Stephan: Back in the 1960s and, again, in the 1980s, I had occasion to visit labs where animal testing was going on. Both times the conditions appalled me so much that I made up a reason why I had to leave, and arranged for a later meeting at another site. The cages were perfectly clean, the mice had enough to eat (mostly) and all that. But the mice were always in view, and in light, and the rooms were cold.
I had grown up on a cattle farm where we had an unused stable. A family of mice moved in. I let them be and observed them through the years. It was a stable little world, and I saw that mice left alone don't like to be exposed to light all the the time, and are very careful about their nests when it gets cold. They like to be warm. My cat, Pangur Ban, feels the same way as do I, for that matter. So although the lab mice were treated well as animated objects, there really was no sense of their feelings as beings. It was very sad, and a form of willful ignorance.
This report may seem a small thing, but I think it is part of an emerging new paradigm recognizing that all life is interconnected and interdependent, and I see it as very good news.
I tried to start a biotech company to provide an alternative to animal testing, and I know that animal testing per se is not going to stop completely for many years. So I view this research with hope, and the fervent wish that it takes hold.
STANFORD, Calif. — Nine out of 10 drugs successfully tested in mice and other animal models ultimately fail to work in people, and one reason may be traced back to a common fact of life for laboratory mice: they’re cold, according to a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Laboratory mice, which account for the vast majority of animal research subjects, are routinely housed in chilly conditions, which may affect their well-being as well as the outcome of research studies, said Joseph Garner, PhD, associate professor of comparative medicine.
‘If you want to design a drug that will help a patient in the hospital, you cannot reasonably do that in animals that are cold-stressed and are compensating with an elevated metabolic rate,’ Garner said. ‘This will change all aspects of their physiology – such as how fast the liver breaks down a drug – which can’t help but increase the chance that a drug will behave differently in mice and in humans.’
In a new study, Garner and his colleagues report finding an easy solution to the problem: Simply provide the animals with the proper materials, and they’ll build a cozy nest that allows them to naturally regulate their temperatures to […]
