The World's Fair

I gave a talk to some folks at UBC's School of Music this past weekend, on biology, genetics and the odd reference to music. One of things I mentioned (with an auditary theme) was the interesting case of the use of Nude mice as vectors for the production of human ears (image below).

I usually talk about this, because it's a good example of how media can often coerse the reader/viewer to come to premature conclusions. You see, I find most of the audience will make one of two responses: either an "EEWWW" response, or a "THAT'S COOL" response. In any event, you would of gotten the sense from mainstream articles when this first went to press that perhaps this was a real human ear, and you could even whisper into the back of this poor mouse to garner a response.

Anyway, our Nude Mouse piece (showcased earlier) went over this a bit. The ear by the way is just a prosthetic.

(Nude mouse speaking) The media I can live without. We're fairly private creatures, so the whole publicity thing is not cool. Besides, they almost never get it right. One time, my uncle had a human ear prosthetic grow on his back, and well, Christ, with all the press that ensued, you'd think he was sleeping with Jennifer Anniston. Not only that, but if you picked up a newspaper, you'd see this picture of poor naked Uncle Orv with a huge human ear on his back, and you'd be totally thinking that he could hear out of this thing. Which, of course, is not at all true. A shame really - that experiment was pretty elegant in my view.

You're kidding me, right?

Not at all. Engraft a hollow polymer scaffold (shaped like an ear) on Uncle Orv's back, infiltrate it with tissue cells from a burn victim needing an ear prosthetic, and wait for growth. Unky Orv ends up doing good because he has no hair, and he also doesn't have the biology to reject the foreign ear tissue. How brilliant is that? (from the SCQ)

Of course, an inevitable question I always get regarding this, is "do they have to kill the mouse in order to get the ear prosthetic?" Maybe, we'll save that one for later...