[B-Chan]

"95 percent of animals used in biomedical research are rodents—mostly mice. Mice are nice. The animals are excellent models for studying any human disease because 98 percent of mouse DNA is identical to human DNA."

Source: Howard Bell, "Of Mice and Medicine"
Minnesota Medicine, April 2007

[allmendream]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/05/MN153329.DTL&type=science

Among the findings are that mice and human beings both carry about 30,000 genes. Differences within these individual genes — the precise sequences of the four-letter DNA code — spell out the obvious differences between the two mammalian species. On a letter-by-letter basis, the genes are 85 percent the same.

This is data from the project that sequenced the mouse genome.

Howard Bell the medical writer is off his rocker, and provided no citation for his contention.

[allmendream]

Moreover the comparison is GENETIC DNA. Howard Bell implies that this is a genome wide comparison. A genome wide comparison would be a GREATER than 15% difference, most certainly not a 2% difference.

Perhaps Howard Bell was confused because we share 99% of the same genes. That is NOT saying that the genes themselves are 99 or 98% the same, just that if you find a particular copy of a gene in a human you are 99% likely to find the same gene (and those genes will be 85% exactly the same).