To Find Autism Treatment, Chinese Scientists Create Transgenic Monkeys | MIT Technology Review:
This from the report:
Scientists in China say they used genetic engineering to create monkeys with a version of autism, an achievement that could make it easier to test treatments but that raises thorny practical and ethical questions over how useful such animal models will be.
Neuroscientist Zilong Qiu of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences says his team has generated more than a dozen monkeys with a genetic error that in human children causes a rare syndrome whose symptoms include mental retardation and autistic features, such as repetitive speech and restricted interests.
They spin in their cages and don’t interact. The scientists who created autistic monkeys say they’ll now try to cure them.
Qiu told reporters during a call that the monkeys have very similar behavior to children with autism.. But there are critics. Critics with questions.. Besides ethical issues, there is this:
Some scientists questioned whether the model developed in China was close enough to autism to really shed any light on human disease .
