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UK scientists, who want to mix human and animal cells in order to find cures for degenerative diseases, have had permission for their research delayed so that the ethical issues can be subject to public consultation (Guardian Unlimited). Scientists from Kings College, London, have applied for a licence for hybrid stem cell work on motor neurone disease. A second team from Newcastle University have applied to research how different tissues grow in the body. But after consideration of whether the two research requests came under its remit, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) recently decided that there are currently...

California supporters of stem cell research are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Yesterday, the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco rejected a lawsuit that has been delaying full operations at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Although the case could still make its way to the state supreme court, CIRM proponents are confident the institute has overcome is last major legal hurdle. The creation of CIRM was approved by voters in November 2004 as a way to get around federally imposed limits on research with human embryonic stem (ES) cells (ScienceNOW, 6 October...

LONDON, February 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British government’s plans to ban the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos are over after a group of 45 scientists, ethicists and politicians published an open letter in January saying that a ban would hold back the advancement of British science.   The Times reports that the government is now dropping plans to ban the experiments and will instead offer funding for a public debate before new legislation is drafted.   The open letter, published in the Times in response to the government’s December 2006 announcement that it planned to draft legislation to ban...

English tabloids are nothing if not colorful, but recently they’ve outdone themselves, splashing images of bizarre genetic mixtures of humans with rabbits and cows across their front pages, derisively dubbed “Franken-bunnies” and “moo-tants” by the headline writers of Fleet Street. The frenzy was triggered by England’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which is pondering the legality of “chimeras,” meaning organisms that carry both human and animal genes. Such creatures may seem like science fiction, but in less spectacular form they’re already common, from cows injected with human stem cells in order to produce a human protein in their milk, which...

In the contest for oddest pronouncement in a State of the Union address, high marks should go to President Bush’s call last January for a national ban on “creating human-animal hybrids.” Fortunately, the modern biotech laboratory does not yet resemble H.G. Wells’s island of Dr. Moreau, that fictional place where an exiled scientist blends man and beast by vivisection. Not even our most skillful, least scrupulous genetic engineers can manufacture humanzees to provide spare parts or serve as semi-skilled labor. We are not yet so talented or so depraved. Yet the President’s call to action did not come out of...

A child's need for a father will no longer be a consideration when a woman seeks fertility treatment, ministers will say this week. The move – which comes despite widespread public opposition and which will give single women and lesbians the right to treatment – forms part of a shake-up of Britain's embryology laws. One of the key proposals would allow research on test-tube embryos that were part-human, part-animal — referred to as "chimeras". The changes, which ministers say have "fundamental social, legal and ethical aspects", are set out in a Department of Health "command paper" seen by The Sunday...

Creating 'human-animals' for research Ethics report endorses mingling human cells with lesser beings Sunday, May 1, 2005 Posted: 0316 GMT (1116 HKT) 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...

Outlawing human/animal chimeras will hurt serious research Last year, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan) introduced the Human Chimera Prohibition Act. The act is cosponsored by his fellow conservatives Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev), Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla) and Sen. Richard Santorum (R-Penn). The aim of the act is to ban various types of research in which human cells and genetic material are mixed with animal cells and genes. Why? Because the act claims, "respect for human dignity and the integrity of the human species may be threatened by chimeras." Violations of the Act would be punishable by fines of $1 million or...

Scientists have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal. In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects. Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare. An eminent committee of American scientists will call for restrictions into the research, saying the outcome of such studies cannot be predicted and may in fact produce subjects with a 'super-animal' intelligence. The high-powered committee of animal behaviourists, lawyers, philosophers, bio-ethicists and neuro-scientists was established...

I love chimeras. I've seen just about every werewolf, Dracula and mermaid movie ever made, I have a Medusa magnet on my refrigerator, and the Sphinx of Greek mythology is a role model for her lethal brand of mystery. So when chimeras reared up in science news, I grabbed my disintegrating copy of Edith Hamilton's "Mythology" to refresh my memory on the Chimera, the she-monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail: "A fearful creature, great and swift of foot and strong/Whose breath was flame unquenchable." Bellerophon, "a bold and beautiful young man" on flying Pegasus,...

If you had just created a mouse with human brain cells, one thing you wouldn't want to hear the little guy say is, "Hi there, I'm Mickey." Even worse, of course, would be something like, "Get me out of this &%#!! body!" It's been several millennia since Greek mythology dreamed up the chimera, a creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent. Research on the chimera front was pretty quiet for 2,500 years. But then in 1984 scientists announced that they had merged embryonic goat cells with embryonic sheep cells,...

Fri, Apr. 29, 2005BusinessweekGenetic mingling mixes human, animal cells The Associated Press /RENO, Nev. By PAUL ELIAS AP Biotechnology Writer   RENO, Nev. - 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.

RENO, Nev. - 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...

RENO, Nev. - On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over . 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...

<p>RENO, Nev. - 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.</p> <p>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.</p>

Need a liver? Raise a sheep - Organ growing in animals raises ethical concerns By Robert Bazell Correspondent Updated: 7:27 p.m. ET April 25, 2005RENO, Nev. - In ancient mythology, chimeras were part animal, part human — imaginary creatures that took many forms. Now scientists are actually creating them. The new creations may look like sheep, but they are part human. "They're sheep still," says Dr. Esmail Zanjani with the University of Nevada. "But they have significant amounts of human cells in their different organs."

xcept for the three million human brain cells injected into his cranium, XO47 is just an average green vervet monkey. He weighs about 12 pounds and measures 34 inches from the tip of his tail to the sutured incision on the top of his head. His fur is a melange of black, yellow and olive, with white underparts and a coal-black face. Until his operation, two days before I met him, he was skittering about an open-air enclosure on the grounds of a biomedical facility on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts. Afterward, he was caged in a hut shared...

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...

Mad Science: Stanford to Create Rat with Human Brain 03/10/2005 Those who thought stem cell research was about helping people afflicted with disease may become alarmed over Stanford’s latest experiment, reported by the UK News Telegraph: the creation of a lab rat with all human brain cells. The article quotes Wesley Smith of Centre for Bioethics and Culture warning, “biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control,” and writing, “Scientists are engaging in increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition.” Actor Michael J. Fox uses a mouse puppet to encourage popular support for...

It will look like any ordinary mouse, but for America's scientists a tiny animal threatens to ignite a profound ethical dilemma.In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells. Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells. In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human. Prof Irving...