That's not quite the process... also, you want to exploit people?

The thing about the testing (especially brain testing) is that it's super invasive, many times involving the death of the subject in order to visually see the brain or take samples. Drug testing results in debilitating conditions or death.

Subjecting humans to this would be horrible. Having "depressed people", or "prisoners", or any other human you suggest would be far more ethically and morally bankrupt than testing on the mice.

I think all life is valuable. However, mice reproduce very quickly, they live short lives, they are small one have traits that make them good for observing because they are close to humans, and they are also well... animals.

Humans have an innate need to discover things. Doing it this way is surprisingly the lesser of two evils. No matter what you think of medical animal testing, you've reaped its benefits at some point in your life.

If it makes you feel any better, the scientists are very nice to them.