8 ms·
The Problem with America’s Lab Mice [video]
- tomtompl 6y agoWow, first time I see this mentioned somewhat in 'mainstream'. How is that not talked more?
- Broken_Hippo 6y agoIt is a known issue, and has been talked about somewhat in 'mainstream': [1] wired.com [2] adam ruins everything. I think it isn't talked about more because most of us don't think about anything like this until it is brought up, not to mention that it is a big, complicated issue that really needs folks educated in the right areas to work out. [1]https://www.wired.com/2016/07/science-huge-diversity-problem-lab-rats/ https://www.wired.com/2016/07/science-huge-diversity-problem... [2]https://youtu.be/FHl0nIdbiLA https://youtu.be/FHl0nIdbiLA
- rapsey 6y agoThis particular issue has not been talked about in any of your links.
- tomtompl 6y agoYes, I am aware of it, I should've been more specific. I haven't seen anyone who is supposed to be solving this issue to be taking any steps towards improving the situation. Respective agencies acknowledged it but (at least not to my knowledge) didn't follow up on that.
- pjc50 6y agoDoes anybody have a source for this that (a) isn't video and (b) isn't Joe Rogan?
- tomtompl 6y agohttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0531556502000128 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S05315...
- tomtompl 6y agoThis https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1352201 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1352201 possibly is more what you're really asking for
- gumby 6y agoI had never heard of Mr Rogan before but I guess I should not be surprised that people These days seek medical advice from a comedian/martial arts commentator. Or from a video of two people having a conversation.
- rapsey 6y agoIf you have never heard of Rogan then you must really be living under a rock. It's the most popular podcast on the planet.
- culturestate 6y agoPlenty of people in the world (even on HN!) don’t listen to podcasts, mate. It’s not a globally universal cultural experience.
- TulliusCicero 6y agoI mean historically people would take medical folk wisdom from all sorts of sources that are probably even worse than Joe Rogan. This reminds me of people complaining about others taking financial advice from reddit, ignoring that on average the financial advice you get from finance subs there is probably much better than the advice you get asking random friends and family -- which is a common practice.
- travisoneill1 6y agoThis satisfies b because the source is Bret Weinstein.
- sradman 6y agoThe publications section on Bret Weinstein’s Wikipedia page [1] lists the paper [2][3]: > Weinstein, Bret S; Ciszek, Deborah (2002). "The reserve-capacity hypothesis: Evolutionary origins and modern implications of the trade-off between tumor-suppression and tissue-repair". Experimental Gerontology. 37 (5): 615–27. There doesn’t seem to be a succinct write up on how this hypothesis led to Carol Greider’s 2009 Nobel Prize [4]. Greider did not recognize Weinstein’s contribution [5]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Weinstein#Publications https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Weinstein#Publications [2] https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0531-5565%2802%2900012-8 https://doi.org/10.1016%2FS0531-5565%2802%2900012-8 [3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679 [4] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2009/illustrated-information/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2009/illustrated-... [5] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JLb5hZLw44s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JLb5hZLw44s
- gumby 6y agoThis is not some secret knowledge uncovered via youtube. Every animal model is imperfect and the various tools to try to address them (e.g. greater genetic uniformity) have consequences as well. If you pick the wrong model your research will fail. Even if it gets through the pure research phase, the FDA will want justification as for why your animal of choice is appropriate. I had a program that required — ugh — guinea pigs. Those suckers ended up costing $1K when all was said and done (not the cost of acquiring them,but looking after them and running the program). Rats would have been cheaper and mice even more but theOr immune systems could reject the pathogen we were trying to treat; the GP was the least expensive animal it would attack. (There turned out to be other advantages too but that was that for research). And when it came time for the preclinical work for IND submission the agency wanted an EMEA more expensive animal because it was a better human model. So it’s an engineering trade off, just like any other. One controlled for when possible. Sorry there’s no conspiracy.
- rapsey 6y agoI think his point is that those mice are misleadingly bad and it is a fixable problem that for some reason the scientific community is refusing to address.
- dmatech 6y agoThe scientific community often comes to an incorrect consensus, and this consensus becomes dogma that must not be questioned because the consequences would be too damaging to reputation/credibility/whatever. Here's another example from a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 - "How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure" When you've got enough incentive, it's hard to resist the urge to use your power to simply decide what is and is not allowed to be true.
- vikramkr 6y agoThe consensus on mice models is that they suck and we need something better, and until we do, everything needs to he tested in humans before widespread approval is given so we arent ever relying on mice data alone to make regulatory decisions. Seems like a reasonable consensus to reach
- DrAwdeOccarim 6y agoDrug development has been maturing for decades. Both industry and the agency have had time to work out what animal models do and do not tell us. If you develop/discover a molecule/drug that treats some disease, it's typically found first in single-cells, then you move into higher and higher organisms. This is the flow of development. No one thinks any mouse, even humanized mice, are surrogates for actual clinical evidence. The whole shtick is risk mitigation, it's amazing how far society has come in such a short period of time where we forget non-clinical testing is not a perfect view into how a compound will interact in a human.
