Showing posts with label humanized mice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humanized mice. Show all posts

Saturday, December 11, 2021

Humanized mice, Covid and bioethics

When I begin to read a medical article, and a phrase introduces a topic with, "Although Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have promoted monoclonal antibodies while opposing vaccine and mask mandates, they're not a substitute for Covid-19 vaccines." 

You have to read it carefully, though. They are not against vaccines or masks, only the mandates. Opposing mandates is a political stance. It's about opposing growing totalitarianism, the huge failures of Biden and the lies of Fauci. This journal obviously is political too--JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association)

But here's my question for medical/scientific folks, because I'm way over my pay grade here: the monoclonal antibodies for Covid preexposure prophylaxis use 'humanized mice" in their development. Is that for testing or is some of that matter passed into our system? Using animals as chimeras is not new, but the bioethics of this seem to only be discussed in some committee locked in a closet in a research institution. Maybe in Wuhan?


Wednesday, May 05, 2021

Humanized mice using fetal tissue

Some Christians want to judge the salvation and eternity of other Christians. Not me. But I will say, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are really bad Catholics.
 
When President Bush placed a limit on fetal cell research, the research using adult stem cell research boomed, and it looked like we would not need millions of aborted babies to feed the ravenous research labs of industry and academe. But hey, the Democrats got back in power. It's just so lucrative and there's always a supply.

Bioethicists will somehow try to convince you that using aborted baby parts to create "humanized mice," is really OK. I mean, all these hospitals and universities have boards and committees to look at the proposals, yet they can't see further down the road than their mega-million dollar grants and the next promotion. It's science, so it must be OK, right?

"Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein comes to mind, though that would be kind. At least Dr. Victor Frankenstein stuck to grafting dead human flesh upon dead human flesh. These 21st-century scientists intermix human with rodent. Perhaps more fitting for these new pioneers would be another novel: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World." . . .
 
“In September, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh published their work on the development of humanized mice and rats with ‘full-thickness human skin.’ ” This so-called “full-thickness human skin” from fetuses was grafted onto rodents “while simultaneously co-engrafting the same fetus’s lymphoid tissues and hematopoietic stem cells from the liver, so that the rodent models were humanized with organs and skin from the same child.” This coveted “full-thickness fetal skin” was taken from fetuses aborted at Magee-Women’s Hospital at 18 to 20 weeks of pregnancy. Human hair was evident on the mice by 12 weeks: “In the scalp grafts, fine human hair can be seen growing long and dark surrounded by the short white hairs of the mouse.”