The Chimera Dilemma Manifested in Sheep 433
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."
A problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A problem? (Score:3, Funny)
Just kidding of course, I don't have a g/f let alone a wife!
Re:A problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A problem? (Score:4, Funny)
Was that after you smiled or when you started talking?
Re:A problem? (Score:3, Funny)
to be honest diane, i was surprised.
"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:4, Funny)
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:4, Funny)
"Yeah, I was like, takin' mine down Central Ave. and this cop, he just came outta nowhere, man. He could not even keep up, and its a real good thing I put the air dam on the rear end, cause the tail kept flyin' up and I hit the hill at Brisco, and nearly lost it totally."
"Modded" was a bad choice of words. Now I have images of blue neon trim and all sorts of flashy bling bling on the farm...
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:2)
And on this week's "Pimp My Ride", the team update run down farm bulldozer with chrome treads, an air conditioned cabin with built in jacuzzi, satellite/Internet/DVD player, 20" plasma display, surround sound and a custom paint job with flames on the bucket and speed stripes on the cabin.
I know! (Score:3, Funny)
Stupid editors
Re:I know! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:5, Interesting)
On a more serious note, was anyone else distrubed by the fact that it was recommended, concerning human-brained mice, that they monitor for signs of humanlike behavior in human-brained mice, and if they find such behavior, they were to... immediately kill the mice? Excuse me? If a mouse is starting to think like a person, shouldn't the appropriate response be to cease testing, ensure a good life for it, and only euthanize it if there are signs that it is suffering?
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:3, Informative)
But sheep with human brains? How long until we have to tell farm animals to quit their jibber-jabberin'?*
*If you didn't get that, be thankful.
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:2)
There's no need to worry unless, say, the sheep start chanting "Four legs good, two legs better!" over and over for five minutes, or start a Whiter Wool movement.
So, after they dissect the sheep, will they posthumously declare it "Animal Hero, Second Class"?
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:2)
My wife has a weird sense of humor. And her name's not even Julie.
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:2)
Re:"Heavily modded sheep" (Score:2)
Didn't we already do that? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that was GWB (Score:2)
Re:Didn't we already do that? (Score:2)
Cannibalism (Score:3, Funny)
If I slaughter and eat one of the sheep am I guilty of cannibalism?
Re:Cannibalism (Score:5, Funny)
-Ab
Re:Cannibalism (Score:2)
Re:Cannibalism (Score:3, Informative)
Human brain? (Score:3, Funny)
Nah, not scary (Score:2)
Re:Nah, not scary (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Human brain? (Score:2)
Re:Human brain? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Human brain? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Human brain? (Score:2, Insightful)
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)...
Re:Human brain? (Score:2, Funny)
Absolutely. For example, there must be new sauces that can be developed.
Re:what happens when they show human behaviour? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hard to Imagine... (Score:4, Funny)
Skittles: Taste the creepy rainbow (Score:4, Funny)
Available on their site, quicktime or windows media: Taste the sheep boys [skittles.com].
I miss the beautifull surreal skittle ads, the creepifying ones don't make me want to eat their stuff: I might get the same horrible nightmare vision they do.
Scary? Yeah, the sheep could revolt! (Score:2)
Re:Scary? Yeah, the sheep could revolt! (Score:2)
Why is this scary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this scary? (Score:2)
Its been said that the only constant is change, but weighed against that, not all change is for the better. On the whole, I have to say that if you were to view these advances from a purely scientific perspective, obviously what has been achieved is remarkable and laudable.
On the other hand, you have to ask yourself just how far we can and will go, and what effect this will have on various societies. What repercussions will this have on cross-species diseases? What purpose will these chimeras serve?
O
Re:Why is this scary? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Why is this scary? (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of language and
Sheep blood (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but... (Score:2)
Even the sentient-sheep proposition might not be automatically bad (anyone got a good New Zealand joke to go here?)--as long as they aren't suffering, as long as it's even POSSIBLE for a human consciousness to be happy or con
Bioethics (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that kept running through my mind as I listened to the discussion was how someone with enough money could run circles around these ethics panels and produce chimeras off-shore.
Now that Bush has made the political (rather than scientific) decision to limit stem cell lines, this activity will most certainly occur outside of the US and beyond any jurisdiction of American ethics organizations.
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Isn't it possible that there are more than two sets of criteria upon which to base a decision such as this? Ethical, perhaps?
