Two Weeks.
I have been back for 2 weeks!! Aaarrrggggggghhhh. And I am still slacking and playing around.Lab is really slack... still. Youcef is ill and because he is not around today I am trying hard to find things to do. So I analysed the PCR ran yesterday, did some calculations which I don't know whether they are right or wrong, and passaged some cells which I think need passaging (they are kind of 100% confluent).
Went for lunch at 12pm for 1.5 hours.
Then, I started to read Terry Prachett after I put another PCR together.
Sigh I gave up trying to make full use of my time (what exactly does this mean actually?). Well, reading storybooks is considered making good use of my time right. When was the last time I picked up a random storybook to read? Before ORD? :P
Time to start reading storybooks without a purpose again :)
And I will be going out every day/night except Friday next week from Monday onwards to Sunday. Now that is seriously playing around. (Ok, well, Sunday is because of work so...)
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As usual I must have something serious.
It has been pretty interesting as I analyse responses from different individuals when I tell them about my work with mice.
Alright. Basically I learn how to maintain strains, I genotype them (i.e. tagging them and cutting bits of their tails off, and then do PCR on the tail bits to determine what mice they are), I inject drugs into them, I put them to sleep and euthanise them, and I dissect them and harvest tissues for histology. I have not learnt surgery and grafting; and because I don't know mouse anatomy well I still have a lot to catch up on my dissection skills.
Given the amount of time I spend with mice in Hopkins naturally I know quite a bit about them and hence I get excited whenever I see mice and whenever I am prompted to talk about my work :P
Well, my intention of writing this post is to urge people not to dismiss work with laboratory animals as 'cruel' or less ethnical than other forms of work with living tissues (e.g. human tissues) because of whatever reason.
Firstly, there is no such thing as 'more ethnical' or 'less ethnical' when it comes to dealing with humans and other living things. I don't understand why is it more ethnical for me to use tissues provided by a patient who has given consent and less ethnical for me to kill mice to harvest tissues for research. It is not as if I seek pleasure in killing them, and we do have a protocol to follow which has to be reviewed annually by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) comprising of vets, medical doctors, researchers, and laymen.
There are federal laws governing the use of animals also... the laws go all the way down to the amount of floor space each animal is entitled to; i.e. strictly speaking it is a federal offence just to keep 10 adult mice in a cage at one go.
We are trying our best to reduce the suffering the animals need to go through because of our research. We have to constantly improve our methods and skills, and we have to constantly ensure that our use of animals are justifiable in order to pass the IACUC audits.
And it is a basic rule that the minimum amount of animals should be used and animal models should be avoided as much as possible for any research project.
Throughout human history we have been sacrificing animals for various reasons. We eat them, wear their skin, use their whatever as medicine, sacrifice them for God... do the animals have any say in this? Nowadays, because of our increased knowledge and awareness we know that animals are making huge sacrifices for our benefits; as a result, we came out with all kinds of ethnical codes in an attempt to treat the animals we have to sacrifice as well as possible.
Of course, this doesn't make it completely ethnical. What is the meaning of being 'completely ethnical'? Hmms trying to define that is as meaningless as saying that something is more ethnical than another.
Though this makes ourselves feel better. I do feel bad for the mice when they start squealing at me...
Another point: it is not justifiable either to completely avoid the use of animal models because doing that, at our current level of technology, will greatly hinder the development of new drugs, new therapies, new diagnostic tools and new research methods. These are things which will give our patients hope and these are things which will save lives when they eventually materialise.
I am not here to judge anyone... but because I have received responses like 'why are you so cruel and sadistic' (because I get excited over dissecting mice?), 'how can you bear killing such cute little things?', 'using human tissues is more ethnical because they are given to us by someone who has given consent', etc., I have to say something to defend everyone who work with animals...
It doesn't make me more ethnical if I voluntarily stop working with animals, simply because I believe that by not contributing my skills to some work which will eventually do good to the human race is also unethnical. I made a similar argument when I was discussing organ donation; namely, it is unethnical to avoid considering linking monetary incentives to organ donation simply because the current altruistic donation system has been proven to be ineffective in maximising the benefits of the current transplant technologies.
Hmms, well, I don't know whether it is appropriate to link this with butchers... However, we should really thank the butchers because they are actually doing an extremely unpleasant job in order to ensure that we have our supply of proteins. If all the butchers suddenly decide to turn ethnical one day and stop slaughtering cows for us, will there be enough soybean in this world to sustain us? The question: is it ethnical for the World Butcher Association (just pretend it exists) to mandate its members to all turn ethnical and jeopardise the world's supply of meat? Certainly this is an exaggeration, but think about it...
Argh, so don't judge us, please? :P
