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The monkeys in Douglas Munoz’s Kingston lab look like other monkeys. They socialize and move around and eat and drink in the same way. They don’t fall over or stagger around. In fact, the only thing separating the macaques from their unaltered lab mates is the elevated level of a specific human protein implanted inside their brains — proteins that accumulate in the brains of humans with Alzheimer’s disease. The monkeys have been injected with beta-amyloid, a molecule that, in high-enough amounts, is toxic to human brain tissue. Munoz and collaborators are studying the earliest changes in those monkey cerebrums....

A TEAM of stem cell researchers have done the seemingly impossible and successfully combined artificial human cells with the embryo of a chicken in a shock new experiment aimed at trying to better understand developing life. ================================================================================== Until now, scientists have been unable to answer how certain cells in a developing embryo decide to become muscles or limbs, while others become bones and nerves. But now researchers led by Dr Ali Brivanlou, from Rockefeller University in New York, have achieved the unimaginable in a shock experiment. By grafting petri dish-grown human cells onto the embryo of a chicken the scientists...

Editor’s note: Writing in the Journal of Creation in 2015, Dr Kathy Wallace dealt at length with the risks of microchimerism, which is male DNA in women’s bodies. More recently, science journal Nature published a paper on the same subject called Immunological implications of pregnancy-induced microchimerism. It is pleasing to report that it was a creationist scientist who first tackled such a deeply technical subject from a biblical perspective in our peer-reviewed journal. Becoming one flesh by Kathy Wallace Women are at risk from sexual involvement with multiple partners. This can impact their health and increase the risk of miscarriage...

Part human, part pig embryos have been successfully created by scientists for the first time. The embryos, that were grown inside a sow, contained a 'low' amount of human tissue. But it is hoped one day this technique will allow whole organs in the pig to be grown of human cells, to tackle the increasing shortage of organs for transplants. The ‘chimera’, or human-animal hybrid, was created by injecting human stem cells into pig embryos and then implanting them in a sow. The human stem cells grew and formed part of the tissue of the pig embryos, although they did...

A handful of scientists around the United States are trying to do something that some people find disturbing: make embryos that are part human, part animal. The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases. One way would be to use chimera embryos to create better animal models to study how human diseases happen and how they progress. Perhaps the boldest hope is to create farm animals that have human organs that could be transplanted into terminally ill patients. But some scientists and bioethicists worry the creation...

For those of us who remember bits and pieces of Greek mythology, or who play lots of role playing video games, a Chimera was a monstrous hybrid creature often depicted as part lion, part goat, and part snake. In today’s world however Chimeras are very real and in this writer’s humble opinion, very disturbing. The word Chimera today refers most often to animals that are gene spliced with other animals creating a kind of hybrid species. As if this attempt at playing God isn’t alarming enough, human cells are being added to pigs, sheep, goats, mice, and other animals that...

Spiders sprayed with water containing carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes have produced the toughest fibers ever measured, say materials scientists. Spider silk is one of the more extraordinary materials known to science. The protein fiber, spun by spiders to make webs, is stronger than almost anything that humans can make. The dragline silk spiders use to make a web’s outer rim and spokes is amazing stuff. It matches high-grade alloy steel for tensile strength but is about a sixth as dense. It is also highly ductile, sometimes capable of stretching to five times its length. This combination of strength and...

This is bullet-proof human skin - made from spider silk and goat milk. Yes, really. Jalila Essaidi is testing the limits of human endurance, and it starts by having to milk spider-goats. Spider goats are otherwise innocent-looking goats that have been genetically engineered to produce milk packed with the protein made in spider's silk. (There is no definitive proof that this also gives them a propensity to skitter up walls or hide out in your sock drawer, but I think it does.) Once the goats are milked, Essaidi spins the protein into fiber that is ten times stronger than steel,...

Citing the "tremendous potential" of research on human stem cells in nonhuman embryos, scientists and a bioethicist from the Stanford University School of Medicine have co-authored a letter urging the removal of funding restrictions imposed on such research last month by the National Institutes of Health. The researchers believe that work on what are called chimeric embryos is vital to advance our understanding of early human development, further our ability to accurately model devastating diseases and facilitate drug testing to ensure that potential therapies are safe and effective. "Currently, it is impossible to accurately recapitulate human development in vitro, and...

Once upon a time, your origins were easy to understand. Your dad met your mum, they had some fun, and from a tiny fertilised egg you emerged kicking and screaming into the world. You are half your mum, half your dad – and 100% yourself. Except, that simple tale has now become a lot more complicated. Besides your genes from parents, you are a mosaic of viruses, bacteria – and potentially, other humans. Indeed, if you are a twin, you are particularly likely to be carrying bits of your sibling within your body and brain. Stranger still, they may be...