Re:Bioethics (Score:5, Insightful)
#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:Bioethics (Score:2)
Sure. There are probably financial reasons as well.
But Bush didn't make the decision for purely ethical reasons. 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?
Re:Bioethics (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Bioethics (Score:2)
I can see we agree on this one.
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Yep.
This work is being done with adult stem cells, just like all the other useful stem cell research that has been done.
And there are limits to what can be done with the existing stem cell lines.
That is why private foundations and the State of California have started funding their own stem cell research.
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Of course it's political. Science only answers "what can be done?", not "what should be done?" I don't have any problem with the idea there should be limits on what my tax dollars pay for. In any event, Bush doesn't have the power to unilaterally make stem cell research illegal, he just cha
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
(checking back to my original post) Nope, I never said it was a prohibition.
Furthermore, the argument that we should allow something unethical to happen in the US so it doesn't happen somewhere else is specious.
Who made that argument? I just said that it is pointless to make rules to govern stem cell resea
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Sorry. I was so used to people coming back with something like "It really is prohibition if there's no money..." I jumped the gun trying to forestall it.
Wouldn't it be better, if you prefer to have the research conducted in an ethical or responsible manner, to have it advanced in a nation where you have a legal and fiscal framework to control it?
If we put any limits on research at all the temptation will be to move to Chin
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
Then we agree more than we disagree. By limiting the number of cell lines, Bush has said that the only lines that will be funded with federal fu
Re:Bioethics (Score:2)
We conduct experiments on humans all the time. We call them clinical trials. The difference, other than the fact that the Nazis believed in race supremacy, is that we now require that the test subjects receive full disclosure of the potential side effects and that their participation be entirely voluntary.
The problem with Bush's policy is that willing participants cannot use federal funds to conduct research on donated
It does explain a lot though (Score:5, Funny)
While it is doubtful that anyone would want a brain transplant from a human-sheep chimera
It would explain how the Patriot Act and the DCMA got passed.
Ba dump bump! Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitresses.
That's *COOL* (Score:4, Interesting)
Human brains in sheep? Now that's just plain *COOL* Hacking the genes.. loads of fun!
I don't know why so many people get upset about this kind of thing.. I mean, if my mom had something like CJD from eating euro-beef 10 years ago, and you could sacrifice a legion of humo-sheep hybrid brains to save her.. Sacrifice away! Myself, I have a damaged heart.. if I could have a new one, I'd kill any number of chimera sheep to get it. I want to watch my boy grow up, not die at 35. Oh, and you go tell that hypotetical burn victim why he'll be deformed for the rest of his life, because he can't have the artificial skin developed from chimera sheep in Qwai Pong Province china, because his narrow minded government doesn't think it's ethical.
In the balance of life, they're sheep. Who cares? Grow them in vats for all I care. As long as this is all done in a clean room environment, so we can minimize the risk of having superbug's crossing the sheep human barrier...
Re:That's *COOL* (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:That's *COOL* (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, when wild animals used to large territories are placed in caged captivity (polar bears, lions, tigers etc...) they usually do [bornfree.org.uk] go mad [gobartimes.org].
Have you seen animals pacing up and down endlessly in thei
I agree completely (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I agree completely (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, maybe I'm in the minority here, but I don't eat chicken mcnuggets. ;)
That aside, while I see the validity and importance of most of your points, I think you're setting up a bit of a strawman argument here. Nuclear weapons programs are often implemented to ensure that other nations can't intimidate them with their nuclear arsenals. It's unpleasant, but at this time there are not many other options. I believe that's part of the reason for the so-called "Star Wars" program(s), as much as I question their usefulness.
More importantly, you question the ethics of the opposition to this research. You're brushing off their concerns by saying, "give them legal rights and a social security card". The concern is that when you start to muddy up the distinctions between human and animal, it's less clear what sort of things are ethical. One wouldn't remove a healthy human's heart without their consent. If a sheep is part or mostly human, is it ok to remove their heart for transplant? That is an ethical question. Once it becomes ok to remove a quasi-human sheep's heart, how far a leap is it to remove a human's heart?
That's totally disregarding the question of whether we're justified in doing these sorts of things to non-human animals capable of suffering anyway.
I agree with some of your sentiment overall, and I think this sort of research can benefit humanity tremendously, but I just wanted to point these things out. I think it's unfair to characterize objections as being due to just "grossout factor(s)".
