Of Mice and Men

Scientists at Stanford university are giving animal rights activists a whole new cause. They are working to create what will basicly amount to mice with human brains. I would have passed this article off as pure bologna until i noticed the source...

news.nationalgeographic.com...
...And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Does this give anybody else the willies? While I understand the medical signifigance of stem cell research, this is going a little into the creepy grey area of medical research. Ever see Hitchcock's The Birds?

Obviously this is rather chilling. I know they can make a human ear grow on a mouses back which is bizarre to me (and then tranplant the ear onto the person who needs it)....but, a brain? What are they going to do, brain transplants?....like Young Frankenstein....

Sounds more like "Planet of the Apes" with mice instead of Apes. What possible reason would they have for doing this?

Now all our little mice will try to take over the world....lol


[edit on 2/11/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

Gives all new meaning to "Mouseketeers"......I picture an army of them trying to take over the United States and then Governer Ahhnald saving the planet and Congress deciding to amend the bill of rights so he can become President.....

"Mouseketeers"...... Damn dude, I woke my wife up laughing.
Yeah it's wierd stuff, I can understand the wonderful medical applications of creating neural cells, etc. but the implications of this could go into the bizzare if they ever decided to try to enhance the intelligence of an animal or species with it. Human Beings have many genomes which have no genetic precursors, and I think there is a reason we have them and introducing our unique genetic material into another species is a really bad idea.

wouldnt it be more logical to genetically experiment with more advanced creatures??? such as dolphins and chimps, they are already pretty smart, where is the harm in attemping to make them a little smarter. perhaps they can give us a little insight.

stuart little 444 life

did you go to my elentary school???

theres one regret in my life it would have to be my oral book report about stuart little, man those kids were relentless!!!

Great, we'll have Ben running around humming old Michael Jackson songs.

can we have a pic of some mice with ears on their backs? im dieing to see it.

Just to be clear, these mice are not going to have human brains. They will have neural cells that are human, but not full human brains.

The above guy is correct, plus even if mice did have full human brains that isn't going to protect them from my boot or pellet gun should they choose to take over the executive Experimenting on mice is the logical first step because they are not very "advanced" (for mammals... they're obviously extraordinarily complex compared to, uh, earthworms etc.) Plus, mice are cheap, and they'll die soon naturally anyway. Mice can also be special "ordered" to come with a huge variety of different "desirable" traits (for the particular experiment - One company doing this is 'Charles River Laboratories' if I recall correctly - like ordering diabetic mice or other special features) which will enable scientists to both experiment on subjects with specific features, and on a huge range of different features.

The whole thing really reminds me of that movie "Charlie" based on the book "Flowers for Algernon".

[edit on 22-2-2005 by AlphaHumana]