That's the drawback of the modern lab mouse. It's cheap, efficient, and highly standardized—all of which qualities have made it the favorite tool of large-scale biomedical research. But as Mattson points out, there's a danger to taking so much of our knowledge straight from the animal assembly line. The inbred, factory-farmed rodents in use today—raised by the millions in germ-free barrier rooms, overfed and understimulated and in some cases pumped through with antibiotics—may be placing unseen constraints on what we know and learn.

Slate has just finished a three part series on the pitfalls and promises of laboratory animals. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) [more inside]
posted by tocts on Nov 18, 2011 - 21 comments

This week Slate featured a five part series by Daniel Engber on the treatment of live animal subjects in biomedical labs and the birth of the animal rights movement.
posted by Rhomboid on Jun 5, 2009 - 21 comments

The National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf. I was searching for an online version of the CD that came with my Neuroscience, 3rd ed. (Purves, et al). What I found was pretty amazing - a full, searchable online version of my book (albeit the older 2nd ed.), including full-color diagrams. The NLM under the NIH has a division called NCBI which hosts a horde of other cool books. [Other aspects of NCBI covered previously; book archive previously on AskMe; more inside]
posted by blendor on Nov 14, 2005 - 4 comments