Re:That's *COOL* (Score:3, Insightful)
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 witho
Won't make a real human. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Won't make a real human. (Score:5, Funny)
Two questions: (Score:2)
2: In the event that chimera hybrids accidentally make it into the food chain, does that mean that humans have a higher risk of contracting spongiform encephalopathy (if, for example, the nervous system/brains of said critters are even a small percentile human)?
Re:Two questions: (Score:2)
I think we should look with interest at the new guidelines for stem cell research, which are likely to be unofficially followed by California-funded research.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-stemce l ls27apr27,0,4314086.story?coll=la-home-headlines [latimes.com]
Basically, they are saying:
- making chimeras are "OK", as long as they don't reproduce
- don't implant human cell in monkeys or apes
- don't transplant cells in a way which "might make them assume some human qualities"
Good luck with
sheep with human brains (Score:3, Funny)
If you kill it, it'll stop creeping you out by talking.
Anyone remember the song, "Cows With Guns"?
Uhhh (Score:5, Interesting)
You know when considering a solution to that particular ethical dilemma that wasn't the first idea that came to mind...
Same thing we do every night... (Score:5, Funny)
OK, I can just see it now:
"Same thing we do every night, Pinky, try to take over the" [splat!]
Re:Same thing we do every night... (Score:2)
Pop-science reporting is fun (Score:2, Insightful)
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 coce
How long before... (Score:2)
As the fine folk at fark.com observed... (Score:5, Funny)
www.gotSheep.com (Score:2)
GotSheep?
(The NYS DMV cancelled my plates on my car- GOTSH33P - and the reason given was "They are illegal, immoral, and sexually perverse".
Sheep with human brain (Score:2, Funny)
Spontaneous Monty Python moment... (Score:2)
Imagine the enormous commercial possibilities... [ibras.dk]
That can't be right... (Score:2)
"pantheon" (Score:2)
The voyage is long (Score:3, Funny)
Psalm v0.23 (Score:2)
He makes me lie down on the examining table...
Conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
Go back to writing about run-away brides (Score:4, Interesting)
I despair of scientific literacy in this country.
The real threat (Score:2, Funny)
Anime (Score:2)
So we're going to need an anime on this issue, preferably with intensely slow pacing and occasionally boring monologues in between brief, action-filled flashes of the crack commando team "Sheep Force 2014."
Sheep Force 2014: They've been engineered to be the perfect killing machines, but they're also still in high school!
Poorly thought out, worded worse. (Score:2)
Are you insinuating that humans are not animals? Or that animals are sub-human? Does that infer that humans are not mammals? Or that not all mammals are animals?
Such statements make me believe that some humans are perhaps better classified as a plant or mineral.
you should be more concerned (Score:2)
A human brain inside a sheep's head would probably not have a human mind; supporting a brain holding a human mind required all sorts of complex anatomical adaptations even just to support its size, adaptations that sheep just don't have.
What you are going to have is human brain cells inside a sheep's skull, and that is likely mostly just going to be a creatu
Important implications (Score:2)
Rgh (Score:2, Insightful)
brain transplant, please (Score:3, Funny)
...wait a second... (Score:2)
There are quite a few co-workers I can think of that could use a brain transplant even if from a human/sheep chimera...
hmmm....
Maybe... (Score:2)
Of course, the fatal flaw in that logic is no human beings would ever mindlessly follow and never question their leaders? Right?
Ah, yes! (Score:2)
Mind comes from structure, less so from cells (Score:2)
However our brain has many and larger structures than do other animals.
So the chances of a human being trapped in a sheeps body is rather unlikly even if it had 100% human brain cells.
As they have already done with mice, I believe.
Disclaimer I'm assuming this is the same article I read the other day on chimeras (not through sl
I'm sure someone already said it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oryx and Crake (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I was thinking that this was really close to the bit in "The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe" Where the cow tells Arthur that it looks forward to being eaten. Surely this is all this new tech is building up to?
Re:Bird brain (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This reminds me of the game "Inherit the Earth" (Score:2, Informative)
Come to think of it, it would have been a very interesting story. In the game, it becomes clear that some sort of underground computer network exists, which controls the weather. These Orbs are just terminals. Thats exactly what the designer said.
Now, what if some humans put themselves into some sort of cryosleep beneath the surface, ready to be reawakened when all signs of the virus are gone?
Jus