Validity Of All Animal Testing on Mice Called into Question

Validity Of All Animal Testing on Mice Called into Question

When a mouse is in the presence of a man, the mouse thinks that the man is another mouse trespassing on his territory and as a consequence the mouse becomes stressed, highly stressed in fact.  The reason this happens is because men and mice have the same pheromones.  The presence of stress reduces the experience of pain in the mouse.  This skews results in animal tests carried out on mice.

This finding has called into question perhaps all of the animal experiments on mice that have been conducted by men since the beginning of animal experiments, which must be an awful lot of experiments because in the United Kingdom about 67% of all animal testing is conducted on mice (almost 2,000,000 mice were used in 2004).

If we can say that all the experiments conducted on mice can at least be called into question or at least there are doubts about the results of experiments, then I would have thought that this substantially damages the justification for the animal experiments that have taken place over the past decades.

If it wasn't slightly amusing it would be very sad.  In fact is both at the same time.  To think that the results of animal testing on mice, over the decades, has been different between experiments conducted by a man or a woman must also call into question the abilities of the scientists involved.

Even when a T-shirt worn by a man was placed next to a mouse, the mouse became highly stressed. Apparently, scientists can judge how much pain an mouse is under by looking at its expression.  A mouse makes a grimace when in discomfort and/or pain and the amount of the grimace indicates how much pain the mouse is in.  Using this measure, scientists who came to this finding noted that mice when stressed by the presence of men felt less pain.

The information is interesting because cats are also used in animal experiments.  In the USA 25,500 cats we use in animal experiments in 2000 and about half of them had the potential to cause the cat great discomfort and pain.

I wonder whether cats are also affected by the pheromones given off by people.  We know that cats are highly attuned to the scent of other animals and people.  I'm not saying that a cat will necessarily feel stressed in the presence of a man but a cat might like or dislike the body odour of certain individuals which may impact upon the results of an experiment conducted upon him or her. I think that needs to be looked at as well in the light of the interesting findings regarding mice.