Man and mouse genetically similar: Comparing DNA sequences offers insight into man's makeup

[Guest guest]

Congratulations, Ryan. You have done the impossible. You've actually

gotten me to agree with Gleason for once! You see, miracles really do

happen.

 

Well, your defense of animal experimentation based on gene similarity would

be quite convincing were it not for the fact that, in the real world,

similar genes do not make for similar experiences with medication. For

example, in the early 1960s the FDA approved Thalidomide, a prescription

medication that was supposed to be a tranquilizer. The drug had been tested

extensively on animals and appeared to be quite safe. Unfortunately, when

it was released on the market it turned out to cause horrible birth defects

in the children of the women who took it.

 

A similar situation occurred with Urethane. That drug was supposed to fight

leukemia. It was also tested on animals and passed all tests.

Unfortunately, when it was given to humans, it wound up causing cancer of

the liver, lungs and bone marrow. Similar experiences happened with many

other medications that passed animal tests with flying colors including

Phenacetin (pain killer - caused kidney and red blood cell damage),

Amydopyrine (pain killer - caused blood disease), Reserpine (anti

hypertensive - caused severe depression and increased cancer risk),

Methotrexate (for leukemia and psoriasis - caused intestinal hemorrhages,

anemia, and tumors), Mitotane (for leukemia - caused severe kidney damage),

Methaqualone (tranquilizer - caused severe mental illness), Eraldin (heart

medication - caused severe eye and digestive tract damage), Accutane (for

acne - caused birth defects), Isopreterenol (for asthma - caused death), and

the list goes on and on.

 

Another example: Chimps and humans share 98% of their genes, but humans get

AIDS and chimps don't. Or, at least, they didn't until millions of dollars

were spent to create chimps that could get AIDS for the purpose of

experimentation. It's noteworthy that virtually all of the progress made in

fighting AIDS has come from clinical research and experimentation, not

laboratory research or experimentation. You see, it's not the 98% gene

similarity that matters, it's the 2% dissimilarity that matters.

 

The point is, despite the similarity of genes, each species is substantially

different from others and the effects of drugs on one species tells you

nothing about that drug's effects on another species.

 

Gleason is right in pointing out that the animal experimentation exists

largely to support a multi-billion dollar industry. Drug manufacturers want

animal experimentation, not because it makes drugs safer, but because it

helps them win negligence lawsuits. They can always point to animal

experiments as evidence of the care they took before putting a medication on

the market. It sounds good to juries who don't know any better.

 

So, before you take that next drug the doctor prescribes, make sure it's

worked on other humans. Otherwise, you'll be the experimental subject.

 

Oh, yes. There are also significant ethical objections to using other

sentient beings as the equivalent of crash test dummies. Since animals

cannot consent to being test subjects, rather like human babies, there is no

ethical defense for exploiting and torturing them in the name of drug

company profits. If you don't agree, just ask Holocaust survivors who were

used for experimental purposes by Dr. Mengela. They didn't have the option

of consenting either, but like test animals, they suffered and many died in

the name of pseudo-science. I met one such elderly woman some years ago

when I worked for a Jewish charitable organization. She still couldn't walk

without severe pain and I never did see her smile.

 

Let's hope the day soon comes when the only test subjects for medications

will be those who need the drugs and have voluntarily consented. That would

significantly diminish the pain and suffering of many species, including our

own.

 

 

-

" Ryan Darius Partovi " <rpartovi

" Jay Gleason " <jay.gleason

Cc:

Saturday, August 03, 2002 11:32 PM

[sFBAVeg] Man and mouse genetically similar: Comparing DNA

sequences offers insight into man's makeup

 

 

> They are very often not at all coincident with results on humans.

>

> Resulting in ever greater human suffering than that of the animals.

>

> Penicillin is just one of more than thousands of examples of the counter

> productivity of animal tests. Because it kills guinea pigs, its animal

> experiments held up its introduction 10-20 years.. resulting in

> millions

> of human deaths..

 

Jay,

 

We have come a long way from the days of penicillin and excessive animal

testing. As far as your similarity claim, perhaps you are not up on the

latest research. See the article below.

 

Love,

 

Ryan

 

Man and mouse genetically similar

Comparing DNA sequences offers insight into man's makeup

By Maggie Fox

Reuters

 

WASHINGTON, May 30 - What makes a man different from a mouse?

Genetically, it is pretty hard to tell, researchers said Thursday. An

initial comparison of one mouse chromosome to a human chromosome shows

the genes they carry are highly similar, a team at genome company Celera

Genomics reports in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

 

SCIENTISTS HOPE that by comparing human DNA sequences to those of other

animals, they can tease out what it is that makes us unique.

And because scientists have experimented on billions of lab mice

and know a great deal about their genetics, they hope the field, called

comparative genomics, can help them better understand human biology.

Richard Mural and a team of colleagues at Celera compared

chromosome 16 in the mouse to human chromosome 21, which it closely

resembles. Mural said both are fairly small and well-understood, which

is why his team compared them.

" To me, the thing that I found the most interesting is just how

similar the mouse and the human are in respect to genes, and gene

content and DNA sequences, " Neal Copeland, an expert in genetics and

genomics at the National Cancer Institute, said in a telephone interview.

" We already knew that human and mouse were similar but it was

really hard to know exactly how similar. "

The Celera researchers found mice have about 10 percent less DNA

than humans, mostly because the human genome has a great deal of

repetitive sequences, once called " junk DNA. "

This surprised Copeland. " It always has been assumed that the

mouse and human genomes were about the same size. "

Celera is sequencing the entire collection of mouse genes. It is

also finishing the human sequence, which it assembled in 2000. A

publicly funded effort to sequence and analyze the entire mouse genome

in also underway.

 

GENOME MYSTERY

One of the mysteries raised by sequencing the human genome is how

few genes it takes to make a person. Scientists once thought humans had

about 100,000 different genes, but Celera and the publicly funded Human

Genome Project came up with about one-third that number.

In contrast, the rice plant has 50,000 genes.

" The amount of DNA in an organism just doesn't seem to have any

correlation with anything we associate with the complexity of an

organism, " Mural said in a telephone interview. " There are plants that

have genomes 10 times larger than humans. "

Scientists now believe that the genes themselves are not the only

important parts of the genome. Other DNA, including the repetitive

sequences, may play a key role in controlling genes.

Celera is publishing the information on chromosome 16 in the

public GenBank, but holding back the rest of the mouse genome data for

paying clients. They found what look like 731 genes on the mouse

chromosome.

" Fourteen genes have no known human homologs (counterparts),

whereas 21 human genes in the compared regions are unique to humans, "

Copeland and colleagues Nancy Jenkins and Stephen O'Brien at the

National Cancer Institute, said in a commentary.

The 14 genes may be unique to mice, or their human counterparts

may lie elsewhere, Mural's team said.

 

DIFFERENT EVOLUTION

Based on this, it could be predicted that about 2 percent of

mouse genes are unique to mice, and about 2.9 percent are unique to

humans, Mural's team added.

One big difference lies in genes that control production of

structures known as zinc fingers. Zinc fingers play a huge role in

regulating what genes do, so this is probably key to the process of mice

and humans having evolved into different species, Copeland said.

Humans share 98.7 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees, our

closest living relatives. Humans and chimps branched off from a common

ape-like ancestor 5 million years ago, while humans and mice diverged

between 90 million and 100 million years ago.

Mural said it is too soon to say what percentage of DNA is shared

by mice and men.

 

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