During a two-day meeting in the last week of February, the Food and Drug Administration debated regulating a new technique that combines DNA from three people that would, in theory, create children free of certain inherited diseases. Scientists say these genetically modified embryos, made with the DNA from two biological mothers and one biological father, would potentially allow mothers who carry DNA mutations for conditions like blindness and epilepsy to have children without passing on these defects.The technique — nicknamed “three-parent in vitro fertilization” — is the latest in a long line of controversial scientific procedures regarding fertility and...

PORTLAND, Ore. - Newly published research by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University provides significant new information about how early embryonic stem cells develop and take part in formation of the primate species. The research, which took place at OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center, has also resulted in the first successful birth of chimeric monkeys -- monkeys developed from stem cells taken from two separate embryos. The research will be published this week in the online edition of the journal Cell and will be published in a future printed copy of the journal. The research was conducted to...

  Cryonics. Neural implants. Designer babies. Welcome to the future of transhumanism. This energetic movement, comprising thousands of adherents, actively promotes the enhancement of humans via cybernetics, genetics, medicine, surgery, nanotechnology, and a full panoply of other scientific advancements. This enhancement would, according to Nick Bostrom's "Transhumanist Declaration," seek to advocate "the moral right for those who wish to do so to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives. [They] seek personal growth beyond [their] current biological limitations" (see www.transhumanism.org).   This may sound like science fiction, but the...

Regarding the Instruction Dignitas PersonaeAim In recent years, biomedical research has made great strides, opening new possibilities for the treatment of disease, but also giving rise to serious questions which had not been directly treated in the Instruction Donum vitae (22 February 1987).  A new Instruction, which is dated 8 September 2008, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, seeks to provide some responses to these new bioethical questions, as these have been the focus of expectations and concerns in large sectors of society.  In this way, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeks both...

A RACE of half-man, half-beast “humanzees” could be created under new fertility laws, MPs were warned last night. Loopholes would let scientists fertilise animals with human sperm, the Commons was told during a debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Tory MP Nadine Dorries claimed it would revive memories of Soviet tyrant Stalin’s attempt to create the “ultimate soldier” in the 1920s by cross-breeding humans and apes. Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson conjured up the spectre of a monster from Greek legend, saying: “The image that people find most abhorrent is of scientists producing GM babies or cloned adults...

London, Oct 24, 2008 / 04:45 am (CNA).- In what one pro-life leader called a “deadly day in the history of Britain,” the House of Commons on Wednesday approved legislation allowing scientists to create animal-human hybrids for medical research. The bill also allows the creation of “savior siblings” genetically matched to sick siblings and eases access to in-vitro fertilization (IVF) for lesbians and single women by eliminating requirements for clinics to consider a child’s need for a father.The Human Embryology and Fertilization Bill passed by 355 votes to 129, Agence France Presse reports. The bill now heads to the House...

The Times of London May 19, 2008 MPs back creation of human-animal embryos The amendment to ban all admixed embryos was defeated by 336 votes to 176. The prohibition on true hybrids was defeated by 286 votes to 223 Mark Henderson and Francis Elliott British scientists will be allowed to research devastating diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s using human-animal embryos, after the House of Commons tonight rejected a ban. An amendment to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill that would have outlawed the creation of “human admixed embryos” for medical research was defeated in a free vote by a...

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has provoked furious dissent from MPs and Church leaders. Hybrid embryos The Bill permits the creation of hybrid or "chimera" embryos, where human DNA is inserted into an animal cell for research. Implanting them into a woman or animal will be forbidden and embryos must be discarded after use. Pro-life campaigners and Catholic leaders are bitterly opposed. Abortion The Bill has provisions to allow amendments to the Abortion Act 1967. MPs are expected to push for a reduction of the 24-week limit to 20. Embryo screening Embryos created in fertility treatment can be screened...

If you've been laughing at those Neanderthal presidential candidates who still don't believe in evolution, it's time to sober up. Every serious scientist knows we evolved from animals. The question now is whether to put our DNA and theirs back together. We've been transplanting baboon hearts, pig valves and other animal parts into people for decades. We've derived stem cells by inserting human genomes into rabbit eggs. We've created mice that have human prostate glands. We've made sheep that have half-human livers. Last week, Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences reported that scientists have created "thousands of examples of transgenic animals"...

Human-animal hybrid embryos conceived in the laboratory - so-called “chimeras” - should be regarded as human and their mothers should be allowed to give birth to them, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday. Under draft Government legislation to be debated by Parliament later this year, scientists will be given permission for the first time to create such embryos for research as long as they destroy them within two weeks. But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to...