American Scientists Working On Creating Chimeras: Half-Human, Half-Animal Embryos (ibtimes.com.au) 242
Researchers at the University of California, Davis are working on creating half-human, half-animal hybrid embryos dubbed chimeras to better understand diseases and its progression. But not everybody is thrilled about it. IBTimes reports: One of the aims of the experiment using chimeras is to create farm animals with human organs. The body parts could then be harvested and transplanted into very sick people. However, a number of bioethicists and scientists frown on the creation of interspecies embryos which they believe crosses the line. New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity." They are not alone in voicing their opinion against the idea. Huffington Post adds: The project is so controversial that the National Institutes of Health has refused to fund it. The researchers are relying on private donors. Critics of these experiments say they are too risky because there is no way of knowing where the human stem cells will go. Will they just become a pancreas? Or could they become a brain? And if they become a brain, will the pigs who house them have human consciousness?
A Pig With Human Consciousness? (Score:5, Funny)
A pig with human consciousness? They've already succeeded! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Donald Trump.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.
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I think you just insulted pigs everywhere.
Re:A Pig With Human Consciousness? (Score:5, Funny)
Leave me out of it, monkey-boy.
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A pig with human consciousness? They've already succeeded! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Donald Trump.
I thought his problem is that he lacked a human conscience?
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Well, we recently had a story here on Slashdot about baboons with pig hearts.
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At first I thought you wrote "human conscience" and couldn't figure out how having a conscience is in any way similar to Donald Trump. (Or Hilary, for that matter)
What a train wreck... wow.
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Then there is the pig without a conscious...Hillary
Says the pig who can't tell the difference between "conscious" and "conscience."
Prophetic Super Bowl (Score:5, Funny)
I guess PuppyMonkeyBaby was ahead of its time.
It depends (Score:4, Funny)
I'm absolutely against it for organ harvesting!
On the other hand, I'm totally for it because that means we'll finally get catgirls, foxgirls, bunnygirls, etc!
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I shudder to think what the Furry community will do with this technology.
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Oh Great, a whole new Bathroom controversy as the Fury clans all want their own "non-human" bathrooms. Thanks Obama!
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Oh Great, a whole new Bathroom controversy as the Fury clans all want their own "non-human" bathrooms. Thanks Obama!
Nice try, they will of course be able to use the bathroom where they feel most comfortable...
In the case of furries, perhaps they won't be comfortable in any bathroom and instead will be allowed to mark their own territory?
Oh hell: (Score:2)
You just know those dratted felines will want their own litter boxes.
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Cats can be trained to use a toilet [wikihow.com]. Many prefer it because they no longer have to spend time burying their waste. The biggest drawback [catbehavio...ciates.com] is you have to leave the lid up and the seat down, but that drawback wouldn't quite apply to hypothetical cat people.
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And I'm not talking about the adolescent variety either...
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... The biggest drawback [catbehavio...ciates.com] is you have to leave the lid up and the seat down, but that drawback wouldn't quite apply to hypothetical cat people.
The only drawback I see in it is having to remember to put the seat down when you're done. I guess living with a toilet trained cat is the same as living with a woman with the exception that a woman may not shit on the floor next to the toilet whey you forget.
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Re:It depends (Score:4, Funny)
"So what got you into genetics in the first place?"
>"I had a dream."
"A dream? Of what? Ending hunger and disease, creating world peace?"
>"A redhead with legs up to here."
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Kemonomimi, kawaii kemonomimi everywhere !!!
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm absolutely against it for organ harvesting!"
As with use of CRISPR tech, this is our first nibbling at the edges of a technology that will involve a host of delicate ethical choices as applications emerge. But the easiest of these ethical questions to resolve in favor of "go for it" is surely having farm animals grow human organs for transplantation. Even vegetarians would be mostly in favor of such a lifesaving application - or to put it another way, those who oppose it would quickly select themselves out of the population.
A pig could be engineered to grow, not just a human kidney, but your kidney, cloned from your body. No more having to spend the rest of your life on anti-rejection drugs, risking death with every sniffle and paper cut.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Interesting)
Where do you think most of those heart valve replacement 'donors' come from?
All this would really do is increase the human viability of more tissues and organs.
