Hana's Mouse thread.

[hanadr]

I got a look at the paper about the low carb mice and the seeming risk of low carbing
I don't think much of that work is relevant to diabetics using low carb for control. However, what I think makes it even less so is that they used BABY mice. Newly weaned and all boys. I know that human children have different dietary needs from adults. I expect baby mice are like that too. And that's after feeding a grain eating animal on a low carb diet.
Humans are not grain eaters. I'm now sure this work is irrelevant to adult diabetics using low carb as a means of controlling a metabolic error.

 

[inwales]

Re: Poor baby mice!

Using mice because nobody cares about them....

 

[hanadr]

Re: Poor baby mice!

I love mice
I've often had pet ones. Nothing is as silky as a mouse's fur.
Hana

 

[lionrampant]

Re: Poor baby mice!

I love mice
I've often had pet ones. Nothing is as silky as a mouse's fur.
Hana

Or as gooey as their insides when you dissect them.

Mmm, tastes scientific. :wink:

 

[hanadr]

Re: Poor baby mice!

I wouldn't dissect when I was at Uni. I refused and some of my classmates were convinced I'd get thrown out. However, the professor said he respected my principles. I was prepared to sacrifice my degree. I was then allowed to do a different module with another class. Actually it was pithing frogs, which I absolutely refused to have anything to do with. I think those disgusting practices have been abolished.

 

[hanadr]

More about those mice

I noticed when I read the paper about the low-carb mice, that they were a specific Mutant strain, so I looked them up
What I found casts even MORE doubt onto the relevance for this study to humans.
I discovered that normal rodents don't form atherosclrotic plaques, which wwwere this study's markers for risk. the ApoE mice were developed specifically to produce this abnormal phenoenon. So why is anyone surprised they did so on an abnormal diet for mice?
Hana

 

[hanadr]

Letter to the Mousy scientist.

This is what I wrote. It's just how I feel about this


I am writing, because I think the recently published study on mice, which
the press has extrapolated to humans, is causing unnecessary distress among
T2 diabetics, who use a low carb diet to control their condition.
I assume that you followed a low carb diet yourself perfectly safely for a
lot longer than the 12 weeks of the mouse study. Did you have your own
status regarding atherosclerotic plaques checked too?( obviously not post
mortem!)
You took ApoE mice, which are mutants designed for the purpose of producing
plaques and fed them a totally non-mouse diet and seemingly, you were
surprised that it didn't do them any good and they formed plaques as they
are designed to do. You then comment that you have stopped your low carb way
of eating, because( you imply) you are afraid of the risks.
You are NOT a mouse,(or are you?,, apologies for rudeness!) you do not have
rodent physiology and nutritional needs.
There are several well designed studies on the effects of low carb diets in
humans with T2 diabetes. the Swedish study was followed over 44 months. this
has shown in humans with defective glucose metabolism, that low carb diets
are beneficial.
I'm sure you were simply joining the anti Atkins movement. However, has
anyone ever PROVEN that the Atkins diet is dangerous? there are millions of
people worldwide who have benefited and are still benefiting from a reduced
carb way of eating and I've only ever found 1(ONE) VERY FLAWED study, which
suggested that increased carbs might help in diabetes. At least that's what
the writer said, although the raw data doesn't quite support it.
It wouldn't have hurt if you had thought of what the press would do with
the material you published and how it would impinge on diabetics, who have
other more immediate risks to contend with.
Hana Rous

 

[timo2]

Re: Letter to the Mousy scientist.

They got their "scientist stops low-carbing after research" sound bite, he got his money.
Job done.

 

[dragongirl]

How funny you did this too! This is what I wrote to The Telegraph this week (I just hope I got my facts right because I'm not as knowledgeable as you)!:

Sir

It has become popular to naysay the low-carb diet, as shown in the research that you reported on this week.

Two significant things are not mentioned. Firstly, the mice were mutants designed for the purpose of producing plaques and fed a human diet (hence the results the scientists were looking for) and secondly, people are presupposing that low carb means high protein consumption. Many type 2 diabetics eat low-carb diets to keep tight control of their blood sugars (thus contravening the somewhat ridiculous NICE guidelines and reducing NHS costs in later years), but their diet relies on a much higher fat intake, which is metabolised to produce the energy they need. This is not the same as emphasising a high protein intake.

Publishing half-baked research with spurious findings is not only damaging to confused, newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics but also insulting to the more serious research that has been undertaken among them – for instance, a well-designed Swedish study conducted over 44 months showed beneficial effects of low-carb diets.

