3 ms·
We can do that as well, and I am confident some studies are in the works. But we still need to understand what is happening, which require controlled environmen
by kergonath 4y ago
We can do that as well, and I am confident some studies are in the works. But we still need to understand what is happening, which require controlled environments and simplified situations where we can study the effect of each parameter one after another.
One does not prevent the other.
- dmbche 4y agoI see. I think I'm arguing that we should be more critical of animal studies, as I'm having problems seeing what usable data was extracted from these mice that wouldn't have been found some other way. Anyhoot!
- kergonath 4y ago> we should be more critical of animal studies Definitely! That is completely legitimate and suffering must be avoided as much as possible. But sometimes such experiments are necessary and cannot be easily avoided. The alternatives are not understanding what is happening (which is ok if the thing is harmless; I don’t think that this is the default hypothesis for nano-plastics), or doing the analytical experiments in humans. > I'm having problems seeing what usable data was extracted from these mice that wouldn't have been found some other way Off the top of my head, in this setting we control exactly the amount of particles and their size, which is important to assess the mechanisms by which they penetrate the tissues. Looking at dead humans has a huge sampling bias (people giving their body are not representative of the population as a whole), and we have no idea about the kind of particles they were exposed to, or of any other factor that could affect what we want to quantify. Maybe some kinds of substances can increase or decrease penetration rates (things that affect blood pressure, for example). In a controlled setting, we know that all mice were exposed to exactly the same conditions.