They aren’t biologically compatible with us and so often seems like treatments that work with mice stumble at human testing stage.
So why do we keep using mice? Why not a different animal more closely related to us?
In: Biology
We do use pigs for some testing. Pigs are pretty closely related to us, with a lot of similar organs and biology. But pigs are big and expensive, and mice are biologically pretty close to us too. They respond to a lot of things the same or similar ways humans do. Plus, they have real short (relatively short) generational gaps, so you can see how something might affect reproduction or generations down the line without needing to wait actual human generations.
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