Will Scientists Create "Manimals"? Human-Animal Embryos Get Approval

British scientists will be allowed to research diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s using human-animal hybrid embryos, after the House of Commons rejected a ban recently. Advocates of human-animal embryo research say that scientists need every available means possible to research devastating diseases. Critics, on the other hand, say that scientists are promoting a frightening and irreversible future.

The main kinds of mixed embryo permitted by the Bill are “cytoplasmic hybrids” or “cybrids”, which are made by moving a human nucleus into an empty animal egg. These are genetically 99.9 per cent human. It allows true hybrids, chimeras that combine human and animal cells, and transgenic human embryos that include animal DNA.

Edward Leigh, British Member of Parliament for Gainsborough, who supported the amendment to ban all human-animal embryos, said that mingling animal and human DNA crossed an “ultimate boundary”. He says exaggerated claims give patients false hope while the dangers of the research are not being considered.

“In many ways we are like children playing with landmines without any concept of the dangers of the technology we are handling,” Leigh said.

At this point, it is legal to culture admixed embryos up to 14 days, but illegal to transfer them to a human or animal womb. But many scientists around the globe want permission to keep embryos alive longer, perhaps even to full term through implantation. Cornell scientists Nikica Zaninovic, who helped create the worlds first genetically modified human embryo says that in order to be sure that a new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally want to keep growing the embryo and carry out further tests.

But ethicists worry that by approving human-animal embryos, lawmakers are opening the door to a future of “enhanced” or “mutant” humans that have animal traits. It is even thought possible to so drastically alter human genomes that a type of superhuman species could emerge.

In theory, the bio-fusion options are limitless. Any gene that exists in another species could be brought over to a human cell. Imagine some of the incredible traits of the animal kingdom that some humans don’t possess such as night vision, amazing agility, or the ability to breath underwater. The precedence for these types of radical changes is already in place. Experimental mice, for example, were successfully given the human ability to see in color. If animals can be engineered to have human traits, then humans can certainly be mutated to have “desirable” animal traits.

The fear with germline engineering is that since it is inheritable, offspring and all succeeding generations would carry the modified traits. This is one reason why this type of engineering is currently banned- it could lead to irreversible alteration of the entire human species!

Ethics, not scientific limitations, is the real brick wall at this point. Most scientists believe manipulating genes in order to make an individual healthy is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. But some are against even that notion, arguing that historically amazing individuals have sometimes been plagued by genetic mental and physical disorders, which inadvertently shaped the greatness of their lives. Should we rob the human race of character shaping frailty? Very few scientists would dare to publicly endorse the idea of using genetic engineering to make a normal, healthy individuals somehow superior to the rest of the human race.

Athletes, on the other hand, might feel differently. In theory, the single most effective way to radically alter your physical capacities is to manipulate your genes. Authorities are already worried that “genetic doping” will become widespread in the world of athletic competition. Now that we’ve mapped out the human genome and identified exactly which genes make you buff, tough and rough—experts say it’s only a matter of time.

Gene doping could spawn athletes capable of out-running, out-jumping and out-cycling even the world’s greatest champions. However, researchers are attempting to prevent that from happening by detecting the first cases of gene doping in professional athletes before the practice becomes mainstream.

“WADA has had a research program in place for some years now, to try to develop tests for gene-based doping,” said Theodore Friedmann, M.D., head of the agency’s panel on genetic doping and director of the gene therapy program at the University of California, San Diego.

But if the past history of traditional steroid doping is any indication of the future, some people—including athletes, doctors, and scientists—will likely break the rules.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

Comments

[B.B.]

If I had to pick, I'd be half dolphin. Yeah, it would be an ugly combo for sure, but I've always been curious about what it would be like to live in the ocean.

[Cliff Carrington]

Great article, but what has it to do with my wife's painting?(Jenny Carrington, oil on canvess) Granted Ancient Egyptians did imagine transgenic gods, but the painting is more about Plato's Forms.

Cliff Carrington

[eyegab]

This is a sad situation. Humans being able to breathe underwater without compressed air. Able to dig in the earth without tools, able to float in the air without wings. Hmmm.

Nope. Don't think it will be allowed. The creator will destroy anything like that before it gets a chance to actually come into existence. So. If there is no creator, all of these monsters will exist, in triplicate. If there is a creator we face ultimate judgement now. THIS YEAR. BANG, and DONE.

[Gloria Rivera]

The Creator will destroy all and start all over again as before.

[Kenneth Schortgen Jr]

Here is the key however.

What we hear in public... has really been going on for several years. MK-Ultra and mind control went on without any Congressional approval for over a decade, and wouldnt have been made public unless an insider spilled the beans.

Same with technology. By the time the public learns of stealth technology, it is already old and updated a generation or two.

I can almost gaurantee there are cloned humans out there, and chimeara hybrids. The US didnt ensure most of the Nazi scientists who were doing these experiments in the 1940's made it to America to continue their work for nothing.