As to the brain, the porcine skull can't hold anything close to a human brain, and 'brain tissue' anywhere else would not be viable as a human brain either due to structural limitations, size, and vulnerability to damage from everyday actions. The human brain is on average 1320g, while a pig brain is only 180g. So the human brain is over 7 times the mass & volume. (I'm making a guess that their densities are relatively similar.)
Sounds like more people afraid of more proof that humans are just a different kind of animal with specialization in generalized intelligence.
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As to the brain, the porcine skull can't hold anything close to a human brain
I doubt we will ever want to replace whole brains in the way we would a kidney or liver - the personality or 'soul' seems to mostly reside in the brain in the form of 'software' or 'firmware', whichever is the most appropriate analogy. Also, the brain is actually a large collection of distinct organs, some of which have functions not necessarily closely associated with mental processes. It may be viable to replace or augment a person's brain with smaller parts, which could then be integrated into and traine
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"those who oppose it would quickly select themselves out of the population."
Just to point out that this is not going to be true as most people wouldn't need organ replacement before reproducing.
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You have a point, but I'm not claiming that political values are transmitted genetically. Rather, those who favor chimera transplants will be around longer as an influence in culture than the "naturalists." People who are still healthy enough to be tenured university faculty, influencing the young, will be the ones who avail themselves of advanced medical technology.
The same is true of those who use vaccines and dental fluoride.
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The anti-science lobby has started to weigh in. This week's news on chimera research first brought opposition from a Christian group called Kansans For Life, because embryos. But unlike other I Hate Science issues, this one has a better chance of drawing both sides than stem cell research or GMOs. You can bet that the anti-GMO left will be heard from soon ("Waaah! It's unnatural!")
And I love it. This technology has the potential to eliminate both extremes of the political spectrum, by adverse selection. The
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On the other hand, we do already transplant some pig parts into humans already.
Of course, the flu seems to like crossing species boundries, and does it every couple of years. Here's an idea, don't use infected 'donors'. It's not perfect, but it will help. Of course, if you're choice was to wait for a compatible kidney that there's only a 4% chance of occurring before you are too far gone to r
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Diseases first, not Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
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OMG...I think you just posted the very first non-trollish post on this article. I commend you, I just don't have any mod points.
And I agree with you. We already have animal to human diseases, does this build a better bridge giving way to even MORE potential strains?
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These kind of chimeras are not necessary for this kind of risky situation, experimental animals are right now routinely "humanized" by modifying their genome in order for them to express human proteins, this makes the humanized animals susceptible to some human diseases and theoretically facilitates the appearance of pathogens that can now infect humans (specially viruses). The new chimeras of this post are actually safer since their offspring would not carry any human traits so they can't be mass produced.
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Swine flu can already infect humans, many human diseases can be transmitted to swine. I don't think this is a large problem and even if it were experimental scientists already have experience in breeding under strict controls - mice without immune system wouldn't live long otherwise.
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zoonotic pathogens are a very real concern, and the mutation of endemic animal pathogens into strains able to infect pure human cell lines *HAS* been documented, and was documented nearly a decade ago.
Specifically, early studies of mixed-culture embryos (an animal blastocyst that has had cloned human inner cell mass cells injected into it, along with the animal embryo's normal contents) resulted in unexpected results: In some cases, the resulting tissues were not just heterogenous admixtures of cell lineage
Dark Angel (Score:2)
Watch season two of Dark Angel [imdb.com] to see how it turns out.
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Even if they weren't capable of fighting, simply having a ready source of replacement organs would be a huge boon to the military.
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Why bother when the whole unit can be replaced? soldiers are mass produced at low cost by unskilled labor
Or maybe we could stop waging wars of choice for power and profit against people that didn't attack us....
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If the problem is ethics, surely the solution would be to obtain military funding for this. A source of genetically engineered animal-human hybrids, combining the best features of both, would be invaluable to a modern military that needs new ways to fight a radically different type of enemy to that it was set up to do. The military could have at its disposal superhumans with animal senses, and at the same time push forward medical technology to benefit everyone.
What could possibly go wrong?
I read a sci fi novel in the university library with precisely that premise back in 1996. Human-tiger hybrids for "supersoldiers", bunnygirls as their "comfort detachment."
