Great news: we're excellent at curing mice of diseases. All this time we've been trying to find drugs that have the same effect in humans as they do in mice, but until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
autoexec 42 minutes ago [-]
> until now no one has had the insight or bravery to ask the question, "What if we just made people more mouse?" Exciting stuff.
This is making mice more people, but either way it's an exciting day for mice everywhere.
autoexec 35 minutes ago [-]
The article walks the headline back pretty quickly. Parts of human brains in mice becomes "pieces of brain-like tissue" made from skin cells and formed into "collections of connected, living cells" followed by a line on how there's "no indication that what's being created here are mice that can think like humans, or a human brain in a mouse body." and that the human cells started to look and function like the outer layer of the mouse's brain as opposed to looking or functioning like a part of a human brain.
It's still kind of neat though and I hope it's actually somehow useful for something.
bygosh 2 hours ago [-]
> The scientists said their work, published in the journal Nature, was carried out with independent ethical scrutiny.
oh, I guess there's nothing to be concerned about.
zhaoziyuan2000 2 hours ago [-]
Does this remind anyone of that novel Flowers for Algernon..?
lioeters 55 minutes ago [-]
That story was so sad, reading it was like actually going through the process together with the main character.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
bsimpson 42 minutes ago [-]
They're Pinky and the Brain...yes: Pinky and the Brain...
d--b 2 hours ago [-]
Sounds like “the scret of NIMH” an animated movie from the 80s, where intelligent mice escape a science lab.
I for one welcome our part human part mouse brain overlords.
yieldcrv 1 hours ago [-]
> While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans".
oh, thank god
LoganDark 2 hours ago [-]
I feel like it's going to be difficult to characterize how mental illness translates to mice, even if you get human cells in there. ("psychiatric diseases" = mental illness)
0xDECAF 2 hours ago [-]
ed...ward?
Rendered at 05:20:23 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
This is making mice more people, but either way it's an exciting day for mice everywhere.
It's still kind of neat though and I hope it's actually somehow useful for something.
oh, I guess there's nothing to be concerned about.
The past few years I seem to be seeing more and more experiments with growing brains in laboratories. Aren't there laws regulating bioethics that forbid such questionable practices? Not that laws ever stopped determined nation states or private researchers from pursuing knowledge - or profit, or competitive advantage - at any cost.
I imagine some would argue there is no ethical problem, because these brains do not experience suffering like humans do. But how do you know for sure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_NIMH
oh, thank god