The Lab Model
An animal model is a living, non-human animal used during the research and investigation of human disease, for the purpose of better understanding the disease without the added risk of causing harm to an actual human being during the process. The animal chosen will usually meet a determined taxonomic equivalency to humans, so as to react to disease or its treatment in a way that resembles human physiology. Many drugs, treatments and cures for human diseases have been developed with the use of animal models. Many (but not all) laboratory strains are inbred, so as to make them genetically almost identical. The different strains are identified with specific letter-digit combinations; for example C57BL/6 and BALB/c.
Although some (but not all) of us might be comfortable with the use of rats and mice for this purpose, I felt that the idea of visually transposing this concept – through the use of a little modified colouring – onto my own pet Labrador might be worthy of investigation.
