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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: Aspartame(tm?) questions
Message-ID: <771@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 9-Jul-83 22:23:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.771
Posted: Sat Jul  9 22:23:59 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Jul-83 09:30:23 EDT
References: <2230@ncsu.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 29

My father has a lab in which he runs neuro-chemistry experiments on white
mice and other animals.

He is worried the the current gene pool of white mice contain an unecessary
predisposition to diseases such as cancer. He is also aware that sometimes
mice die for unknown reasons. One year a whole floor of mice died for some
reason which was never acertained. Not a single mouse on the whole floor
had been used to test *any* chemicals; the whole floor was full of mice
which were being bred to see if there were any traces of genetic mutation
in the Xth generation of mice.

Such was the nature of the experiment that it could be clearly shown that
whatever the mice died of, it wasnt a genetic mutation. When new mice
were procured and the experiment was duplicated no mice died.

The obvious problem is, of course, that had he been doing a survey on
the possible effects of X he would probably have jumped to the wrong
conclusion that X was bad.

In particular, he ran an experiment and presented his "conclusions" that
X has some measured effect when added to mice drinking water. X was
distilled water.

I have know idea what to do about this - if you run losts of experiments
at some point you must realise that you are causing unnecessary suffering
and death to your experimental animals.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura