Researchers Train Mice To Choose Between Life-Saving Medications And Other Essentials

BALTIMORE, MD—Calling the trial a huge breakthrough in behavioral science, researchers at Johns Hopkins University announced Tuesday they had trained mice to choose between life-saving medications and other essentials. “In this first-of-its-kind experiment, we were able to successfully teach rodents to make a cost-benefit analysis between paying for a surgery they needed to survive and their rent that’s due at the end of month,” said lead researcher Dr. Natalie Boyd, explaining that the mice quickly learned that if they chose to pay for necessary medical treatment, it would correlate to the denial of other equally important basic necessities, like food and shelter. “Through repetitive exercises, the mice eventually were shown to prioritize resources fundamental to daily life, like paying for heat and clean water, against receiving emergency medical care to prevent their deaths. After several weeks of being trained to make those decisions, the mice were able to determine which life-saving medications and treatments they were willing to forgo in order to avoid the bank foreclosing on their homes and forcing them to live on the streets.” Boyd added that nearly 30% of lab mice quickly decided the medical debt accrued wouldn’t be worth the lifetime of suffering that would result, and chose instead to end their own lives.