Why not try to figure out why the monkeys DON'T get
the symptoms and try to apply THAT to humans?
john marlow
--- Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com> wrote:
> John Marlow <johnmarrek@yahoo.com> wrote,
> >Q: Do you think it possible that when these animals
> >are genetically altered to come down with human
> >diseases, and genetic fixes for those diseases are
> >developed--that the fixes will not work in humans
> >because the process of artificially altering the
> >animals itself introduces factors which are (or are
> >not) present in the "naturally-occurring" human
> >diseases?
>
> I think this is very possible. This is one of the
> main problems with
> using animals for research. Animals often don't
> react the same way
> to diseases as humans do. In fact, the whole
> purpose to the above
> research is to develop monkeys that can get
> AIDS,breast cancer,
> alzheimers and other diseases. Normally, they don't
> get these
> diseases. Even when infected with the AIDS virus,
> monkeys don't get
> the disease. Even if we slip in a few genes to make
> them react to
> the disease like humans, we still don't know if they
> will react to
> the treatment like humans. This is a major question
> mark for this
> kind of research.
>
> I would predict that this approach will only be
> useful for genetic
> engineering at testing ways to turn the specific
> genes back off.
> Testing drugs on the monkeys for later use with
> humans would seem to
> be a less direct approach, more aimed at treatment
> rather than
> prevention.
>
> (I wanna be a glow-monkey!)
> --
> Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
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