The ‘guardian rats’ of Kenya

Mice at the University of Nairobi (UoN) Chiromo Campus lab in Nairobi on April 27, 2021. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

Before the Covid-19 vaccines were used on you, they were first tested on mice. White mice, that is. For ages, medical researchers use animals to verify the safety of medicines and vaccines. Besides biomedical research, mice are also used in psychological experiments. But why mostly white mice and rats, not cats?

For starters, mice and rats used for medical research is not the kind found nibbling at overnight ugali in your house. Or wild rats roaming in sewer lines. Lab rats, also nicknamed ‘test tubes with tails’, are mostly bred in controlled environments and are of specific strain so that a researcher in Chicago, USA, gets the same results as one in Siakago, Kenya.