Re: About Rats:

Which is why I tried, intentionally, to defocus this from the related, but different, issue of Animal Rights and the morality of animal testing.

The point is that animal testing is more often than not useless for humans. Its scientific value is constantly exaggerated by interested parties. Even if there was no admissible ethical problem, actual usefulness should be a criterion, and animal testing fails it. Really, AIDS at least would already be cured if it was for animal testing. (Though of course, there is a chance that AIDS itself was accidentally introduced in humans from infected monkeys through the polio vaccine, but even if it wasn't, the case remains that HIV is much more harmful than its non-human analogs)

But the most spectacular failures of all, so far, are not in AIDS, but in neurological issues. (Why should this be any surprizing, given that the human brain is the organ most divergent from all its relatives'?) Now, if we are trying to understand sexual orientation, or pleasure mechanisms with a focus on those pleasure mechanisms underlying sexuality or underlying chemical addictions or "compulsive" behaviors... well, no animal offers a brain similar enough to ours, period. Did you know that some paleontologists believe "behaviorally modern" humans may date as recent as 50K years?[*] If so, that would mean that even Neanderthals and Denisovans would not be close enough to conduct brain experiments on them.

[*] I've read convincing arguments from both sides of the debate: sudden recent modernity, and gradual (and older) modernity. I do not pronounce myself on it. I am just showing how particularly unique our brain really is.

So... no, I am not convinced that rats provide a valid model for "reactive children."