Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo 655
ralphb writes "Here is the story of scientists in China who have, for the first time, used cloning techniques to create hybrid embryos that contain a mix of DNA from both humans and rabbits. Hop on over for a look!"
This is just the sort of thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is disgusting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is just the sort of thing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok guys. I'm all in favor of stem cell research, but . . . we need to just stop and figure out a way to do it without generating shocking headlines. This kind of headline is just going to piss everyone off and hinder the progress of the research.
It would be wrong to keep it quiet - and people would find out anyway. Just keep it below a certain shock level. I.e. no furry humans with long ears and twitchy noses showing up in the tabloids. Please?
Stem Cells (Score:5, Insightful)
So in the short run it is posibly a better way to get stem cells, in the long run it will raise alot of ethical concerns, as well as the undermined nature of the cell - in short we don't know if they are "true" stem cells in their ablity to grow into any organ. Also, if they do have the potenital to become any organ, we don't know how the human body would react to the foegin DNA (the rabit mitocadria)
Re:This is just the sort of thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
It should be phrased in as scientifically opaque a way as possible though, so that the tabloid journalists can't understand it ;-)
J.
Deeper thinking required (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhere I've read that we share most of our DNA with all the other members of the animal kingdom and indeed we share a lot of DNA with every living thing.
Some of these exparaments are "pure research" and others are "applied research." In pure research you do the exparament and then look to see where it took you. In applied research you have a pretty good idea of where you are going and are pretty much conducting the exparament to verify your theory. In either case, there really is a goal to the research and I'll submit that the goal is usually good for humanity.
Without this kind of research we would miss out on opportunities to cure disease, treat birth defects and, all sorts of other good things. But, there is something even better that comes from this research. We gain a greater understanding of the world we live in. We add to humankinds knowlege base. Without doing this we will fail to advance and the next century will look like the last. When that happens there is little doubt that we will have started to slide down the road to extinction becuase we will exhaust vital resources.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, this IS important research, that has the potential of providing important material for research projects that might take medical science huge leaps forwards.
Re:This is just the sort of thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of this excercise was to find a way to get stem cells for research. Apparently they think this method is quite likely to work.
Do you remember a little thing about stem cells? Wasn't there a little spat or two about it? This is a huge breakthrough which can allow both sides to be happy. Although the human-embryo stem cell proponents do lose some face, because there really was another way to get the stem cells.
We all should have read the damn article (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of knee-jerk 'this is bad/immoral/whatever' comment, even though you clearly didn't finish (start?) reading the article is exactly the kind of piss-poor commentary that prevents science doing good.
J.
Re:We all should have read the damn article (Score:3, Insightful)
There obviously needs to be boundaries - so lets work them out.
Re:This is disgusting (Score:3, Insightful)
"Most important, researchers said, the paper stops short of proving beyond a doubt that the stem cells retrieved from the hybrid embryos are truly capable of growing for long periods of time in lab dishes, and that they can turn into every known kind of cell."
To give an example or where this kind of research could be very useful, some of the big issues with the Edmonton Protocol to treat Type I diabetes (http://www.joslin.harvard.edu/news/islet_transpl
So I have a hard time listening to the people who have a knee-jerk reaction that this kind of research is "disgusting" or "disturbing". The potential difference it could make in the lives of many millions of people is astounding.
Re:This is just the sort of thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple big 'if's, but it could happen.
Re:We all should have read the damn article (Score:3, Insightful)
Sadly, the 'moral majority' aka Christians (and other people with imaginary friends who apparently tell them what to think), have votes too.
J.
Cell mass != viable organism (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, if a human embryo with three of a given chromosome is formed, depending on which chromosome it forms on, the embryo may either fail to develop past the 8 cell stage, or develop into a 10 week fetus and die, or develop longer and die, but never become viable outside the womb. Down's syndrome is unique in that it and sex chromosome triploidies are the only triploidies that are compatible with life. Other triploidies result in miscarriage or failure to implant.
Unfortunately, I had to learn about this the hard way.
Not good (Score:2, Insightful)
But I fear that our scientific knowledge is growing far more rapidly than our wisdom and social structures.
This technology in these times is a recipe for disaster. Look at the last couple of years.
Do you think the world is ready for this technology, or will we stumble into it blindly and apathetically and blame 'them' ( them: scientists, government, those pulling the strings of our government, the rest of the world who stood by and watched as we sealed our fate ) later when the shit hits the fan?
"Every Sperm is Sacred" (Score:4, Insightful)
If a man has sex just once and gets his girlfriend pregnant, one sperm has done its job but there are still hundreds of millions of sperm wasted. Now if a man had sex twice a day every day for seventy years and each instance of sex conceives exactly one child, that is just over 50000 babies - and trillions of sperm. Most of which were just never going to make it. So if you had a w**k twice a day for seventy years you might have wasted trillions of sperm, but since most of them were never really going to go anywhere anyway, you have only really wasted one per shot. And there are sufficiently more sperm in a single ejaculation to make that quite insignificant by comparison.
As they say, sperm are tiny, but it only takes one of them to fill a pram!
Island of Dr. Moreau (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually this is a bit terrifying. I don't believe the world is ready for genuine human/animal mixes. Image yourself (if these abominations can survive) as one of the poor creatures from the movie. As at least part human you would be a social creature. As at least part animal (if there are any physical or at least obvious psychological manifestations of your animal self) you would be an outcast and a freak. The best one could hope for is some meager acceptance through pity. That's not much of a life. Just because because one can do something doesn't mean that one should. Hopefully this type of DNA mixing and cloning will prove to be untenable if for now one else then at least for the sake of the individuals that may be produced this way.
