The Chimera Dilemma Manifested in Sheep

Rollie Hawk writes "While many limits on stem cell research exist in the United States, scientist are finding wants to straddle or at least blur the line between man and animal. It's not quite The Island of Doctor Moreau, but it's bringing a pantheon of ethical dilemmas, nonetheless. The creation of chimeras, named for the mythical beast composed of parts from several different animals, has been in the news off and on for the last few months. The latest case involves around 50 sheep said to possess at least partially human organs. These heavily modded sheep are growning human-like organs such as livers, hearts, and blood. All of these could eventually be close enough to the real thing to be harvested as replacements parts. If that doesn't shock you, consider one other human organ that is being grown in some of these sheep: human brains. While it is doubtful that anyone would want a brain transplant from a human-sheep chimera, it does hold the possibility for doing brain research that would never be allowed on human beings. That is, unless, the brains end up being too human. Just the possibility of a human mind bouncing around inside a sheep's head is a scary proposition."

Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not too far from sheep these days either. Everyone got pissed at Iraq for having weapons of mass destruction because the US Government said so.

That justified our plunge into the heart of their country and subsequent 'liberation'. Now that we've raped it over and over and handed it to the highest bidder, there's been no mention of these weapons.

Why is this scary?

[pyth]

Because it's new? Are you a luddite?

Won't make a real human.

[logicnazi]

Just injecting some human brain cells into a sheep or even transplanting an early human brain from a fetus is unlikely to produce any kind of human sheep. The human brain doesn't just develop from a genetic blueprint but also requires a huge amount of deveelopmental cues and responds to hormones and signaling molecules (like sonic the hedgehog) to develop properly. Not to mention a host of enviornmental stimuli needed to encourage the brain to wire itself correctly.

In short it isn't just human neurons which make us human but the whole brain development system at work in babies. This isn't the sort of thing which could be duplicated in a sheep without extensive genetic modification or hand controlling all the developmental signals. If this is possible at all it is far beyond our current level of technology.

So don't get freaked out yet people. They are just growing human neurons in sheep at the moment there is no chance we will make a person trapped in a sheep body.

God damn these popular stories can be misleading.

Re:That's *COOL*

[dj_segfault]

I think cuz brains is different.

If an animal had a human brain, with something approaching human intellect (could you have usefil human-like brains without human-like intellect>), the the list of what is cruel to do to them and what is not has to move more towards the human end of the spectrum.

In fact, it might be cruel simply to have a creature with our level of intelligence but without the ability to do anything with it. It would be like shoving a kid in solitary for their whole life. Clearly they would go crazy in short order. That's what really bored humans with too little stimulation do.

----
Abbey.... normal?

Pop-science reporting is fun

[Joe Tie.]

It's always fun to see how the reporters particular bias will come accross.

He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago. "It's mice on a large scale," Chamberlain says with a shrug. As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines

They've allready painted him as a mad scientist, eagerly rubbing his hands together in glee over having fought Gods plan. All the while shrugging his shoulders at the cocern of the good people of the world.

Re:Bioethics

[FidelCatsro]

For a politican there is normaly two criteras ,
#1: Fiscal(who bribed/lobied(same word really) me the most)
#2: Ethical(If I do this , will i get voted out next term and be unable to recive #1)

politicans generaly have all the ethics of 51% of the votes and the largest cash pay off.

Re:Human brain?

[I_Human]

Sure the sheep has a "human" brain, but that wont necessarily make it human-like. Classic nature vs nurture, and I think for it to be more human-like we have to look at the sheeps nurturing. I suppose the human-brained sheep would be akin to feral children and not show much more than just the animal that they are. Interesting to think about anyway.

Re:Human brain?

[gnuman99]

Many animals have much higher functional intelligence than many mentally handicaped humans. A sheep with human intelligence would still be viewed and treated like a sheep.

Maybe this is the time we start to re-examine how we treat other animals. Sadly, this will probably not happen in my lifetime (ie. next 50+ years)...

Sheep blood

[shog9]

Is a person a Luddite simply because they question the wisdom of doing something that is new?

No, not until they start attacking the new thing with axes...

Conflicted

[donnyfire]

I have to say, as a medical student, that I am quite excited about the possibilities presented by this type of research. To be able to conduct research on tissue systems that are more human will provide better models for treatment of disease in humans. Thus making medicine more effective and safer. That being said, I am appalled at the prospect of ANY form of human hervous system running around in ANY other type of creature. True, it could provide tremendous insight into how the human brain works. However, it is my belief that the brian is the center of our humanity. It is the seat of who we are as a species, and is unique in the world. To artificially develop this type of tissue in an animal mode really seems to be an ethical misjudgement. A public backlash to this type of research could jeopardize research in general, which would be a disservice to the scientific community.