As I recall, it wasn't a particularly bad book, for pulp. Can't remember the author or title for the life of me.
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Breaking out in cows (Score:2)
Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine [wikipedia.org] in 1796, from cows.
This was quite controversial at the time, because it involved injecting bits of cow into humans and... what could go wrong? Caricatures of the time [post-gazette.com] show cows "breaking out" of people after the cow vaccine was given.
In religious terms, how ethical is it to inject humans with pieces derived from the lower animals? Didn't Jenner's vaccine meddle with God's great plan and pollute the integrity of the human form?
Pure ethics can be based on suffering
We were warned... (Score:5, Funny)
Al Gore tried to warn us about ManBearPig, but no one would listen to him.
ManBearPig [cc.com]
Nothing new (Score:2)
We made hybrid embryos decades ago. We're making new ones; for decades, we've been all weird about human embryos and have been restricted to a set of old embryonic lines and hybrids we made back then.
"our sense of humanity." put in perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:"our sense of humanity." put in perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Focusing on the existing violence alone, and not putting it in proper context with historical trend lines is what called "making the perfect the enemy of the not-bad-and-its-getting-better".
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Caig Venter is upset (Score:3)
Holy crap i want a half cat half dog (Score:4, Funny)
Screw half human half animal, i want half cat half dog. Loyalty of a dog yet only shits on other people's lawns!
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Manbearpig (Score:3)
It's obvious where this is going (Score:2)
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Sounds like a great idea... (Score:4, Funny)
We'll create this "human organ farm" deep underground and convince all the organisms that they're the world's last hope for survival. We'll explain that a nuclear war made the vast majority of the world too contaminated for life, but a lone island presents hope for survival. We'll convince them that we'll use a lottery to "randomly select" who to send to this "island". All the while, we'll keep them ignorant and secluded, distracting them with organizational tasks like mixing particular organic molecules together to help feed growing organism embryos, and entertaining them with VR live-action versions of X-Box video games. Then, as long as we keep them secluded in this "distraction-dystopia", we don't need to worry about their consciousness, right?
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We'll create this "human organ farm" deep underground and convince all the organisms that they're the world's last hope for survival. We'll explain that a nuclear war made the vast majority of the world too contaminated for life, but a lone island presents hope for survival. We'll convince them that we'll use a lottery to "randomly select" who to send to this "island". All the while, we'll keep them ignorant and secluded, distracting them with organizational tasks like mixing particular organic molecules together to help feed growing organism embryos, and entertaining them with VR live-action versions of X-Box video games. Then, as long as we keep them secluded in this "distraction-dystopia", we don't need to worry about their consciousness, right?
Jordan Two Delta was hot.
What is our "sense of humanity"? (Score:3)
THE line, you say? (Score:2)
However, a number of bioethicists and scientists frown on the creation of interspecies embryos which they believe crosses the line.
Oh, well that's easy to settle, if there's a line. And not just a line, but the line.
Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Regard the line, people!
Or just allow a market for human organs (Score:2)
It's interesting that everyone but the person donating the organs gets something. The only reason there aren't enough organs is because of price controls. Allow people to sell organ futures and we would have plenty of organs for everyone that needs them.
"Half"-human...no. (Score:2)
This doesn't make the pigs "half-human, half animal" any more than Escherichia coli cells modified to produce human insulin protein are "half-human, half-bacteria" (or a
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It is most likely a state of mind, but it would generally be informed by our structure. Mostly brain structure, but other senses would play a role too.
The consideration of a brain actually forming in this manner is potentially horrifying, though. Such a brain would have no external stimuli at all. Granted, it would not know what it is missing, but I believe the brain expects at least some low level input which it is unlikely to get as an internal growth in a distinct host organism.
While I grant that it i
Dear Scientists.... (Score:2)
Stop it.. and start working on what all of us in the USA want...
Make the CatDog.
yes one end cat, one end dog... Give it to us!
Grow a new heart and new wounded knee. (Score:2)
All it will take is one person saved by just such an organ grown in an animal, and the idiot pundits and politicians will be swept aside like, what was that thing from the American writers class? Like a spider's legs in a roaring fire!
