Posted on 03/15/2005 10:00:29 AM PST by mojito
What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious experiment recently carried out by a team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University. Scientists injected human brain cells into mouse foetuses, creating a strain of mice that were approximately 1% human. Weissman is considering a follow-up that would produce mice whose brains are 100% human.
What if the mice escaped the lab and began to proliferate? What might be the ecological consequences of mice who think like human beings, let loose in nature? Weissman says that he would keep a tight rein on the mice, and if they showed any signs of humanness he would kill them. Hardly reassuring.
Experiments like the one that produced a partially humanised mouse stretch the limits of human tinkering with nature to the realm of the pathological.
The new research field at the cutting edge of the biotech revolution is called chimeric experimentation. Researchers around the world are combining human and animal cells and creating chimeric creatures that are part-human, part-animal.
The first chimeric experiment occurred many years ago when scientists in Edinburgh fused a sheep and goat embryo - two unrelated animal species that are incapable of mating and producing a hybrid offspring. The resulting creature, called a geep, was born with the head of a goat and the body of a sheep.
Now, scientists have their sights trained on breaking the final taboo in the natural world - crossing humans and animals to create new human-animal hybrids. Already, aside from the humanised mouse, scientists have created pigs with human blood and sheep with livers and hearts that are mostly human.
The experiments are designed to advance medical research. Indeed, a growing number of genetic engineers argue that human-animal hybrids will usher in a golden era of medicine. Researchers say that the more humanised they can make research animals, the better able they will be to model the progression of human diseases, test new drugs, and harvest tissues and organs for transplantation. What they fail to mention is that there are equally promising and less invasive alternatives to these bizarre experiments, including computer modeling, in vitro tissue culture, nanotechnology, and prostheses to substitute for human tissue and organs.
Some researchers are speculating about human-chimpanzee chimeras - creating a humanzee. This would be the ideal laboratory research animal because chimpanzees are so closely related to us. Chimps share 98% of the human genome, and a fully mature chimp has the equivalent mental abilities and consciousness of a four-year-old human.
Fusing a human and chimpanzee embryo - which researchers say is feasible - could produce a creature so human that questions regarding its moral and legal status would throw 4,000 years of ethics into chaos. Would such a creature enjoy human rights? Would it have to pass some kind of "humanness" test to win its freedom? Would it be forced into doing menial labour or be used to perform dangerous activities?
The possibilities are mind-boggling. For example, what if human stem cells - the primordial cells that turn into the body's 200 or so cell types - were to be injected into an animal embryo and spread throughout the animal's body into every organ? Some human cells could migrate to the testes and ovaries where they could grow into human sperm and eggs. If two of the chimeric mice were to mate, they could potentially conceive a human embryo. If the human embryo were to be removed and implanted in a human womb, the resulting human baby's biological parents would have been mice.
Please understand that none of this is science fiction. The National Academy of Sciences, America's most august scientific body, is expected to issue guidelines for chimeric research some time next month, anticipating a flurry of new experiments in the burgeoning field of human-animal chimeric experimentation.
Bioethicists are already clearing the moral path for human-animal chimeric experiments, arguing that once society gets past the revulsion factor, the prospect of new, partially human creatures has much to offer the human race. And, of course, this is exactly the kind of reasoning that has been put forth to justify what is fast becoming a journey into a brave new world in which all of nature can be ruthlessly manipulated. But now, with human-animal chimeric experiments, we risk even undermining our own species' biological integrity in the name of human progress.
With chimeric technology, scientists have the power to rewrite the evolutionary saga - to sprinkle parts of our species into the rest of the animal kingdom as well as fuse parts of other species with our own genome and even to create new human sub-species and super-species. Are we on the cusp of a biological renaissance, or sowing the seeds of our destruction?
> This was a punishment for rape.
It was also a punishment for smacking your father. Or even giving him lip.
Now, do you think it'd be ok if someone killed their child for sassing them?
Interesting. Thanks for the help on that one.
It sure would get the OTHERS attention: don't you think!
Tradition says that the death penalty was never exercised for that particular offense. Though, it probably would have prevented a lot of other crimes if it had been...
I think that killing your child; JUST BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO BE BORN; is legal in this country.
Now then; let's make some MORE comparisons; shall we??
OK. Exodus 31:15: Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.
What did you do last Saturday?
>Response 2: So... breeding better moo-cows is a sin? How about dog breeding? <
I looked up the passage in my Amplified Bible and it says:
" ... You shall not let your domestic animals breed with a different kind [of animal]; ..."
The Amplified version of the Bible is to reveal an English meaning equivalent to each key Hebrew/Greek word.
Rabbit-human chimeras were made years ago.... Pass the Minotaur gravy.
> " ... You shall not let your domestic animals breed with a different kind [of animal]; ..."
OK, so instead of breeding a good milk cow with a good meat cow, they're talking about breeding a cow with a horse.
Ummm... ever known a cow to breed with a horse?
> Tradition says that the death penalty was never exercised for that particular offense.
If tradition trumps the word of God, then something is wrong somewhere...
ROFL!
Agreed. The parents were too lenient. Like today's parents, only hopefully not as bad.
According to 'Unlimited Access', Hatellary Rodhamster was the original chimeric 'mad cow'.
I don't believe that Jesus declared that the old law would apply forever. How could He, when at the last supper He declared that "this is the New Covenant in my blood...". If He declares that a new covenant is coming, He must mean that the old one is passing away.
If you're thinking of Matthew 5:18 ("For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished."), then I would like to point out that "all" was accomplished, when Jesus died on the cross.
If that's not what you're thinking of, I'd like to know where in the Bible Jesus says that the Law would apply forever.
TChris is correct when he says that the Law was given to a "particular people" (the Israelites) "in a particular time" (the time from the giving of the law to the death and resurrection of Christ).
This could work better than freezing your head after you die:
Once someone is terminally ill, have scientists take a sample of his genetic material to make a chimpanzee they can transplant his head to until the day science can make you a new human body for him.
> If you're thinking of Matthew 5:18 ("For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished."), then I would like to point out that "all" was accomplished, when Jesus died on the cross.
And did heaven and Earth pass away? I seem to have missed that.
Of course, there're also this nuggest of forever:
Deut 18:19 All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the LORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the LORD unto thee and to thy seed with thee.
And one must explain away Jesus saying:
Luke 16:17 And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
No, heaven and earth have not yet passed away, but the whole law was fulfilled in Jesus. What He was saying was that the Law was more "solid" than even heaven and earth, and would last until He fulfilled it.
Numbers 18:19 uses that "covenant" word again. You know, the one that was dissolved when Jesus died and rose again? With the demise of the old law, the system of sacrifices and the office of an Aaronic priesthood were done away with. We could, therefore, conclude that "forever" meant for as long as God chose to sustain the Aaronic priesthood, and that the terms of the agreement were fulfilled.
Luke 16:17 His assertion was that it would be easier to destroy heaven and earth than it would be to cause God's Law to fail. The law did not fail. Jesus fulfilled the old law and gave us a new covenant in it's place.
A world turn upside down.
Well, sheesh yourself. This is a horror and a cruelty; not a medical treatment.
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