Re:"Heavily modded sheep"

[Generalisimo Zang]

You're right. In a humane world, if people discovered a sheep with a human mind, they'd treat it well... as if it were a person. Unfortunately, we live in THIS world... where even actual humans have a hard time getting treated as if they were people. *sigh*

Rgh

[ksilebo]

I really could care less about the moral bullshit surrounding this. If it weren't for some people cracking open some skulls well before most of us were born, we wouldn't be able to perform surgery the way we do now. I'm not saying we should grab someone off the street and start experimenting on them, but growing almost 100% human brains in a sheep and then experimenting on it does not bother me. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who whine about this and make noise. I really hope the research is going on without anyone knowing, and we gain knowledge without having to answer to some religious crackpot protesting that some damn sheep has a human heart.

I agree completely

[mcc]

For fuck's sake. It's pretty much just agreed the world over that science will be constantly used to create new and horrible weapons that could kill increasingly large numbers of people in increasingly horrible ways, but that strangely enough it's expected will never be used. You tell someone about Russia restarting its nuclear weapons research program and people just shrug and go, meh, they do that.

But if it turns out science might be at some point to do something that, rather than being horrific and violent, is merely strange, people freak the fuck out. A bomb that can kill billions in a single moment is shrugged off as normal. But tell someone that someone might be growing sheep with human livers, and what's the response? Oh no! What a horrible perversion of nature! Why do we continue to let such horrible things happen! Never mind that this, you know, has the capacity to save lives or create useful technology on a huge scale. It's "unnatural!" Of course, so is fire and clothing and the internet. But for some reason those are okay and genetic engineering is not.

Mankind has the capacity to do strange and wonderful things, and instead of trying to find exactly where our capacities lie we're holding back everywhere just based on pure grossout factor.

If the reason we're holding back scientific progress is actually "ethics"-- people complaining about genetics and such keep using that word, I am not sure they know what it means-- I want to know why they're worrying so much about sheep in laboratory conditions with some slightly strange DNA in their brains and totally ignoring the relatively horrible conditions that totally normal sheep, chickens, etc are being bred and harvested in on a worldwide scale. The worldwide march of technology and progress has brought a lot of horrible things, but we shrug, decide we don't care, and eat our chicken mcnuggets anyway. So why freak out so much over these sheep? If the rediculously unlikely situation we turn out to have created sheep with thinking, feeling human brains, okay, give them legal rights and a social security card and move on with your lives. I assure you, this isn't worse than what happened to the contents of those chicken mcnuggets, just a little bit wierder.

Re:Bioethics

[Rich0]

He made his decision as a nod to the conservative wing of his party.

What ethical reason would there be for denying individuals the medical advances that come from stem cell research?

Uh, why exactly do you think that the conservative wing of his party opposes stem cell research? For ethical reasons!

Sure, many people may disagree with the ethical judgement being made, but the decision is purely ethical. What other motivation would they have? Do you think that they're doing it just so that they can watch people with various diseases die?

In this case the ethical dilema is whether it is OK to destroy embryos to harvest their stem cells. What makes it a dilema is that it is strongly debated whether embryos are fully entitled to human rights. In fact, that is not all that different from the debate about putting human brains in sheep - is that enough to make a being with human rights? (Whoa, and suddenly we're back on-topic...)

Just because you don't happen to agree with the ethics of the situation doesn't mean that it isn't an ethical decision.

A decision to ban all animal research would also be an ethical decision, and one that many people would disagree with, but which many would also agree with.

Unfortunately, ethical problems will only be straightfoward when everybody else gets with it and just agrees that I'm the only one who really knows what is right and wrong... :)

Re:Won't make a real human.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for reminding me why its never a good idea to speak on a subject one knows nothing about. Sir, please pick up some neurology books. Even if they're pop-science, you might find yourself somewhat surprised by how much we do in fact know about the human consciousness.

Re:Why is this scary?

[Erris]

It's scary because the law does not provide protection for the possible creation. Imagine yourself trapped in a sheep's body. You were litterally raised in a barn, never clothed and left to sleep in your own shit. While you can never articulate your feelings, you might be very upset. You would certainly be upset to know that your owner could kill and eat you.