Consciousness is not understood (Score:2)
The sensations that come from our organs (other than the brain) profoundly influence our consciousness. Our mood, our thoughts, everything.
What if our consciousness is not just centered in the brain but spread throughout the whole body?
Do organs have their own consciousness that is a direct constituent of the highest-level consciousness of thought? Are there thoughts that you have that are a direct reflection of the sensation of a specific organ other than the ears, eyes, nose, and tongue?
People are trained
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Do organs have their own consciousness that is a direct constituent of the highest-level consciousness of thought?
No.
natural order of life . (Score:2)
For billions of years on earth, every life form has endured discomfort and unpleasantness. Some evolved in a new, more efficient form, others were left behind. The process continues today and includes humans. Individuals of every species can expect difficulties and the strongest will carry on the genes. Humans have anointed some species protected- meat & dairy animals, domestic pets; and others condemned- experimental animals, disease carriers. Human individuals continue to suffer unpleasantness in many
Life immitates are (Seinfeld clip) (Score:2)
Pigman Seinfeld clip [youtube.com]
Edward? Daddy? (Score:2)
I want to die.
Practicality? (Score:2)
1) How many animals would they need to raise, maintain, etc... to build a "warehouse" of organs to ensure that when they are needed a "match" can be found? Wouldn't this require insanely massive
far more damaging to "our sense of humanity" (Score:2)
You know what damages people's sense of humanity even more? Dying miserably even though modern medical technology could make you well, because some prick called Stuart Newman takes the position that a pig is more important than a human or thinks that a human kidney somehow gives a pig a soul.
Pointy Hats (Score:3)
Is this new? Is the objection even modern? (Score:2)
The objection to this seems like it comes from a time when people didn't know we were just another of the animals lucky enough to have thumbs, the physical requirements for auditory speech, and a brain capable of utilizing those things. Animals, even those of lesser intelligence than humans (which is not all, some are believed to even have superior intelligence) are known to have consciousness. Only a hum
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Of course the Portland Trail Blazers rely on human flesh to maintain their human appearance... LOL
Well that escalated quickly. (Score:2)
You had to go an bring dualism into the discussion. Aren't all of you rushing things?
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I know, I know... it's against my personal interests to point out the implications prematurely.
File this one under "charity". At least I only stated the first in the chain of insights.
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I'm an atheist. I acknowledge no wider metaphysical context containing science (though this is in no way in conflict with atheism...)
Human to me is some definition of a collection of genes widely agreed upon to be the constituents of the extant human genome. Would a pig with a human brain be human? Na. But it probably needs some kind of rights since it's going to be a self-aware animal with a relatively high level of intelligence (But I'd also argue all [wi
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In that case, you only need to do what you already expect to do. Get naturally deselected. We'll take it from there.
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The current American fitness equation doesn't really include anything for long-term individually variable genetic morality. I do quite fine...
I'm certainly glad you've got it from here, though. I can feel my progeny's chances for a better life increasing with every word you type.
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In that case, you only need to do what you already expect to do. Get naturally deselected. We'll take it from there.
Won't happen, at least not in the US and UK. We have so many laws to prevent Natural Selection from happening that it simply won't. At least not with humans.
Which means we're stuck with the stupidest of the stupid mucking up the already mucked-up gene pool.
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Which "Atheist" do you mean? /.
There are plenty here on
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Well, step one is the question of whether you feel there's a practical usefulness to having some way to differentiate yourself from any other animal--that is, that you have any justifiable reason to think you should have "rights" beyond the animal you recently ate between hamburger buns.
Would that be useful to you? I'll hold you to your answer.
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I think you don't know shit about what you are blathering about. There's nothing metaphysical about what a human is - it is a definition that's decided by the collective. That definition have changed often too, Africans were considered sub-humans (and still are in some places), Jews too (still are in some places). In war situations the enemy is always painted as sub-humans, this because for a human soldier it is easier to kill "the enemy" rather than another human.
When pigs, dolphins and elephants can be a
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Strange when I get responses suggesting I am wrong, then explain specifically why I am right.
You say rights are not scientific concepts. So, if you limit yourself to a material (scientific) worldview as representing what exists, you do not have them.