Just watch television and motion pictures. Many of the movies that come out with bizarre, almost fantastical sci-fi themes are actually meant to get into your sub-conscience so you will be desensitized when they eventually bring to light the fact that are, and have been doing it already.

So... it is better to be ahead of the game and realize, when something like this is made public to 'discuss' the ethics of a science... you can be sure that it has already been done, and all they are doing is testing public response to the 'discussion' to measure how and when they can bring what they have ALREADY done into the mainstream.

The greatest example was just last week... the Vatican made a MAJOR release to desensitize the billion or so in the Catholic church that its OK to beleive in, and accept alien species. That means in reality, they already KNOW of, and have made contact with, aliens of some sort... whether they be of a spiritual nature, or physical.

[CK]

I don't think you would want to be a dolphin. Remember the law of the sea. The bigger fish can eat the little fish. All kidding aside, though, this is a pandora's box that should not be opened.

God save us from ourselves!

[Bensenville Butch]

I would be half boring and half stupid. Oh wait....

[Robert Hightendure]

As known to day all are possabile, yet not possabile, We can, but most religus people will not let us. even just manupating a sungle gene. I would say why not? becalse we can help the human species. We are all animas

[Charlotte]

Reminds me of the book of Revelation where the locusts with long hair and a man's face with painful stingers persecute those who accept the Mark of the Beast for five months. Maybe they'll be created in a British laboratory and sent out later to do the work they were created for. God have mercy on us for fooling around with the human and animal gene pool like that.

[Ruth]

I read an article written about 5 years ago on this very subject. Fits perfectly and explains a lot!
http://www.abrieflookattomorrow.com/tainted_seed.htm

[peu]

there is nothing sadder than all these comments about people who think they know what their god wants and doesn't want.

[Manjinder]

This is very interesting, and as curious as I am of the outcome. I dont think we shoud continue with these experiments. I believe we humans are the way nature meant us to be, with desease and plagues an all. We should not be allowed to alter ourselves its just wrong on so many levels. If people keep living and not dying our earth will not able uphold the burden of human kind. My veiw is not a regilous one(although I am a god fearing person) I just think that if we cross boundries we are not meant to cross, MOTHER NATURE is going to give the human species the biggest ass whooping ever!!!

[T.H. Culhane]

I am a religious person. I believe that God created Evolution and that there is a divine entelechy that is driving life forms to pre-adapt themselves to environments that are progressively more challenging until some can escape even the gravity well of Earth, which has been a relatively safe womb for ours and other species, and seed other parts of the galaxy. It doesn't matter to at the end of the day if God's plan to evolve creatures with greater physical and mental abilities than the current version of "Homo sapiens" happens because of random mutations, selected for post-hoc by an ever changing "nature" or by deliberate intention. God already produces chimeras by having viruses splice and dice genes from their hosts. I, for one, would rather see us use the divine gift of intelligence to accelerate and guide the process of evolution. Whether our Earthly environment becomes less hospitable to its current large brained life forms because of global warming, weapons of mass destruction, toxic contaminants or a meteor collision, at some point humans and other mega-fauna are going to have to change and improve their fit with new hostile environments. All the better if we combine our assets, share genes and adaptations that were honed over millions of years by separate species in separate environments, and bring them together for common survival. I truly believe that a loving God would want this fulfillment of His Plan!

[T.H. Culhane]

And with regards to Manjinders idea that Mother Nature is going to give us an "ass whooping", my experience with mother nature is that "she" is always giving species an ass whooping -- that is what natural selection is really all about. I believe that if we don't start using our ability to engineer our genes and combine them with other well-adapted genetic information from other species who successfully survived mother nature's ass whooping over the millenia, then the next big ass whooping we get (from climate change or WMD's) will be our last and we shall go extinct like so many other wonderful life forms that have graced our planet. Combining our genes in "manimal" hybridization may be the only way we can survive the next ass whooping. I am not a God fearing person, by the way, I am a God loving person who fears human stupidity, backwardness, ignorance and superstition. As my many Muslim friends say "there is no God but God, so it is impossible for humans to PLAY God. If God didn't "want" us to use the intelligence he gave us, he wouldn't have permitted us to have it. It is funny to me that so many supposed "Christians" in the Western world think God has forbidden us to learn more about how He operates and to experiment with the laws of nature and creation. To Eastern Christians like me it is a matter of faith that God can only operate THROUGH his creation (which is why he sent Jesus and the prophets), so any creating that must be done must be done by physical beings in the biosphere (which is why sensible Christians believe in Evolution -- God would not violate his own physical laws just to make things simpler for people to explain in nursery school). Having human beings understand and combine genetic information rather than leaving it to the brainless denizens of the ecosystem is very much in keeping with the tenets of our faith in a loving and all knowing God.

[LittleP]

I want a bigger penis, doc.

[noob]

Wo! Finally i'll be druid irl.