The 3Rs of Animal Research

Abstract

On Dec 3, 2021, The Francis Crick Institute issued a press release titled “Gene editing used to create single-sex mouse litters”, describing the ability of scientists to generate all-male or all-female mice with 100% efficiency. At first glance, this might be construed as another example of humans playing God. However, the significance of this technology, as described in Nature Communications, has far-reaching implications relating to the way scientific research and agriculture is conducted. According to James Turner, one of the corresponding authors of the paper, at least 25 000 publications in the past 5 years have used mice in sex-specific research studies.

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