Stem cell science has become notorious for obliging society to consider again where it draws the line between human embryonic cells and human beings. Less well known is that it also pushes us to another border that can be surprisingly vague: the one that separates people from animals. Stem cells facilitate the production of advanced interspecies chimeras--organisms that are a living quilt of human and animal cells. The ethical issues raised by the very existence of such creatures could become deeply troubling.
In Greek mythology, the chimera was a monster that combined the parts of a goat, a lion and a serpent. With such a namesake, laboratory-bred chimeras may sound like a bad idea born of pure scientific hubris. Yet they may be unavoidable if stem cells are ever to be realised as therapies. Researchers will need to study how stem cells behave and react to chemical cues inside the body. Unless they are to do those risky first experiments in humans, they will need the freedom to test in animals and thereby make chimeras.
Irving Weissman of Stanford University and his colleagues pioneered these chimera experiments in 1988 when they created mice with fully human immune systems for the study of AIDS. Later, the Stanford group and StemCells, Inc., which Weissman co-founded, also transplanted human stem cells into the brains of newborn mice as preliminary models for neural research. And working with foetal sheep, Esmail Zanjani of the University of Nevada at Reno has created adult animals with human cells integrated throughout their body.
No one knows what the consequences will be as the proportion of human cells in an animal increases. Weissman and others, for example, have envisioned one day making a mouse with fully "humanised" brain tissue. The lawyer developmental programme and tiny size of this chimerical mouse fairly guarantee that its mental capacities would not differ greatly from those of normal mice. But what if human cells were instead put in the foetus of a chimpanzee? The birth of something less beastly could not be ruled out.
The intermingling of tissues could also make it easier for infectious animal diseases to move into humans. Diseases that hop species barriers can be particularly devastating because the immune systems of their new hosts are so unprepared for them (the flu pandemic of 1918 is widely believed to have sprung from an avian influenza virus).
There are currently no international standard governing chimera experiments. Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act of 2004 banned human-animal chimeras. The US has no formal restrictions, but Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas proposed legislation in March that would outlaw several kinds of chimeras, including ones with substantial human brain tissue. Some institutions that supply human stem cells set their own additional limits about what experiments are permissible.
Within the US, at least, greater uniformity may emerge from general guidelines on stem cell use recommended in late April by the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS recommended that chimeras involving most animal species generally be permitted. It urged a ban on any use of human cells in other primates, however, as well as the introduction of animal cells into human blastocysts.It also warned against allowing human-animal chimeras to breed: some human cells might have managed to infiltrate the animals' testes and ovaries. Breeding those animals could theoretically lead to the horrible (and in most cases, assuredly fatal) result of a human embryo growing inside an animal mother.
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Add Commentwhat are the ethical issues involved in such experiments,and should such experiments be permissible? I thought that there are many ethical ,societical and religious objections to such experiments.As a professor of experimental embryology I add that such objections extends to the scintific community. I will prepare a scientific review paper in this issue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfessor
Mohamed Shahin
Ain Shams University.
Hmmm... I wonder if it is pure coincidence that the only Senator pushing legislation at this time is a fundamentalist, conservative christian, Brownback, from the Creationism Capital of the First-world, Kansas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe larger question here of course is EXACTLY what attributes define life that mandates ethical, moral treatment? To many of us, myself included, there is no clear line in the sand. Philosopher Jeremy Bentham challenged this absurd notion many years ago as I recall... and championed compassionate treatment of animals.
What "modern humans" have done is beyond reprehensible to planet earth and every non-human inhabitant in the web of life.
We have absolutely relied on our fellow life travelers for just about every advancement in medicine... not to mention pharmaceuticals themselves ... and ... butchering for food.
Genetic chimeras are nothing new in nature.... nor is using animal tissue in humans, porcine heart valves are but one example.
Strange, but no one seems concerned about the use, abuse & necropsy of animals to serve humanity's paranoia regarding... mortality.
Every human attribute can find a parallel in the animal kingdom, from which we certainly evolved and already share major genetic material... down to the "most primitive" species.
Sooo....digest the big picture and get back to me regarding this alleged "crisis" of ethics, eh?
