(images via npr)
Good Morning, Friends!
After reading some of the incredible responses to the animal testing discussion SuperForester Jackson initiated, I had animals on the brain and spent the rest of my day reflecting upon the huge issue that is animal testing. Based upon the responses given by SuperForesters, there seemed to be a general consensus that animal testing is neither entirely “right” nor is it entirely “wrong”. Relatively speaking, if the human win (for example, saving a human life) outweighed a loss for (or of) an animal, animal testing seemed to be considered to be okay. I understand I’m generalizing a very complicated issue but bear with me for a second. When we think of animal testing, we usually think that something good for people equal something bad for animals. So last night I was thinking, surely there are examples where we can find a win for both humans and animals. A happy ending for a human can’t always be an unhappy one for an animal…right?
Later on, I found this article. Thanks to gene therapy, two male squirrel monkeys (all of which are naturally colorblind) are now able to see in full color.
To recap, all male squirrel monkeys are born with a type of color blindness in which they lack a receptor in their eyes that would let them see red and green. Female squirrel monkeys, on the other hand do have the receptor and can see the whole spectrum.
So researchers at the University of Washington developed a gene therapy technique to reprogram some of the color receptors in the male monkeys’ eyes. They did this despite many other scientists telling them that even if the adult male monkey had the receptor, its brain wouldn’t be able to read the signal. Five months later, those other scientists were proved wrong. In fact, the adult brains of the colorblind monkeys appeared ready to receive the new input and overall, this may prove to be a promising technique to cure colorblindness and a whole range of vision problems for humans.
This might not be the perfect example of both an animal and human win (of course the possible human win here is much greater than the ability for a couple of male squirrel monkeys to see in color) and some might even argue that the results for the monkeys go against nature, but if I were a male squirrel monkey and after a treatment was able to see the whole spectrum of colors, I’d think that was pretty awesome. And from what I could tell, I don’t think the monkeys were harmed in the process.
So I’ll take this one as an overall win.
Love to all,
Carla
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