Backward GMO Mouse Science
Drug companies own patents on unsafe drugs that would be unethical to test on humans. So they take mice and genetically alter them to have certain conditions. The big challenge with Autism is the variability of the condition, this would be quite visible with the large sample of brains found a Harvard's McLean Hospital.
"The freezer, a 2004 model from Fisher Scientific, comes with a built-in alarm that sounds when the temperature drops significantly, and a second independent monitor automatically calls five staff at the centre on their mobile phones in succession. “None of our devices were triggered,” says Benes. On 31 May, an investigator opened the freezer door to retrieve brains, and felt the shock of no frozen air. After staff at Autism Speaks, the non-profit organization based in New York that leads the Autism Tissue Program, alerted the families of donors, the Boston Globe covered the mishap.
In a few weeks, an investigation into the freezer breakdown will be made public. Although foul play will be considered, 30 days of security-camera tape suggests that’s not the issue, Benes says. Refrigeration systems commonly break down. So, the big question concerns the sensors that watch temperature.
Freezers at the NICHD Brain and Tissue Bank are equipped with monitors that sound an alarm when the sensors act up. For example, freezer temperatures usually fluctuate within a fraction of a degree and the monitor will notice when a sensor stabilizes on a single digit, explains James O’Malley, a national sales manager for Amega Scientific, which manufactures the AmegaView surveillance system at the NICHD. “I don’t know what happened [at McLean], but it sounds like the sensor system might have locked in at a reading, that can happen when a temperature probe goes bad,” O’Malley speculates. The Amega system also monitors its own power, and sends alerts and updates by e-mail and text messages, in case something goes wrong with phone lines. “It’s all about redundancy,” says O’Malley.""
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/06/brains-thaw-at-harvard-repository.html
Now all they needed was a group of brains that resembled the mice. They somehow found 10 children that happened to have the same type of Autism.
"It's also odd that 10 of the 11 children with autism had the same sort of disorganized patches of cortex, Nelson says. That's not what you would expect with a disorder known to involve many different genes, presumably affecting many different aspects of brain development."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/26/294446735/brain-changes-suggest-autism-starts-in-the-womb
As an American Idiot I would like a complete description of the methods used to obtain these samples.
"The freezer, a 2004 model from Fisher Scientific, comes with a built-in alarm that sounds when the temperature drops significantly, and a second independent monitor automatically calls five staff at the centre on their mobile phones in succession. “None of our devices were triggered,” says Benes. On 31 May, an investigator opened the freezer door to retrieve brains, and felt the shock of no frozen air. After staff at Autism Speaks, the non-profit organization based in New York that leads the Autism Tissue Program, alerted the families of donors, the Boston Globe covered the mishap.
In a few weeks, an investigation into the freezer breakdown will be made public. Although foul play will be considered, 30 days of security-camera tape suggests that’s not the issue, Benes says. Refrigeration systems commonly break down. So, the big question concerns the sensors that watch temperature.
Freezers at the NICHD Brain and Tissue Bank are equipped with monitors that sound an alarm when the sensors act up. For example, freezer temperatures usually fluctuate within a fraction of a degree and the monitor will notice when a sensor stabilizes on a single digit, explains James O’Malley, a national sales manager for Amega Scientific, which manufactures the AmegaView surveillance system at the NICHD. “I don’t know what happened [at McLean], but it sounds like the sensor system might have locked in at a reading, that can happen when a temperature probe goes bad,” O’Malley speculates. The Amega system also monitors its own power, and sends alerts and updates by e-mail and text messages, in case something goes wrong with phone lines. “It’s all about redundancy,” says O’Malley.""
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/06/brains-thaw-at-harvard-repository.html
Now all they needed was a group of brains that resembled the mice. They somehow found 10 children that happened to have the same type of Autism.
"It's also odd that 10 of the 11 children with autism had the same sort of disorganized patches of cortex, Nelson says. That's not what you would expect with a disorder known to involve many different genes, presumably affecting many different aspects of brain development."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/03/26/294446735/brain-changes-suggest-autism-starts-in-the-womb
As an American Idiot I would like a complete description of the methods used to obtain these samples.
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