The Vacanti mouse was a laboratory mouse that had what looked like a human ear grown on its back. The "ear" was actually an ear-shaped cartilage structure grown by seeding human cartilage cells into a biodegradable ear-shaped mold.
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The earmouse, as it became known, was created by Dr. Charles Vacanti, an anesthesiologist at the University of Massachusetts and Dr. Linda Griffith-Cima, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at M.I.T. in 1995. Created to demonstrate a method of fabricating cartilage structures for transplantation into human patients, a resorbable polyester fabric was infiltrated with bovine cartilage cells and implanted under the skin of a hairless mouse.[1] The mouse itself was a commonly used strain of immunocompromised mouse, preventing a transplant rejection.[1]
The first pictures of the mouse were released following a 1996 BBC TV broadcast, Test Tube Bodies, produced by the British science show, Tomorrow's World. The pictures were circulated worldwide, appearing on many front pages and on TV programs such as the Jay Leno show. Sometimes colloquially referred to as the "earmouse", it provoked horror among the animal rights and advocacy groups and anti-genetics groups, who protested the use of the mouse for the experiment. Then in the October 11, 1999 New York Times, the anti-genetics group, Turning Point Project, placed a full page ad and used this picture with an inaccurate caption which read, "This is an actual photo of a genetically engineered mouse with a human ear on its back".
The photo of the mouse[2] was passed around the internet, mainly via email, sometimes with little to no text accompanying it leading many people to speculate whether the photo was real.