These wealthy benefactorsm don't care about kindness or courtesy or Morals. These people who provide the money to fund this research are only interested in making themselves immortal. They want clones, they want thier bodies or their brains frozen to be thawed out in the future. For others, it may be a problem with paranoia! They are afraid of other people 'touching' thier things or their money. If they can't take it with them, then they would just assume not go. If you really want to throw the religious arguments in there, then you need to seriously research the book of Revelations and remember that we continue to invent new things to kill every other living thing. Car exhaust put all that garbage in the atmosphere... and for what? So you could go fast. That's the reason we never mass marketed electric cars or hydrogen cars... They don't go fast enough. Mass transit will never be useful until you actually take the busses into neighborhoods where people live, because they are too lazy and silly to walk. People are afraid of getting wet or dirty or being forced to look at each other, or-god forbid- talk to one another face to face. We basically need to 'upgrade' the world, and do it quickly. We Americans need to quit complaining and suck it up. WE need to be more concerned about the world around us rather than trying to look good in front of losers who are doing the same thing. We are all lemurs, or sheep, letting designers and banks decide where we should live, what we should eat, what we should wear, and even who and what to bully into serving not us, but THEM. We would have colonized the moon and possibly mars a long time ago, If the people with the money hadn't insisted on 'OWNING' the moon. It's all about having not just the most toys, but the most expensive ones. Perhaps we should read H.G. Wells Time Machine again, with our eyes wide open.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice mention of the Time Machine. Still though I have a strange sense about these ideas of ethics and I bare my uncertainties well. But still, I do wonder about these ideas, these concepts. There is a certain necessity in mean to better organize them as they bifurcate into new concepts endlessly. To understand these sort of things I try to examine my surroundings and have realized a new perspective. Firstly I looked at the the orders to the world. Like those of the single-celled and multi-cellular organism. Those of the atom then the molecule then the organelle then the cell then the tissues that make up organs and organ systems to support the organism. And finally we come upon an idea that I called a colony originally but soon found to have been termed a super-organism, a terrible term given that we'll run out of words if we just keep adding super to every old term. But I'm getting off topic, a super-organism is much like a multi-cellular organism. Take for example the specialized ants in a colony that build themselves into bridges to better allow the movement of the other ants from one place to another in addition to water-carrying ants, guard ants, worker ants, scavenger ants, and nursery ants that care for the queen's pupae. This goes for bees, termites, and similiar such insects. Then I realized that humans are a bit of a super-organism too. This sort of idea has a few insights especially of applying it to our species over a given period of time. It explains the general sense of xenophobia and cruelty of white people even. After gaining a collective abandonment issue after the fall of rome from the onslaught of disease and the barbarians as the east escaped nearly unscathed and were themselves quite prosperous during the so called dark ages. Then after suffering the pear and similiar such medieval tortures they eventually came upon their past following the crusades and began to see how much they'd fallen. And upon those altogether more hospitable people of Africa and taking advantage of their calmer and more kindly definition to the word slave, as a person to aid oneself why y I to could advance their place in society like all others and had their complete rights, and made themselves a far crueller definition to act on. Now say I try to expand on this idea and I realize the idea of not just a multi-organism entity but a multi-superorganism entity that has apparently been termed Gaia. Ah, the name of an earth goddess instead of some term containing the word super, how refreshing. Now this idea says that life(ran out of spac
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a thorny issue. I think that the probability of a human fetus in an animal mother is rather unlikely even if chimeras were made, because both must be chimeric animals and both of them would need to have their gonads producing human sperm and eggs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat would be more problematic would be a human hybrid with a non-human primate. Those progeny would survive, because we are closer to chimpanzees and gorillas than donkeys are to horses.
Once this form of research becomes more widely known it's likely to see massive protests from every conservative religious group in existence. Can you just see the signboards telling scientists to 'Stop Defiling God's Work'?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll that aside, however, I am curious to know what the end result of such genetic blending would be. Anyone recall the story of The Island of Dr. Moreau? I'm not trying to be a fear monger, but history has shown that once humans discover a new well of knowledge, they always try to reach the very bottom, often with dangerous results. Genetic research, like everything else we've explored, has remarkable potential. But we'll probably find the wrong ways to use it first.
This issue have a long time. In fact, this kind of experiments have been done many years ago. And yet nothing negative has been detected. I think it`s just religious fundamentalist paranoia.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We basically need to 'upgrade' the world, and do it quickly. We Americans need to quit complaining and suck it up. WE need to be more concerned about the world around us rather than trying to look good in front of losers who are doing the same thing. We are all lemurs, or sheep, letting designers and banks decide where we should live, what we should eat, what we should wear, and even who and what to bully into serving not us, but THEM."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMake some more money, so you'll be the one with the gold making the rules. No reset is going to happen on a pauper's watch.
This is not a thorny issue, this is a nitemare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis site explains exactly what these implications are, and the reason these experiments are being conducted in the first place, and that has nothing to do with ethical medical research.
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The Illuminati believe that through science they will be able to genetically produce a "Body" or "Host" that can then be possessed by the actual spirit of Lucifer/Satan.
This "host" that the spirit of Satan will inhabit is called the "AVATAR"
James Cameron has actually named his entire film project based around the satanic doctrines of demonic possession and modern DNA manipulation, in which the Illuminati seek to bring about the "New Age humanoid", or demonically possessed biological human entity.
http://rikijo.blogspot.com
http://rikijo.blogspot.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Illuminati believe that through science they will be able to genetically produce a "Body" or "Host" that can then be possessed by the actual spirit of Lucifer/Satan.
This "host" that the spirit of Satan will inhabit is called the "AVATAR"
James Cameron has actually named his entire film project based around the satanic doctrines of demonic possession and modern DNA manipulation, in which the Illuminati seek to bring about the "New Age humanoid", or demonically possessed biological human entity.
http://rikijo.blogspot.com