It's one thing to grow human bones, muscles and organs. That can get creepy enough if done by harvesting and supressing what would have otherwise grown into a whole person. Growing human brains is something that's always creepy unless it's done in a free and legally protected body. It would also be cruel to create a limited, crippled or painful body such as a sheep for that human brain. It is unethical to take risks for others you would not be willing to take yourself or without their consent.

Re:Didn't we already do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than hiding some editor's posts, I wish I could just shear (see, this is on-topic! ;-) off the last sentence for certain editors, like timothy, and michael before him, who always end their posts with a troll.

Scientists have no imagination...or business sense

[Anonymous Coward]

So perhaps this will make for a good open source biology project.

I propose taking two arthropods and combining characteristics to make, a still rather stupid, but much more practical and useful creature.

Lobsters taste good.
If you've not tried one, BT a copy of the Simpsons episode in which Homer acquires Pinchy, a pet lobster.

Cocaroach lives everywhere and tastes like crap. Thank you Arby's. Actually much worse than crap. Even worse than that bit of shell innard from a pecan that you immediately regret overlooking in your haste to shell and eat.

I propose a project to take the tasty genes from the lobster and put them in the cockroach. While we are at it, we should transfer a few more genes to make the tasty roach weigh in at about a half pound and a few modified genes so it will seek out and consume non modified cockroaches.

If you guys are worried about a sheep doing math and complaining that you don't pay enough attention to her when you're done, than implementing the robster should be a piece of cake.

I'm serious here. If there is one thing on this earth that genetic enginearing should listen to, it's the scream of a squeamish woman who has just found a cockroach in her cooch.

Imagine a world where robsters have consomed all the cockroaches but are still plentiful from cleaning kitchen floors and eating their own scraps. Hell, we should patent the damn things and make the chinese pay through the yingyang for 'em.

Eat the Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

It bothers people because the same logic can be applied to humans. "Why not sacrifice a legion of your average, miserable persons, to save someone's mother? I'd kill any number of strangers to watch my boy grow up. Their just humans, there are several billion around and no one will miss the children from Qwai Pong Province. Grow clones in vats for all I care, as long as its in a clean room environment! " There's a reason to feel queasy about this...

Re:Conflicted

[Musrum]

You need to seperate the harware from the software. We are not a sentient beings just because we have a homosapien brain. The brain is not the center of our humanity. It is simply a node...

Re:Bioethics

[dasqua]

considering guantanamo bay, the Bush US gov seems to like putting things outside their jurisdiction.

why should this be any different?

Re:Why is this scary?

[mrchaotica]

What we need is a lot more understanding of the developmental process (i.e., the "nature/nurture" problem). Would a human-brained sheep feel like a "human trapped in a sheep's body," or feel like a sheep? If it didn't feel like a human, would it realize it was different from other sheep? A lot of what separates us from the rest of the animals is language; if it never had the opportunity to learn a language (assuming sheep don't have one) would it realize the possibility existed?

Speaking of language and "humanity", which is more human: a human raised by wolves [wikipedia.org] or an ape that's learned sign language [wikipedia.org]? When we understand that, we'll understand the ethics of chimeras.

Re:That's *COOL*

[johnnyb]

"In the balance of life, they're sheep."

Based on what exactly?

Why is it ethical to do this with sheep/humans, but not ethical to do this with humans (and if you don't think this is coming, people have proposed created brainless humans for the purpose of harvesting organs).

At what point is a chimera no longer human?

I find it really amusing that people on this board are so willing to go for it. I'm cynically guessing this is the same crowd that is morally outraged because people send unwanted email without looking at the consequences on our network infrastructures.

Human Sheep?

[Antarius]

Just the possibility of a human mind bouncing around inside a sheep's head is a scary proposition.

I second that. Let's have a look through history at what all of the human-brained sheep have done so far:

The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, The Hundred-Years War...

Yup. You just described Christianity. They are described in the Bible as Sheep, no?

Re:Bioethics

[Anonymous Coward]

"In this case the ethical dilema is whether it is OK to destroy embryos to harvest their stem cells"

major point of contention here: those embryos in question in most cases are going to be destroyed anyway. Doesn't it sound stupid to throw away this valuable material that could lead to potential cures to many things? Good old organized religion, hampering the progress of man out of fear and ignorance since its unfortunate inception out of fear and ignorance.

you got the part on personal morals and ethics dead on though. WhenKerry described well in one of the debates, it is wrong for one man to take a personal religious belief (i.e. the almighty, unquestionably good christian morals) and use his power to turn it into law for the whole country