If you honestly believe this, then you are dismissing nearly all experimental biology. This is a reason why scientists wanted to keep CLOSED journals, because of the lack of interpretation by the wider world. Not all publications are the final word, it's a model.
Search my comment history for a deeper dive on this one. It's not a productive reply. You might not like it, but that is the state of the art. Animal models are 100% a valid way to do things.
Also ITT: HN figures out that natural childbirth involves poop touching a newborn. Cmon, seriously? How do you not know this?
Hate away! As I've said before, out of hand dismissal of any publishing due to mouse models is very in fashion here at HN.
I strongly agree with you that primates would be a better model, from a cost is no object, no public opinion perspective. In fact, probably to many people's non-surprise, most primate work has been moved to China to avoid scrutiny. Last I saw at my place, primates were primarily (ha!) used for behavioral studies and nothing grisly.
I'll see your "here are the differences" and raise you a here are the similarities to humans:
* We're around 85% genetically identical to mice overall if we dump (actually controversial idea) junk DNA. This number varies on who you ask.
* Certain genes can be up to 99% the same. Your gene of interest being similar is important.
* We're both mammals. (some models are not)
* We share many of the same biochemical systems, endocrine, etc.
* Many genes for known diseases are shared. Disease similarity can be very high. (think cancer, atherosclerosis, diabetes)
* Mice can be made immunodeficient and used with human material.
* Very well studied life cycle, and measurement of health. We know most measurable parameters and their nominal ranges.
To harmonize with your idea of differences to humans here are the ones that make mice even more useful:
* Reproduce fast, this means ideas can be tested early and often.
* Small. Cheap to house, and make at scale.
* Genetically identical clones: we're better than ever at this now. This increases our ability to repeat and vet research.
It is completely standard for work to be done in mice. This constant dismissal of mouse models is a nothing burger. Animal models don't always pan out, however that's the state of the art.
I agree with you that in a no holds barred world primates would be universally better. In the US, IACUC exists because of primate experiments gone off the rails at Penn in the 80s. "Unnecessary Fuss" is the vid/incident. Video release was 83 I think? IACUC showed up 1985. This put primate work in the US under intense scrutiny and not without reason.
Oh and for what it's worth, I've never see a lab rodent's tail come back in 6 years of working with them. :) You are sending me on a new search!
Maybe if we're lucky we'll see a response from microbiome person.
I'll admit my reply was spicy, but grandparent's reply is borderline noise / bot tier discourse. HN can do better, and I think your reply is a good sign of that!
Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR) is an experimental medical procedure where an emergency department patient is cooled into suspended animation for an hour to prevent incipient death from ischemia, such as the blood loss following a shooting or stabbing.
That page doesn’t say this is a net win or worked well at all, but it’s a difficult line of research. Not only are the first patients almost dead at the start of the process (as is always the case with high-risk of death experimental procedures), but there also is no way to know when a patient will show up.
Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA) is a surgical technique that induces deep medical hypothermia. It involves cooling the body to temperatures between 20 °C (68 °F) to 25 °C (77 °F), and stopping blood circulation and brain function for up to one hour.
I think that’s a proven winner for some patients, but only at relatively high temperatures (“Profound hypothermia (< 14 °C) usually isn't used clinically. It is a subject of research in animals and human clinical trials”)
Besides the research discussed in the other comments we have now many documented cases of people falling into extremely cold water in the winter, being pulled out after an hour, and recovering. The warming has to be done properly though, if you just pull them out and heat them up immediately they'll die. If you just pull them out and let them warm up very slowly in a warm room they'll die. You have to heat them up as evenly as you can at a certain rate.
When you consider that oxygen deprivation is the primary cause of cell death it makes sense. Cooling down the cells greatly reduces their metabolism and thus oxygen requirements. But cooling the heart down before the brain just makes the brain run out of oxygen first. The more oxygen-dependent the organ the more critical it is that organ be cooled first. Conversely you can't warm up those organs before the heart and lungs or they'll survive that long time of cooling only to die during warming due to lack of oxygen.
Some people are documented as surviving in freezing temperatures for extended periods, yes.
This is what you would expect from freezing. It preserves things. The difficulty with freezing is getting back up to normal temperatures safely. (And the creation of ice crystals, which can be very damaging.)
I think it was tried with larger mammals and it didn't work, which is why the research for humans was dropped. The hope that at some point in the future it may be possible is the entire point of cryonics.
No idea, but another comment claims it works for severed body parts. I'd assume that freezing an attached bodypart would have complications due to circulation being hindered in non frozen parts of the body, and it would be painful.
Don't think a 21st century ethics board is gonna be onboard for doing such an experiment either.
people in siberia/artic regularly freeze their fingers, no need to have cobayes.
Blocking the circulation in the hand does not make someone die, many people survived loosing an arm for a reason.
What must be said though is that while freezing allow for partial body rescuscitation, let's not be fooled. The mice or body part might behave normally, but the body has suffered from a lot of possibly permanent damage (conformational changes, oxidative stress). I expect rescuscitated humans to have a lower quality of life and reduced lifespan, although that's fucking worth it for being rescuscitated!!
One reason is that ice has that annoying property of taking more volume than water. This has consequences. However modern cryogenics aims to vitrify water, which is a special kind of ice that does not take more space!
What people don't know is that structurally preserving organs AKA cryogenics, is a solved problem. Researchers have done that sucessfully to a pig's brain, preserving 100% of its structure. The current issue is that while we can preserve the body without structural losses, we don't know how to reanimate it because the chemicals they uses become toxic upon reanimation and there is no known way to extract it fast enough.
As a reminder, before rescuscitating humans, cryogenics will allow better preservation of blood and organ donations.
