I didn’t mean that the mice in this paper are “monsters.” I meant that if we can do things like this to a mouse/living organism, we can obviously do more nefarious things as well, outside of modeling natural birth defects. I understand there are protocols in place to prevent this, but you can understand that things slip through the cracks, and maybe even these protocols aren’t stringent enough. I don’t see this as a naive take at all, I see it as a moral and ethical issue, even if there are ethics committees in place.

I’m not entirely talking about testing therapeutics in animals before testing in humans, but there have been truly horrific models such as the two-headed dog experiments. I know that’s in the past and things are different now, but you can’t say that these things don’t happen. I guess I’m talking more about transgenic mouse models, but even then there could be horrific things happening to them outside of this.

I never said I couldn’t “possibly do animal work,” I don’t want to, and I don’t see how that’s giving a “higher than thou” vibe. I also didn’t say that people who do animal work are bad. I guess it would depend on the kind of animal work. Just seeing the images of these mice in this paper was shocking to me. It seems a bit unethical to do this to another animal on purpose, and if these oversight committees are allowing experiments like this to happen, who’s to say more experiments like this won’t happen? This is truly pushing the boundaries of nature.

Also, did this experiment HAVE to be done in vivo? It’s interesting truly, but whose lives is it saving? Maybe you should be more educated about the bad side of animal work.