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Japan Science

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.
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Japan Approves First Human-Animal Embryo Experiments

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    ... into the current crop of slashdot "editors"?

    These are not summaries. They're wastes of time. Because the editors just won't edit.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    the age of the catgirl is upon us.

  • by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Friday July 26, 2019 @10:56PM (#58995618)

    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...

    • by Empiric ( 675968 )

      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.

      • by Z80a ( 971949 )

        Anything smart enough to hire a good lawyer is considered human in practice.

        • by Empiric ( 675968 )
          And where there are no lawyers?
          • 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.

  • 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

    • by mentil ( 1748130 )

      *Rapid-fire typing* By my calculations, the Gojira probability is... *pushes up glasses*... millions to one. What could possibly go wrong?!

    • 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.

      • 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 ...

      • It is beyond absurd to give full human rights to an animal growing a human kidney, liver, etc, which is the goal here. The issues only arise when you're doing something to bring in human intelligence.
        • How about we be careful to confirm that our bacon isn't capable of sarcasm or poetry for a while before we part it out?
    • Ah! Yes, I see. I will apprise Dr Nakauchi of your proposal for human/cactus hybrids and relay his response.
  • Do you want ManBearPigs? Because this is how you get ManBearPigs. Iâ(TM)m totally super cereal you guys...
  • 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

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      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.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      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.

  • 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?!

  • This is where it starts.

  • 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?

  • No good can come from this, right?

  • If they incorporate enough human DNA in these animals would they have human compatible organs even temporarily? It might make a good bridge for people that need a transplant right now.
  • This sounds like the first (next?) step towards the "underpeople". (See, e.g., "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell".)

  • ...chicken?

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