- mennis16 6y agoBut in certain fields this current setup seems to be failing. The large majority of clinical trials related to neuroscience fail. To the point that pharma companies are starting to defund these departments, because the hit probability is just not good enough to outweigh the costs. This is despite the fact many of our treatments are woefully inadequate and often closely related to drug discoveries made 50+ years ago. And despite the fact that the field is well funded in academia, taking up entire departments distinct from biology. Neuroscience is a hard problem no doubt, but I also think the current paradigm for how basic neuroscience research is done is way too limited, and that is impacting the viability of potential treatments that make it to clinical trial phase.
- ethbro 6y ago> I also think the current paradigm for how basic neuroscience research is done is way too limited, and that is impacting the viability of potential treatments that make it to clinical trial phase. Our current paradigm is optimized to avoid injuring humans at all costs, including to the extent that it diminishes the chance of success. By advocating for a different model, we're stating "Avoiding injuring humans in drug discovery is not our primary concern." Maybe that's worth it in a broader calculation, but let's be honest about what we're talking about. Pharma companies and regulatory bodies don't put in place billion+ dollar trial hoops on a whim: they do so to avoid permanently injuring or killing people with some pretty horrific side effects, to the extent we can.
- pachico 6y agoWhy is it that anytime someone simply points out the ethical issues about animal rights he gets downvoted? I've seen it more than once here.
- throwaway4666 6y agoDisclaimer: haven't seen the video (I never click any video link, sorry), but I did read the text links provided in the thread. That said: one of the big reason to use mice as animal models is that we've obtained a bunch of pure-bred, homozygous lines for a bunch of different genes, and that process is expensive and above all lengthy. Mice have both (a) a relatively short generation time and (b) been experimented on for a very long time. This makes them particularly suited for experiments involving knocked-out genes and suchlike because you have near-perfect controls at your disposal. Now just because we have a bunch of pure-bred homozygous mice doesn't mean mice behave the same way as humans with respect to e.g. metabolic pathways, immune system etc. It's just that we often don't have better models.
- sradman 6y agoThe problem is that the breeding protocols inadvertently created a selection bias towards long telomeres. Mice with extra long telomeres have exceptional tissue repair capacity while also being susceptible to tumor growth. The supply of lab mice can be corrected to have a more natural telomere length. All past studies that used mouse models to study the impact of drugs are skewed to under report toxicity and over report carcinogenicity.
- mennis16 6y agoThat fixes only this one specific problem though, the breeding protocol has probably introduced a lot of biases.
- sradman 6y agoI imagine that “the fix” involves a new strain of more natural mice and a better breeding protocol moving forward. Part of Weinstein’s issue is that this fix has not been transparent. I hope someone can provide greater detail.
- ardy42 6y ago> Mice with extra long telomeres have exceptional tissue repair capacity while also being susceptible to tumor growth.... > All past studies that used mouse models to study the impact of drugs are skewed to under report toxicity and over report carcinogenicity. Could the data from long telomere mice be de-skewed to compensate for new-understood effects the long telomeres?
- ngcc_hk 6y agoI read there is another issue with cell line as well sometimes ago.
- dnautics 6y agoMany cell line stores are basically HeLa cells, and not whatever cell line they are labeled as, because probably at some point some grad student accidentally contaminated one petri dish with another and the HeLa s took over. heLa cells themselves have an interesting history.
- Dowwie 6y agoThis discussion between Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein happened after the major reveal (and full story) on The Portal podcast between Bret and his brother, Eric. I highly recommend listening to it: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-prediction-and-the-disc/id1469999563?i=1000462975502 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/19-bret-weinstein-the-...
- jordanpg 6y agoTL;DR please. These brothers are smart and often interesting but they are also both audibly quite taken with their own brilliance and often not what I want to listen to.
- elindbe2 6y agoLab mice have extremely long telomeres compared to wild mice and humans. This would theoretically make them better able to heal but more prone to cancer. This also makes them a poor model for testing the toxicity of drugs because they would be better able to deal with the damage caused by drug toxicity. Drugs that have been developed using these mice could have a higher toxicity than the lab mice data suggests. Weinstein uses the Vioxx scandal as a possible example of such a drug.
- sradman 6y agoelindbe2 nicely summarizes Bret Weinstein's paper and the Joe Rogan clip. Eric Weinstein's 2hr+ Portal Podcast #19 on YouTube is frustrating but I'd summarize the "new" info from memory as: - math oriented older brother Eric thinks biology oriented younger brother Bret is Nobel Prize worthy - yet Bret and his mouse telomere paper live in obscurity - reason 1: Bret chose Evergreen rather than a top tier University - reason 2: the science establishment is biased against disruptive ideas and scientists - Carol Greider’s 2009 Nobel Prize was based on work inspired by informal phone calls and emails from Bret - Bret claims that Greider failed to recognize his contribution and then actively undermined his paper(s) through the peer review process I wish we had TL;DR + Start/Stop Links into the original video. Long form audio/video podcasts are both a boon and a curse since the content cannot easily be searched or linked to.
- mrtweetyhack 6y agoMice Lives Matter