Mother Nature and Medical Research

We often hear about medical research being at the 'mouse test' stage. This stage is actually usually after many years of research which needs to be followed by more research. These mice have been inbred, overbred, mutated, and who knows what (I always feel sorry for the mice). Unfortunately hurricane Sandy is responsible for the loss of years of research.

As NYU medical center was evacuated and power systems failed, many mice and other cells and tissue samples met with their demise. This means many research programs will be set back by years. Damn.

A lesson to be  learned here is that no matter what is put in for back up systems and redundancy to safeguard research and materials a natural disaster can get around it. I am sure they had generators and back up electrical for incubators etc. But who knew labs would be flooded, caretakers could not get in for days, etc? It may have been unforeseen before the end of October, but now we know.

Our real lesson to learn is that you can't mess with Mother Nature.