Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsstat.UUCP 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