Question: dont you worry about the mice is in pain?

James Chan answered on 15 Mar 2011:

Hi jkxbl, you are right, I used to worry about this too. But don’t worry, we do everything we can to ensure the mouse is not in pain. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, it’s not very nice for them to be in pain! It’s unethical and inhumane. The other reason, which is also important, is that the body responds to pain and can affect the way the animal heals, so we keep the mice pain free to make sure this is consistent i.e. the same for every mouse.

The way we do this is by putting them to sleep for the operation and I then give them a really strong pain killer which I inject near the main nerve that goes to their leg so that when they wake up, they do not feel any pain at all. The other thing is, I insert a rod into the broken bone to hold them together and when broken bone is held together, it becomes a lot less painful. So when the mice wake up, they are actually running around on their legs without realising anything is wrong.