Posted by Ellen on July 06, 2001 at 11:19:52:
Number one mammal feels the need
By Graham McCann
Published: July 5 2001 17:37GMT | Last Updated: July 5 2001 17:38GMT
"Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie/ O, what panic's in thy breastie!" Progress, from a mouse's point of view, brings to mind two words: "frying-pan" and "fire". Human beings no longer consider their poor, earth-bound companions to be mere vermin; they now think of mice, in bio-medical terms at least, as a kind of "mini-me".
The Secret Life of the Mouse, an edition of Channel 4's Equinox series to be broadcast tomorrow evening at 9pm, examines the reasons for, and the consequences of, this shift from ignorant pest to unwitting partner. It is an informative account that raises some interesting ethical questions.
The humble mouse, the documentary notes, is now "the number one mammal for genetic research", because, in its essential make-up, this tiny creature is so remarkably similar to ourselves. There are more than 30,000 genes in the human DNA, and many, if not most of them, are involved in our diseases. Scientists feel that they need to know about the function of every single one before they can fully translate the fruits of their research into tangible advances in the field of practical healthcare.
This is where the mouse comes in: researchers would like to have at least one newly-created mouse mutant for each human gene, and so, in such vast high-tech institutions as the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, thousands of exotic-sounding strains - including the shaker, the rhino, the dwarf, the lethal spotting and the pigmented nude - are fed a special "Love Mash" (a mixture of rolled oats, brewer's yeast and cod liver oil described by the "colony co-ordinator" as "sort of a Viagra for mice"), cross-bred and then subjected to experimentation relating to the causes and possible treatment of cancer, obesity, osteoporosis, diabetes, Down's Syndrome, Alzheimer's and innumerable other defects and diseases. More than 25m mice are born each year within the bright white walls of the laboratory to serve the single-mindedly utilitarian concerns of science.
Narrated, from a mouse's perspective, by the impeccably well-bred Stephen Fry (even though a Peter Lorre soundalike would surely have been a much more suitable mouthpiece for our skittish and diminutive fellow mortals), the film goes on to document - in tones which oscillate nervously between the confidently disapproving and the cautiously ambivalent - a few of the many ways in which these creatures are made to help us to help ourselves. Some mice, for example, are fed a high fat diet composed of corn oil and "quite a lot of butter" in order to induce heart disease; another strain is bred and manipulated specifically with a view to exploring the genetic tendency to fracture one's hip; another is rendered - with the help of 1.6bn dollars and several bursts of radiation - mentally retarded. "Your need for us grows and grows," grumbles the Fry-mouse, "as you dig deeper into the origins of your own ill-health. With you, we'll never find peace."
Mice are also at the forefront of the stem cell revolution. Professor Irving Weissman, at Stem Cells Inc. in California, is pioneering research which involves integrating human brain stem cells into the brains of mice. He has asked a colleague of his at Stanford University, Professor Hank Greely, to set up a committee to consider the ethical issues that his project has prompted. The primary moral concern, argues Greely, rests on the question of what fraction of a mouse brain can be replaced by human brain cells before the creature might have, or be thought to have, "some aspects, some attributes, some small part of humanity in them that would make it inappropriate to treat them as laboratory animals."
Weissman, however, is desperate to push on. "This is not for fun," he says of his project. "This is to try to hasten our ability to understand how human brain cells work, how they respond to drugs, how we can develop new drugs, how we can use these cells to replace functions. We can't do that in humans. It will never happen in humans. It's not ethical." He accepts that his approach is a cause of anxiety, but remains unrepentant: "You can't skip this argument and say, 'If I ban it, it's going to be okay', because if you ban it, you're part of the force that will prevent these discoveries from reaching not only society but you and your family."
The documentary, perhaps understandably, is not quite sure what to make of this predictably ambiguous modernist enterprise. It wags its finger at times but withdraws it at others, wonders weakly out loud about what kind of world it is that we are making, and then hints, once again, at the wisdom of the old observation: "The best laid plans o' Mice an' Men, gang aft agley/ An' leave us nought but grief an' pain/ For promis'd joy!"