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Science

Studies That Add Human Cells To Animal Brains Are Ethical, Panel Says (sciencemag.org) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Experiments that create tiny brainlike structures from human stem cells or transplant human cells into an animal's brain have made some scientists, ethicists, and religious leaders uneasy in recent years. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has restricted some of this research. Now, a U.S. scientific panel has weighed in with advice about how to oversee this controversial and fast-moving area of neuroscience. The panel finds little evidence that brain "organoids" or animals given human cells experience humanlike consciousness or pain, and concludes current rules are adequate for overseeing this work. But they caution that could change, particularly as experiments move into nonhuman primates. "The rationale for the report is to get out ahead of the curve," says Harvard University neuroscientist Joshua Sanes, co-chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that released its report today.
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Studies That Add Human Cells To Animal Brains Are Ethical, Panel Says More

Studies That Add Human Cells To Animal Brains Are Ethical, Panel Says

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  • No pain, really? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lsllll ( 830002 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @02:07AM (#61254080)

    From TFA:

    “It is extremely unlikely that in the foreseeable future” organoids will be conscious or feel pain, the report concludes.

    What kind of scientists are these that think animals don't feel pain? Mamals, which most lab animals are, definitely feel pain. You don't need to be a scientist to know that.

    • Re:No pain, really? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Your.Master ( 1088569 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @02:39AM (#61254114)

      The summary is really bad, and that sentence being obvious nonsense is how you know. Read the actual article. Organoids aren't actual animals. Organoids are tiny clusters of cells, of which a portion are human.

      The ethicists looked at three cases. Two of them are about human cells in animal brains, and one is about organoids. The organoids one is the one dismissed because there's no pain. Transplanting human cells onto an animal brain is dismissed because human brain cells develop so slowly an animal dies of natural; causes before it could actually integrate with the brain circuitry. It specifically calls out that future animals that have slower-developing brains, like monkeys, could need a new assessment.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Mamals, which most lab animals are, definitely feel pain

      But they don't suffer any extra pain from having some human cells stuck into their brains.

    • Many in the medical field believed that human babies [washingtonpost.com] didn't feel pain, up until around 1986.

    • "What kind of scientists are these that think animals don't feel pain? "

      Angler scientists.

  • BULLSHIT! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 )
    nothing ethical about it, money has once again defeated common sense and decency.
    • Maybe this is how army of the 12 Monkeys gets started.

    • Inveterate troll "Cluehammer" (and what ripe irony there is in his chosen handle!) thundered, ex cathedra from his fundament:

      nothing ethical about it, money has once again defeated common sense and decency.

      "Money" really has very little to do with it - which you know very well, but choose to ignore, because trolls gonna troll.

      The full book - of which the Science article is more-or-less a summary - is available online as a 212-page free, downloadable PDF. (You have to start on this page [nap.edu] - which requires you supply an email address, but only checks to see if the domain is valid, not the f

  • Lawdy, whatssamatteryou ! (Score:3)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Friday April 09, 2021 @03:02AM (#61254148)

    And while you're at it, get rid of all those non-human cells in your gut, your skin and your rectum! God didn't make us proud humans to promote all those dirty alien life forms. Look at you, even your eyeballs are crawling with foreign glumpgnigs and unstable elements. Have you no shame!?!? Lord knows it's indecent to mix human DNA with such nyasty things.

    • No. God doesn't know that. God wouldn't have made it so easy if he (or she?) didn't want us doing it. I mean, he made things like faster-than-light more challenging than genetic engineering. I am sure he knew what he's doing.

  • Who woulda thunk it? Dr. Josef Mengele was ahead of his time.

  • If nature didn't want us to do it, it would have banned it like backward time travel or anti-gravity. Or at least not made it super easy. Why is this stuff easier than say faster than light travel? It's because nature wants us to do it.

    • Re:God lets us do it. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @04:03AM (#61254228)
      Religion is a story told to children and dumb people. Believing it is optional, but pretending to believe it is mandatory for all top-level operatives. There is no way I'm accepting that the Pope, or the top Scientology guy, or whatever, are true believers.

      I'm just not buying it, and I never have.

      • There is no way I'm accepting that the Pope, or the top Scientology guy, or whatever, are true believers.

        One way to find out... Take away all their money, power and position and then see how they feel about things.

      • and he made it to Vice President. The guy's a Dominionist. Google that if you don't know what it is, but TL;DR; it's the Christian equivalent of Isis or Sharia law. That guy was our Vice President.