How hard was it getting though Jr. High with normal sized ears and no fluffy tail ? Now at this to the mix and try to get a date for the sock hop! (NPI)
Re:Pre-emptive post (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I was almost down to the bottom of the page moderating, and had to back out to respond to this point.
You have come close to hitting on the quintessential question behind all of the debate.
What makes a human a human?
Arguably, the most important criteria for being human is awareness... consciousness.
Here's a rather graphic gedanken:
Shave off all your hair... are you still human? What if you amputate your arms and legs? How about body organs? Artificial heart, kidney dialysis, iron lung, etc... Take this beyond what is possible with modern day science... brain in a vat. Quality of life has certainly decreased dramatically! However, the brain is still thinking, the software of mind is still running. What if it were possible to run the software on other hardware? Sure, cyberpunk has beat this topic to death... but I certainly don't consider my brain to be me! To quote Rene Descartes: "cogito ergo sum". Nothing else is relevant... software is everything (yeah, I'm a programmer ;-) )
Unfortunately, science has not been able to answer the question of when during development the spark of consciousness begins.
Can we agree that awareness requires a brain? Can we agree that this brain needs to be working... ie. the synapses are firing, neural potentials exist?
If so, then consciousness must begin sometime between 4 and 6 months of development.
This experiment was limited to 14 days of development. This is the point when cells begin to differentiate. Clearly this is long before a brain and the potential for consciousness arises.
Really, this is an ideal stop-gap measure. If by mixing mitochondrial DNA of another species with human nuclear DNA you achieve a development term necessary for medicinal purposes, and at the same time insure development self-aborts prior to brain development, then you end up with a self regulating procedure that prevents the accidental creation of a human consciousness.
Re:Smoking Man at work? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, no Rabbit People (Score:3, Insightful)
Hate to nitpick, but this is a really important point from an ethical standpoint. The eggs that were collected were from rabbits. The rabbit nuclear DNA was removed, and replaced with human DNA.
It's the same end result--an egg with human nuclear DNA and rabbit mitochondrial DNA--but the original eggs were harvested from rabbits. This is potentially a very useful technique, because it represents a source of embryonic stem cells that doesn't require the collection of eggs from humans--a time-consuming, costly, and potentially dangerous process.
Aside: There is no intention to allow these chimeric embryos to mature into some sort of science fiction half-man half-rabbit hybrid--the Chinese government limited the researchers to fourteen days growing time. The only purpose of these experiments is to develop a new source of embryonic stem cells.
Does the logic work for computers too? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think because all the ROM code is extracted from a Macintosh, we'd consider a PC running this emulator a system of the Macintosh platform.
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The unborn homo sapiens, is by definition, not a parasite. Biologically, it is a developing human being going through the natural biological growth process. Your opinion on the matter is contrary to the biological facts of the case.
All you have done is reiterate my first post: That pro-abortionists claim a human being is only worthy of life when it has reached an arbitrarily defined stage of growth or development.
The initial question stands. How is this position ethically different than Hitler maintaining that only human beings with certain genetic traits are worthy of life?
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:4, Insightful)
In regards to your comment about a fertilized egg being a human being, well... I think that depends on what you mean. Is it genetically distinct from its parents? Yes. Does it contain human DNA? Yes. Is it a person? Debatable. A fertilized egg does not have a brain, a personality, or any sense of its environment. Is it possible to lack these qualities and still be considered human? That's a matter of viewpoint.
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right, it's hard to attach emotions to a EEG.
Re:God, I've seen a lot of crap movies.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Once the eeg is flat in an adult human being, it will not recur. Using a flatt eeg to define death, or the end of life, was arrived at biologically. A flat eeg indicates the death of the human being. Individual components may continue on for a few hours or days, but the organism as a whole is dead
In a developing human being, organism will start with a flat eeg, then beging to show increasing development and complexity. The organism is already alive, and will continue to grow in complexity as time passes.
Chinese Ethics (Score:1, Insightful)
"R. Alta Charo, an associate dean of law and professor of bioethics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, noted that the work passed muster with Chinese ethics authorities"
Now, THAT'S comforting. I was starting to think that maybe the Chinese were going to get a reputation for being un-ethical...
This is the country where you can kill a female baby of less than a year old and still consider it an abortion.
Re:Island of Dr. Moreau (Score:2, Insightful)
Perhaps I was thinking about one of the possible consequences of this line of research.
It does pose other ethical questions just on its on. From the very bottom of the article
_
Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said he felt certain that the human-rabbit embryos were human enough to deserve protections.
"I think because all the nuclear DNA is human," Doerflinger said, "we'd consider this an organism of the human species."
_
It begs one of the most basic questions of human existence: are we ghosts in the machine or are we purely material beings?
If we are ghosts in the machine then the bodies we inhabit are a temporary form of existence that will be transcended. So the risk for the future can not be in complete jeopardy regardless of what we do to the bodies of future generations.
From a materialist point of view I should think that this is more frightening. The very definition of self for future generations is potentially at stake. Genetic manipulation brought about the prospect of designer babies but that was generally limited to human DNA or even limited the potential to selecting which genetic traits a baby will have from it's parents (as in Gataca). But raises the specter of animal DNA getting in to the mix.
Perhaps it is too far off for you and I specifically to worry about but they day will come when these are real concerns. Perhaps sooner than later.
Re:Human Rights (Score:1, Insightful)
RTFA. It's not going to be developed, and embryos sadly don't have any human rights.
What moral Dilemma? (Score:2, Insightful)
What, I ask you, moral dillema exists when given a choice between studying these embryos and throwing them away. It is not as if these embyos are going to ever become viable fetuses either way.