Creating 'Human-Animals' For Research. (Sheeple)

[Dover]

Creating 'human-animals' for research
Ethics report endorses mingling human cells with lesser beings

Saturday, April 30, 2005

RENO, Nevada (AP) -- On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab.

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 the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.

In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.

The National Academies -- private, nonprofit agencies chartered by Congress to provide public advice on science and technology -- consist of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.

But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent....cont'd


http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/04/29/human.animal.mixing.ap/index.html

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WHAT'S AT STAKE

THE ISSUE: The biological co-mingling of animal and human is evolving into exotic and unsettling human-animal hybrids that bring to mind the chimeras of ancient myth.

THE RESEARCH: Scientists have created pigs with human blood, mice with brain cells and rabbit eggs fused with human genetic material.

THE CONCERNS: Critics worry that one of these experiments could create an animal with human traits, especially in work where human and animal brain cells are co-mingled.

THE SOLUTION: The National Academies, in a recent report, said mixing human and animal cells could be vital to advancing medicine. But the Academies recommend that each proposed experiment be first reviewed by an ethics board created at each research institution. It also proposed banning the mixing human embryonic stem cells with monkey and other primate embryos.

-- The Associated Press


PROPOSED RULES
National Academies recommendations on human-animal experiments:

• Each research institution should form a special committee to oversee human embryonic stem cell research and approve any proposed experiments for human-animal hybrids.

• Extra scrutiny must be given to experiments that involve inserting human cells into animal brains to prevent "higher order" brain functions.

• Mixing of human and animal brain cells require "more investigation" and should be handled with "due care."

• Bans should be in place on the breeding of human-animal hybrids and the injection of human embryonic stem cells into monkey and other primate embryos.

-- The Associated Press

[iconoclastic cat]

1. It's the Pigman!

[Spinzonner]

2. Breeding more Republican voters is definitely a bad thing

[JitterbugPerfume]

3. can 'o worms

I will have to think about this one carefully

[Champion Jack]

6. Ha!

[doodadem]

4. Island of Dr. Moreau

Here we come!

[Spinzonner]

5. But maybe 'Island of Dr Dolittle' too

Of course we may not like hearing what they have to say

[Massacure]

7. I always wished Mr. Ed was real!!!

[Imperialism Inc.]

8. That's interesting that they would single out primates for ban.

I wonder why that is. I guess maybe it is because they already have some "higher order brain functions". Sort of makes you realize how arbitrary the distinctions are in the first place.