Making Animals More Usable in Medical Research

This article in Wired demonstrates that, due to genetic engineering, animals may be becoming even more useful in medical research. From the story:

A panel of 36 mice could finally deliver the long-unfulfilled promise of personalized medicine. The mice were specially bred to contain just about any genetic predisposition in humans. They should help scientists determine which drugs are dangerous—or more effective—for individuals before they reach the market…

The testing won’t be a silver-bullet solution to drug toxicity: Mice are not exactly like people. Plus, interactions between genes and environment are hard to duplicate in a lab. But the mice should help scientists understand these ambiguities, and using them should be a major improvement over testing drugs on just a few types of mice.