Usually, if the mouse is infected or mutated in a given manner, its innards would need to be removed and studied, to determine what effects the mutation/infection had on them. This kills the mouse.
It’s still a suffering animal, so we should get the most data we can out of every specimen. That should minimize the total amount of mice being used.
Also only studying some mice can lead to biased results.
Iirc in the pace trial participants who dropped out because the intervention worsened their condition where not included in the end result. With rats the researchers could just chose the healthiest ones and just claim they selected randomly.
Rant:
The pace trial was a horrible study on a chronic disease that was conducted by the british health system with the goal of denying care.
The trial also had other systematic flaws like having a laxer definition of healthy at the end of the trial that at the beginning, meaning people who where sick enough to participate would be declared cured at the end even if nothing changed.
This study is still used to denie people’s lived experience and just call them lazy.
I don’t have a personal connection to any of this, but learning about it made me angry enough, that I must share this knowledge.
I do wish humans could find a humane way to do research in general. Thank you for sharing this. It’s a good reminder that life suffers and dies so we can live and I feel it would become us to remember that, for everything we consume.
Usually, if the mouse is infected or mutated in a given manner, its innards would need to be removed and studied, to determine what effects the mutation/infection had on them. This kills the mouse.
Couldn’t they just put them back?
Nah it’s like how if you touch A baby bird it’s mom won’t take it back, the body rejects the insidey bits when it has human funk on them.
For some reason, I was under the impression not all infected mice were actually studied. Thanks so much for your kind reply.
It’s still a suffering animal, so we should get the most data we can out of every specimen. That should minimize the total amount of mice being used.
Also only studying some mice can lead to biased results. Iirc in the pace trial participants who dropped out because the intervention worsened their condition where not included in the end result. With rats the researchers could just chose the healthiest ones and just claim they selected randomly.
Rant:
The pace trial was a horrible study on a chronic disease that was conducted by the british health system with the goal of denying care.
The trial also had other systematic flaws like having a laxer definition of healthy at the end of the trial that at the beginning, meaning people who where sick enough to participate would be declared cured at the end even if nothing changed.
This study is still used to denie people’s lived experience and just call them lazy.
I don’t have a personal connection to any of this, but learning about it made me angry enough, that I must share this knowledge.
I do wish humans could find a humane way to do research in general. Thank you for sharing this. It’s a good reminder that life suffers and dies so we can live and I feel it would become us to remember that, for everything we consume.