Mice keep yanking my chain. Today was a perfect example. The headline said scientists produced mouse stem cells from mouse skin cells. This could be a huge breakthrough, both ethically and medically. The only problem is that the method used on the mice would cause cancer in humans. Fuck you, mice. Give me something I can use!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19067616/ [no longer available]
My disappointment could have been worse. It’s not clear I’ll ever need that particular medical breakthrough anyway. The stories that really chafe my nuggets are the ones that sound like this:
“Researchers announced a breakthrough in gene therapy. This new technique gave mice an IQ of 700, grew hair in bald patches, doubled the size of their peckers, and made them immortal. The mice also showed signs of telekinesis, unlimited male orgasms, and x-ray vision. In lab tests, the mice beat leopards in paw-to-paw combat.”
This makes me all excited because I think “I could use a few of those things.” Then I read the rest of the story and it says something like “The researchers cautioned that this sort of gene therapy in humans would make their eyes turn into vaginas.”
It’s bad enough that I live in a country that ranks 37th in health care. The thing that really pisses me off is that I have worse health care than mice. If I were a mouse, I would start smoking, drinking, overeating and having unsafe sex, because those tiny bastards can be cured of anything with a goddamned aspirin and a shot of their own skin cells.
It makes me wonder if mice are easily cured because of the placebo effect. Mice don’t know anything about science, so they think whatever the scientist is doing must be helping. For example, if a lab mouse sees the janitor beating off in a test tube, the mouse thinks “Hey, my tumor is shrinking!” And then it does. You can’t underestimate the power of positive mouse thinking.
Just once I would like to see a headline that said, “SCIENTISTS DISCOVER A CURE FOR HUMAN DIABETES,” followed by details that say, “Scientists caution that this treatment in mice would give them inverted erections and make them hump themselves to death.”
Well, I can dream.