The largest application of transgenic animals by far is the use of mice as models of human disease and tests for potential therapies. The first example was the Harvard oncomouse, with an added human gene which gave it a form of human cancer. The certainty of giving such mice cancer, compared with a statistical probability of a population of mice, was claimed to lead to less mice being needed in research. The opposite has been the case. The applications in mice have increased enormously to the point where GM mice are used in a wide range of experiments. Once a gene is identified in the human genome project, it has become almost routine to seek to "knock out" the equivalent gene in a mouse and to try and identify the function of the gene.
In "Engineering Genesis" we pointed the anomaly of the vast increase in model mice against the general European trend in animal research of the "3 R's" - reduce, refine and replace. We suggested that the use had become too automatic, and steps needed to be taken to make researchers think twice before using mice.14 The fear is that mice have ceased to be seen as animals at all, in this context, and are merely items in a research catalogue.
This poses a deep ethical dilemma for Christians. No one could justify wilfully genetically changing a mouse to give it cancer, or one of a range of fatal and painful human diseases, were it not for the awfulness of those diseases in humans, and the immense difficulties of the medical profession in understanding and treating them. There are almost two cultures, depending on what one's exposure has been to the issue. For the medical research community, the imperative of relieving human suffering is overwhelming in this area of disease. For the animal welfare lobby, there is the sense of outrage at what we are doing to defenceless animals.
Here we reach a generic issue about the use of animals in human medical research. Christians may be torn both ways. There is a deep sense of concern for the human suffering that might be alleviated, but a deep reluctance to treat another of God's creatures merely as a source of spare parts, or to programme them genetically to have dreadful diseases. While we would find it difficult to say an absolute "no" to xenotransplantation or GM mouse models, there would be individual experiments and uses which would not necessarily be justified.
