Telomerase – Mouse lifespan extended up to 24% with single treatment (May 2012)
I can nearly eliminate cholesterol in mice (well, they start out with very little to begin with) and my roommate can cure a Huntington's disease model in his lab mice. If media attention were given to every group to achieve something remarkable in mice, we would end up hearing about a lot of false starts. And false starts are a critical/inevitable part of science, so the only thing I'm really saying is that the media attention to this topic is most likely premature.Mice are a useful model, but they are different enough from humans that we should be cautious when interpreting mouse data in a broader context.Once repeated studies attacking the same problem from different angles in different institutions start to align, that's when my interest gets piqued. (Unless it's research within my field, in which case I feel better able to understand the strengths and limitations of early-stage studies.)I also admit that, to a certain extent, this is akin to a "middlebrow dismissal" (though I'm not trying to dismiss their work), and I'd love to hear from an expert in their specific domain.