lab Mice
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       The Case for Free-Range Lab Mice
        
       Author : cocacola1
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2023-02-18 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
        
       | lofatdairy wrote:
       | Similarly, cell lines are known to have variations and make
       | replication difficult, especially after a few passages at the
       | lab. FBS also being essential to media but being notoriously
       | difficult to standardize makes things even trickier.
        
       | aaron695 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | superkuh wrote:
       | It's even worse than the un-life like conditions of allowed
       | animal models leading to bad results.
       | 
       | With the increasing regulatory burden and outright outlawing of
       | animal models in scientific research biological studies are
       | moving to new far-abstracted models that are much cheaper,
       | easier, higher N, and counterintuitively, way, way less
       | predictive of the actual results in human bodies. Testing
       | 1,000,000 compounds in single cell tests (or just chemical
       | binding assays) in a micro-well array has less predictive power
       | and useful outcome than testing 10 compounds in monkeys. At least
       | when it comes to figuring out which things will work in human
       | disease. The giant massively abstracted studies also generate
       | false positives that waste time. But they do generate
       | publications so they're selected for at the funding level.
       | 
       | That's part of the reason biological research was so much more
       | productive per $ input last century.
        
         | klipt wrote:
         | > That's part of the reason biological research was so much
         | more productive per $ input last century.
         | 
         | Isn't part of it also just that the long hanging fruit has
         | already been picked?
        
         | beebmam wrote:
         | I don't find this very convincing. Do you have any evidence for
         | this claim breaking down all the different costs for the
         | research and quantified the change in those costs over time, or
         | is this just an apriori argument?
        
         | kanzure wrote:
         | What's that old joke about mice benefiting from all the
         | research but not humans? Maybe we can switch back to (this time
         | voluntary) human experimentation at some point.
        
           | teddyh wrote:
           | If human experimentation was that more useful, wouldn't a lot
           | more scientific results be available from countries with more
           | lax laws against it?
        
             | xwdv wrote:
             | Problem is those countries suck at research.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-02-18 23:00 UTC)