        I guess what I'm saying is don't just think the folks at the top haven't drunk the Kool Aid, even in a country like America that enshrined Secular Government in our founding documents.
        • The point was that regardless of his label or affiliation that he realized it was bullshit and only claimed to be a believer because it was politically convenient to be. Maybe he does believe the bullshit. Most people are going to have at least one or two really weird or fucked up beliefs. Frankly I don't care as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. I like to think Pence was just there to ensure no one would try to assassinate Trump because as much of a loud-mouthed idiot as he was, Pence would probably be

        • It's funny when someone who constantly urges other people to listen to their own personal faith preacher every chance they get, accuses others of being koolaid drinkers.

        • Yeah, GWB was a true believer too. But he wasn't at the top.

      • "There is no way I'm accepting that the Pope, or the top Scientology guy, or whatever, are true believers"

        But the Scientologists have spaceships in their delusion!

  • The fishing industry tortures to death about 2 trillion animals [forbes.com] every year, and factory farms enslave billions [humanesociety.org] of animals in torturous condition every year.

    What does a species that legally allows such atrocities consider ethical?

    • The fishing industry tortures to death about 2 trillion animals every year, and factory farms enslave billions of animals in torturous condition every year.

      Not enough hyperbole. It does actual conservation a disservice when the entire fishing industry is equated to this kind of barbarism. [theguardian.com]

      What does a species that legally allows such atrocities consider ethical?

      Why should I care about the moral compass of someone, who if they could, would most likely deny me from fulfilling a natural biological need to consume animal matter?

      • You don't have to care, because the vast majority of voters oppose ending factory farming and fishing, despite it causing more pain and suffering than all other atrocities ever committed in history, combined.

        "And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life." -- Aristotle, Politics [bbc.co.uk]

        "[F]or the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer

        • "more pain and suffering than all other atrocities ever committed in history, combined"

          Does that include natural history too?

          Just go ahead and admit that you want to ban all meat production entirely, whether it is humanely produced or not, and no matter how simple a life form it is. There can never be a situation where the exploitation of animals in any form would be an acceptable and permissible choice by your ethical standards. Humans should extract themselves from the top of the food chain and fulfill al

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Wolfier ( 94144 )

            This. I would vote you up if I had mod points.

          • I meant the last 5000 years, so excluding prehistory. The pain and suffering caused by non-humans is vastly more than that caused by humans because of how long they've existed. Some members of the great apes species are however able to empathize and understand fairness, which means that they know what the results of their choices are.

            If I had the power to snap my fingers and end all torture, rape, slavery, war, antropogenic climate change, habitat degradation, the anthropocene mass extinction event, speci

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tomhath ( 637240 )
      By that logic (or lack thereof) we should kill all predatory fish and marine mammals. Have you ever seen what a mackerel does to its prey?

  • Ethics are all in the eye of the beholder.. What you and some other people might find ethical, might not be for others.

    If something would be for the advancement of the human race, like say curing certain disseases, some people might find a lot more ethical, than if it would be for mere pleasure..

    Ethics are just thought up by a few people with a certain mindset, and who says they are the ones that are right.

    • Ethics are just thought up by a few people with a certain mindset, and who says they are the ones that are right.

      There's nothing like good ol' appeal to authority, or using vague terms like 'unethical' in order to smear your opponent.

      Somewhere between "it is unethical to murder and eat human beings" and "it is unethical to genetically modify the human body for aesthetic purposes or to increase physical or intellectual performance" there is room for actual rational debate on the ethics of experimentation with humanity's biological programming.

  • I think this ruling is a bit too "convenient".

  • . . .And, are you pondering what **I'm** pondering, Pinky ???

  • Of did you mean other animal...

    You know this is not the 1800s, we are not God's chosen people, nor the only ones who can think/feel, the sun doesn't revolve around us, and we're not superior to other animals, blacks, women, etc., right?
    (We are superior to SJWs though. Just in case you might confuse me with one ;)

  • Brain cells? Waste of time. (Score:3)

    by Dirk Becher ( 1061828 ) on Friday April 09, 2021 @06:43AM (#61254488)

    Judging by deviantart there is a much bigger market for human->animal breast transplants.

  • "The same thing we do every night, try to take over the world!"

  • We should find a way to add human brain cells to humans. We are clearly experiencing a deficit.

  • You start talking about putting human cells in animals and kids will think it's like the dog girl in Fullmetal Alchemist [fandom.com].

  • Is what will erode America's technology lead.

    Eventually, people will ponder if AI will feel pain, and then progress will halt.

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