The Myth of the Demon Drug
This is a story about how two independent forces conspired to turn the United States in the world’s leading champion of incarceration. A powerful combination of shoddy lab experiments and entrenched prejudices have turned America into the world’s preeminent jailer.
The use of mice and rats in experiments dates back to the 1850’s, when so-called rat fanciers sold them to early scientists looking for a better way to conduct experiments, to the benefit of humans. The most common mouse species — Mus musculus, or ‘house mouse’ — are considered “biomedical Swiss army knives,” and are easily genetically manipulatable, according to a 2019 article in Smithsonian Magazine on the history of lab research. Bookending our scientific needs, the most common rat species — Rattus norvegicus, or ‘Norway rat’ — closely mimics the human neural network, and physiology. Together, these comprise 95% of all lab animals, according to The Foundation for Biomedical Research.
Their short life spans, allowing for quick multi-generational observations, their docility, their relative abundance and economy, their size, their genetic, biological and behavior characteristics, and now, the creation of genetically altered ‘transgenic’ and ‘knockout’ mice that more closely mirror the human genome, all conspire to make these tiny creatures the darlings of scientific research.
