Posted by utopizen on December 9, 2002, at 7:17:52
In reply to Re: Pregablin trial / mice tumours » Georgie Geordie, posted by JahL on August 14, 2001, at 10:23:38
> > I'm in the Uk and get panic attack/anxiety.
> >
> > I'm being screened for a pregablin trial. On the notes it says that mice developed tumors at near human dose ranges but rats did not.
> >
> > What does this mean exactly...
>
> I think one's (mice?-I'm sure someone here will know) a better indicator as to what human responses will be to a given drug.
>Aren't humans a better indicator for what will happen if a drug is taken by humans? After all, did rats and mice tell us that SSRIs would make us impotent? It didn't.
Unfortunately, mice aren't fuzzy little versions of humans. The more we keep thinking that, the longer we will be away from curing mental illnesses and diseases. Real medical progress these days really does come from the non-animal models.
Unfortunately, drug co.'s like the vagueness of animal models. If something goes wrong in the drug, they can claim it didn't go wrong that way in animal testing. And while in vitro and other non-animal tests are faster and more efficient and cheaper, they require greater capital at the beginning to design or construct. Much more than breeding rats, anyway.
So basically, as long as neurology and animal behavior is filled with professors who tell their students B.F. Skinner was a God and we should name our children after him, we'll really continue to have boards like Psycho-Babble to let us share our no-gos with the drugs we take.
Speaking of B.F. Skinner, he has had one of his hallmark studies refuted- it was back in the 60's, some guy re-did his fighting test and found it had paradoxial results. It used Skinner's classic model, heating up the bottom of the cage to induce fighting. Eventually this researcher became so upset with animal research's ethics and validity issues he became devoted to anti-vivisection.
100 years from now, people are going to look back at us and think, "look at those primitives, they think mice are closer to humans than rats! As if either is a useful model!"
After all, it took centuries for Galen's work to be questioned, and now we laugh over his findings that the source of all ailments lie in "humors" (bodily fluids such as bile, etc.) So this resulted in anxiety patients being "cured" by removing people's black bile until opium replaced this in the 1700's. Yes, what would we do without black bile removal? Thanks for whoever decided to name drop Galen along the greater thinkers of our time by putting his name up on the boston public library...
I hate it when people are sort of told to praise someone repeatedly because that's what everyone has told them to do. I've always be skeptical of "heroes" that my teachers have used to name-drop repeatedly-- the names of the people you can't watch a PBS documentary over without hearing someone praise them like it was their son. Like Dewey. He screwed up the the whole school system for a century's time, and everyone talks of him like he invented water. He's responsible for schools that think it's educational to color pictures of turkeys all day. I volunteer at an after-school program, I'm not making this up. In the 1800's, kids would learn college-level geometry when they were in middle school. Now they spend thieir homework time coloring in turkeys. Am I the only one who is ticked off by this? Please, join me in social babble to continue... =)
I also think social anxiety sufferers are the "other", as my philosophy professor refers to people who find different paths to direct themselves to and think by.
Speaking of which, while I slow down this babble, I just learned last night Robert Frost's Walking in the Woods (name) poem was written after him seeing double down a wood's path. Apparently he had this as a kid and sometimes as an adult. He would see and hear things that weren't there, and his mother told him never to let anyone know because that would be dangerous.
poster:utopizen
thread:75036
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021203/msgs/131080.html