Japan Approves First Human-Animal Embryo Experiments (nature.com) 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Nature: A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year. Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.
Until March, Japan explicitly forbid the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus. That month Japan's education and science ministry issued new guidelines allowing the creation of human-animal embryos that can be transplanted into surrogate animals and brought to term. Nakauchi's experiments are the first to be approved under Japan's new rules, by a committee of experts in the science ministry. Final approval from the ministry is expected next month. Nakauchi says he plans to proceed slowly, and will not attempt to bring any hybrid embryos to term for some time. Initially, he plans to grow hybrid mouse embryos until 14.5 days, when the animal's organs are mostly formed and it is almost to term. He will do the same experiments in rats, growing the hybrids to near term, about 15.5 days. Later, Nakauchi plans to apply for government approval to grow hybrid embryos in pigs for up to 70 days.
Until March, Japan explicitly forbid the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus. That month Japan's education and science ministry issued new guidelines allowing the creation of human-animal embryos that can be transplanted into surrogate animals and brought to term. Nakauchi's experiments are the first to be approved under Japan's new rules, by a committee of experts in the science ministry. Final approval from the ministry is expected next month. Nakauchi says he plans to proceed slowly, and will not attempt to bring any hybrid embryos to term for some time. Initially, he plans to grow hybrid mouse embryos until 14.5 days, when the animal's organs are mostly formed and it is almost to term. He will do the same experiments in rats, growing the hybrids to near term, about 15.5 days. Later, Nakauchi plans to apply for government approval to grow hybrid embryos in pigs for up to 70 days.
Can we transplant some human cells... (Score:1)
... into the current crop of slashdot "editors"?
These are not summaries. They're wastes of time. Because the editors just won't edit.
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The first viable human/animal hybrid will be a cat with a human vagina.
Or a giant squid with several human...
Mentlegen (Score:1)
the age of the catgirl is upon us.
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Cat Girls for Everyone! (Score:5, Insightful)
The new plan to get the birth rate up is to start selling catgirls in every pet shop. One-way ticket to Japan, already bought...
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The problem is that neither you nor the catgirls have a reason to be treated distinctly as human, unless you have a reason.
And no reason will ever be found in the domain of biology and DNA permutations.
Enjoy the inescapable naturalist time bomb.
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Anything smart enough to hire a good lawyer is considered human in practice.
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Then you have all the rights you are capable of defending. These places exist, and our current president calls them "shithole countries". Past presidents have been more diplomatic, and tried peacekeeping missions in such places.
Yes, I'm suggesting that forcing people to defend their rights with violence is probably a bad idea. We should probably err on the side of too much human rights at first, until we know that we didn't accidentally make a pig that can understand sarcasm or something.
If it sounds like the opening of a horror movie... (Score:2)
DON'T DO IT
Otherwise I'm never walking backwards again.
seriously though, I think there are some very thorny ethical issues not far down this path. so still DON'T DO IT
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*Rapid-fire typing* By my calculations, the Gojira probability is... *pushes up glasses*... millions to one. What could possibly go wrong?!
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Your post would be much more interesting if you actually listed 3 of the ethical issues.
The main one I can think of is whether to treat them as animals, humans, or something in between. Legal rights, basically. Everything else seems to fall inside that question.
But there is a very simple answer to that question, treat it like you would a human. Maximal rights = totally safe. So, if you can't legally do it to a human fetus/embryo/toddler, then you can't legally do it to a hybrid fetus/embryo/toddler.
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Your post would be much more interesting if you actually listed 3 of the ethical issues.
The main one I can think of is whether to treat them as animals, humans, or something in between. Legal rights, basically. Everything else seems to fall inside that question.
They could be called Underpeople, and they'd be slaves, until one catgirl dared step forth ...
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Thorny ethical issues? (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m super cereal you guys!! (Score:1)
Chinese Created First Human-Animal Hybrid (Score:1)
The Japanese are not first in creating a human-animal hybrid.
The Chinese are first in that unethical achievement.
A report [sciencealert.com] by ScienceAlert states that the Chinese have created the first hybrid of a human being and a monkey.
"In a bid to learn more about the way the human brain develops, scientists in China have added a human brain gene to the genome of rhesus monkeys. It's called MC HP 1, or microcephalin, and it's involved in regulating the foetal growth of the brain.
The addition does seem to have made the
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It's not inherently unethical. Not until it develops a neural system. ... Then things start getting a bit sticky, and you need to worry about things like whether it is viable.
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Your very own article says that wasn't the first time. IIRC the first transgenic organism with human genes was E Coli that produced a human protein, created in 1977, by an American company. Mice were engineered to produce human tPA in 1987, at the US NIH.
So let’s see (Score:2)
The previous story was from an American university and was basically Terminator 2.
Now this story is from Japan, and it’s pretty much Fullmetal Alchemist.
So what’s up next... a story from a German research team that lives in a gingerbread house and has figured out how to cook children in the oven?!
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Dr Morrow's island did that way before FMA (which was a very well written show, btw).
Re:Humanzee (Score:5, Informative)
The russians did that exact experiment.
A whole lot of nothing happened.
Why?
Acrosome binding protiens are not sufficiently similar between us and other primates. Sperm cells cannot bind to the zona pellucida, and so fertilization cannot occur. This process is called the Acrosome Reaction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Even then, the fact that nonhuman primates have more total chromosomes, due to human chromosome 2 being the result of fusion of two ancestral chromosomes that were not fused in other primate species, you are going to have differences in chromatin packing and other sources of gene expression anomalies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.nature.com/scitabl... [nature.com]
But the basic answer to your question is the acrosome reaction.
Re: Humanzee (Score:4, Informative)
A somewhat reputable source discussing the Russian experiment in question.
https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com]
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IMHO, the anecdotal evidence that SOMETHING happens is overwhelming, precisely due to the total silence that engulfs the entire subject.
This has been documented to death on 4chan. Nothing happened.
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If you think there's complete silence on the subject of human vaginas flooded with animal jizz and vice versa, you've been browsing with safe-search turned on too long... I'm reasonably certain if I provided links, I'd be permabanned before you could say "take the knot".
Actually, zonkeys exist, and wolfdogs, too. I... feel sorry for the chihuahua that has to carry a litter that big, though.
A lot of times reproductive isolation can occur due to behavioral issues, habit distance, or even animal sexual prefe
So.. Bear big man? (Score:2)
This is where it starts.
Slavery with extra steps? (Score:2)
Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.
Why take the extra steps of researching how to do it with animals? Just grow humans and kill them for organs. Or is there some "ethical" line I'm crossing here?
Is his being done at Umbrella Corp? (Score:2)
No good can come from this, right?
Makes me wonder (Score:2)
Cordwainer Smith was a prophet! (Score:2)
This sounds like the first (next?) step towards the "underpeople". (See, e.g., "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell".)
Tastes like... (Score:1)