Your excellent paper would be better used campaigning for the NHS to issue free testing strips and meters to all type 2 diabetics so that they can monitor their blood sugars and eat a sufficiently low-carb (but not extreme) diet to maintain themselves in a safe zone.

 

[hanadr]

Well done Dragon. I like your getting the strips issue in too.
Hope they publish
Hana

 

[inwales]

Stop animal testing now...

 

[mullaneder]

if we didnt have animal testing then where would we be today as diabetics? what medicine would be available to us? i dont like the idea of animal testing,especially for cosmetics.however there have been a lot of medical advances through animal testing.all i can hope for is that it is done ethically and with as little pain as possible.i see it as a lesser of two evils.i would love if it didnt exist but i wonder what the world would be like if it didnt

dermot

 

[hanadr]

This particular study shows how animal studies can be a waste. First you breed mice whose physiology is abnormal. then you use that very abnormality to produce "surprising" results
Hana
I do think that some animal research is essentila though.

 

[Handyníall]

Re: Poor baby mice!

I wouldn't dissect when I was at Uni. I refused and some of my classmates were convinced I'd get thrown out. However, the professor said he respected my principles. I was prepared to sacrifice my degree. I was then allowed to do a different module with another class. Actually it was pithing frogs, which I absolutely refused to have anything to do with. I think those disgusting practices have been abolished.

Oh you would not like medical school then. Last year we spent the whole thing dissect 'Kenneth' our cadaver. (That was his actual name).

I couldn't possibly leave my body to that sort of science *shudder* mainly because letting first years loose with scalpels is not a brilliant idea...

Anyway, I think the tests are relevant in so much as it is a piece of research. But like has been found out with various clinical trials going wrong, no matter how much you mutate the mice they will always be different from humans.

 

[cugila]

Why do I feel like someone just walked over my grave.......... :shock:

Kenneth

 

[Handyníall]

Oh dear, don't worry. Apparently he had the healthiest liver my lecturer has ever seen!

 

[hanadr]

I wouldn't have minded dissecting a human cadaver, even if I knew his name. After all, he left his body for that purpose when he didn't need it any more.
Little mice and worse still intelligent larger creaures are tormented without their consent. Pithing frogs is disgusting andunconscienable( sp?). I sincerely hope it's not allowed any more. And they used wild caught creatures.
There's a big difference between dissecting a body GIVEN by its former owner for the education of doctors, and tormenting little creatures for the very dubious edification of students who will never use the knowledge.
The biggest distress I've ever seen in a child was the result of a demonstration that used to be done in biology, where fertile eggs were incubated and one or two opened at intervals for 11 year olds to see the developing embryos.
I had to drive home the little girl who realised that the nearly formed chick's heart would soon stop beating. I refused to teach that topic again.
What would children learn from that lesson?
Hana

 

[copepod]

Have to agree with Hana questioning the value of showing live / soon to be dead chick embyos - there is simply no need. By chance, yesterday I visited the Natural History Museum at Tring, and was so impressed by the old (Victorian?) panel of models of egg and chick development, that I took a photo - might be useful to show my nieces one day.
However, it's important to draw distinctions between teaching / learning and research. Medical students need to see real human bodies (which are pledged to medical schools while the person is alive, and after the year of dissection, a thanksgiving service is held, attended by students, staff and relatives of the bodies); vet students learn dog anatomy by dissecting greyhounds, which are put down at the end of their racing careers, unless they go to new homes, where they prove themselves to be affectionate, comfort loving and not keen to walk far. There's also the distinction between using animals and other reasearch method, including in vivo and human volunteers. I've been involved as a researcher and volunteer, so I know I'm not the only human who volunteers to help other humans, but also as an alternative to some animal experiments. But I'm not sure if insulin would have become a treatment for diabetes as quickly if Banting, Best, MacLeod & Collip hadn't experimented on dogs in Toronto in 1922. http://www.discoveryofinsulin.com/Home.htm

 

[hanadr]

The insulin discoveries in Toronto certainly made good use of the lives of those dogs,, as did the pigs in the South African heart transplant research but the world has moved on since 1922. For much research, "in vitro" tells us as much as "in vivo". I knew about the greyhounds too and think that it's pretty mean of the owners to exploit these gentle creatures twice.
However, I still can't think what the low carb mice study has taught anyone about human health.
Hana