Taken from the BBC news of this evening:
"In fact, the Alzheimer's mice performed as well on tests measuring memory and thinking skills as aged mice without dementia."
Does this make you think that maybe our scientific techniques are a little out of hand? Aged mice without dementia? Alzheimer's mice? Taking memory and thinking tests? Really?
Regardless of how I feel about using animals for testing, this quote strikes me as just a wee bit odd. Its from an article that--if you read it here--will tell you why (if you were a mouse, at least) using a cell-phone might help protect you from dementia. There's no discussion, however, of if it's weird that scientists out there are giving little mice rodent-versions of Alzheimers (and the like) and then administering rodent memory tests. Does anyone else find it odd that we just take that kind of thing for granted? That we just accept the vision of lab-coated scientists injecting mice with all sorts of weird things, poking and prodding them to reveal the secrets of science that might, just might, apply to humans too?
No one ever stops to talk about if that's a weird thing or not; we just go right to talking about the results and the implications they might have for human health.
I'm not the only one who thinks this is crazy, am I?
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