Making Animals More Usable in Medical Research

This article in Wired demonstrates that, due to genetic engineering, animals may be becoming even more useful in medical research. From the story:

A panel of 36 mice could finally deliver the long-unfulfilled promise of personalized medicine. The mice were specially bred to contain just about any genetic predisposition in humans. They should help scientists determine which drugs are dangerous--or more effective--for individuals before they reach the market...

The testing won't be a silver-bullet solution to drug toxicity: Mice are not exactly like people. Plus, interactions between genes and environment are hard to duplicate in a lab. But the mice should help scientists understand these ambiguities, and using them should be a major improvement over testing drugs on just a few types of mice.