So, you have a "concept". There are a million subjective "concepts" on the subject, varying from yours, equally backed, and contradicting yours, on the subject. I want to know if you have basis to saying your concept is real, within the limits of what you ack
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Okay. A human is a biological entity that has a soul.
Reality will make the "point" manifestly clear when it eliminates you, which you can refer to as "natural selection" if you prefer to remain committed to your material-reductionist stance.
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Here's a peer-reviewed, quantified, eye-witness (empirical) study, for one. [thelancet.com]
And "metaphysics" is a core branch of philosophy acknowledged and used the entirely of the last 2500 years, by religious and secular sources. There is no question that metaphysics exists, even if one's metaphysics is "only material things exist".
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You have given no evidence it does not require it, and there is a great deal of reason to think it does. For starters, I'd look at the history of attempts to develop "strong AI". For something longer-standing, the "mind-body problem" (easy summary) [owl232.net] has remained unresolved for the last 500 years, which presents you with quite an array of questions that must be resolved to even think your claim is logically possible.
In other words, the current evidence is against you. Show otherwise, if you can.
Re:"the NIH has refused to fund it." (Score:5, Insightful)
And really with the political shit? left-wing?
I'm a lefty (I think... hard to say these days), and I'm all for GMO chow, nuclear power, catdogs, bunnygirls, and not wasting the stem cells from terminated pregnancies. I don't feel like it's... political at all for me. Just logical.
You need to get over yourself and your politics. Try to look at issues by their merit instead of whatever your coach tells you your team is all about.
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Are you really trying to form an equivalency between genetic construction of a Chimera, and research on harvested fetal stem cells?
I'm not trying to form a moral equivalence between the two.
And really with the political shit? left-wing?
Opposition to Bush's fetal stem cell ban certainly didn't come from the Right.
(I think... hard to say these days)
That's true.
Try to look at issues by their merit
That's such a (pun intended) God awful slipperly slope. After all, lots of Russians thought there were ten metric ass-loads of merit in the idea of raping hundreds of thousands German woman and girls. Japanese thought their actions in Nanking were highly meritorious, too. Fritz Haber thought it was highly meritorious to develop chemical weapons for use by th
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I'm not trying to form a moral equivalence between the two.
Then why are you bemoaning the lack of left-wing "outrage" on the matter? If I could point you to some left-wing outrage on the chimera research funding moratorium, would you feel better? Here you go:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/11/researchers-urge-lifting-of-nih-funding-restrictions-on-chimeric.html
Perhaps the lefties are holding their outrage until they see if the NIH will resume funding in this area...it is after all a moratorium while the NIH "considers a possible policy revision in t [nih.gov]
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You wouldn't want any outrage until an actual policy has been made, would you? Where's the fun in that?
Ask any partisan on any side of the fence. Fear is a great donation motivator.
Just to point out . . . (Score:2)
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That's semantics. Yes, before we had a legal system or laws, we didn't call anything a crime. That doesn't mean it was ethical or moral then to do those things, it just meant that either the justice was meted out more directly, or injustice prevailed due to a simple inability to redress it.
I agree that concepts may need to be re-thought when technology provides new cases, but that doesn't mean that the concepts we've developed have no value just because they were innovated at some point in the past.
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You assume that religion is required for those thoughts. Very disappointing.
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The GOP presidential candidate called, he wants his false equivalencies back!
And to answer your question, its in the summary:
New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity."
I don't know what an evolutionary biologist can be, if not left wing.
Note: You started this partisan bickering....
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The GOP presidential candidate called, he wants his false equivalencies back!
You saying it's a false equivalency doesn't actually make it a false equivalency.
New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity."
Using baby parts because the mother decided "she didn't want to" damages "our sense of humanity", too.
Note: You started this partisan bickering....
What's your point?
Different reference (Score:2)
"Are we not men?"
We are Devo!
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Not to go on all-fours; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to suck up Drink; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to eat Fish or Flesh; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to claw the Bark of Trees; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
Not to chase other Men; that is the Law. Are we not Men?
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Ummm... they would move to Texas?
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There are a lot of people that worry about killing animals, that includes many scientists. A lot of thought is spent on deciding IF an animal study is needed, HOW the study should be done to minimize suffering etc.