Scientists Engineer World's First Schizophrenic Mice

Scientists have created the world's first schizophrenic mice and are born with a mental disease. They engineered these schizophrenic mice to get a better understanding of the illness and also test various medications on it before testing it on humans.

This is the first time; an animal has been created that displays mental illness from birth. However, this is not the first time the mice have been genetically modified; scientists have created in the past with various physical conditions such as heart disease. Genetic engineering of these mice will help the scientists a vast source of laboratory animals to test their theories.

Animal rights activists however condemn this genetic engineering of mice and said it is "morally repugnant to create an animal doomed to mental suffering".

The mice were engineered by modifying its genes to mimic a mutant gene first found in a Scottish family with a high incidence of schizophrenia affecting about one in every 100 people. The researchers said the mice's brain showed similar features of humans with schizophrenia, such as depression and hypertension. The egg cells of the mice were genetically modified by inserting a gene associated with schizophrenia into their DNA. The eggs were fertilized and grown into baby mice using surrogate mothers.

These mutant mice may provide an important new tool for further study of the combinations of factors that underlie mental illnesses like schizophrenia and mood disorders," said Takatoshi Hikida, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, a leading researcher.

On the one hand it is important to find a cure for schizophrenia, but on the other hand it is inhumane to produce mice with mental disease, what if it escapes and affects other mice population. I hope they create alternate methods of finding a cure, there should be a way.

What do you think about this method of creating a mice with a mental disease?