Mice engineer to be schizophrenic
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have genetically engineered mice to carry a human gene that triggers schizophrenia, an advance that will help researchers search for new methods to control the disease. Researchers currently rely on mice that are given doses of powerful drugs such as PCP to induce schizophrenia. The gene was found in a Scottish family prone to the disease. By inserting the mutant gene into mouse DNA, the researchers were able to create mice with the type of brain abnormalities associated with schizophrenia. According to the National Institutes of Mental Health, schizophrenia affects about one percent of the population.
"Before, we would inject a rodent with a drug and say it's a schizophrenic mouse, but it did not reflect the underlying cause of the disease," said Hopkins scientist Dr. Akira Sawa.
- read the Baltimore Sun report
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Comments
By a nurse no more | Posted 4:16pm | September 25, 2007
Ok, let's see, they were giving a drug to the mice to make them schizophrenic and then trying to find another drug that would treat the schizophrenia that they induced. And they wonder why they weren't having much success?
Seems to me all they needed to do was stop giving the mice the schizophrenia inducing drug. That would mean the whole experiment was a failure.
How would they know if the mice were naturally schizophrenic anyway?
Is it any wonder that research yields so little? You can't treat a disease with drugs when drugs were the cause of the disease!
It also exposes something far more sinister, they know how to cause diseases. There are no way to prove that they aren't causing diseases that are becoming epidemic today. Things like diabetes, bipolar, heart disease, ADHD, asthma and a long list of other ailments that are on the rise.
Need an example? How about Zyprexa that causes diabetes and Avandia that causes heart attacks, but isn't very effective at treating diabetes? There are more, plenty more, just watch TV and you'll be treated to a flood of drug commercials that have side effects worse than the condition they claim to treat.
Whatever happened to "First do no harm"?
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