From the dawn of medical history, mice have always been a tool, used for the development of medical treatments and understanding of human anatomy. In medical history, mice models have greatly helped medical scientists to study mainly, structure and diseases related to heart, kidney and genes.

Scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore have another success in medical history as they bred world’s first schizophrenic or mentally ill mouse.

For the first time we have an animal genetically engineered with a mental illness. It will allow researchers to study the disease and develop treatments.

To develop this mouse, scientists modified its DNA to mimic the gene responsible for schizophrenia. This gene was inserted into the egg cell and then fertilized by using surrogate mothers. Features, such as hyperactivity and depression, similar to those humans with schizophrenia, were detected in mice’s brain.

This gene is believed to be found first in a Scottish family with high incident of schizophrenia, which affects one in about every 100 people.

However, such an act of forcing animals to mental suffering is an ethical issue for animal right campaigners. They called it an immoral and unnatural act. They further showed doubts about the reliability of mice models in modeling human diseases.

However, scientists are of the opinion that ninety-nine percent of human genes share a comparable version in the mouse, and many of them appear in the same order in our chromosomes. Therefore, we have similar reproductive and nervous system. That is why mouse has served as a model for biomedical studies for more than a century. By some estimates, 25 million mice are used in medical research each year.

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