Human-animal hybrids
The Associated Press

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Featured Topic | Posted 22 weeks 3 days ago

Should human-animal hybrids be allowed?

A team at Newcastle University announced yesterday that it had successfully generated “admixed embryos” by adding human DNA to empty cow eggs in the first experiment of its kind in Britain. Such embryos are hailed by scientists as an opportunity to help treat conditions such as Parkinson’s and diabetes. Opponents, though, describe the work as “experiments of Frankenstein proportion." Should human-animal hybrid embryos be allowed?

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Ben likes: Life or lifestyle?

Dr. Helen Watt/The Linacre Centre

The logic of production is freely carried out in the treatment of manufactured embryos, though tellingly the State wants some control over the kind of offspring parents may accept. The sinister concept of the ‘permitted’ embryo, and the permission for embryos to be ‘preferred’ for transfer as healthy, but not as sick or disabled, are obvious examples. Not everyone is welcome in the libertarian Brave New World.  

The brutal disregarding of the respect and reverence due to human procreation is continued in allowing human material to be used to substitute for animal sperm or ova or their parts. Whatever the risk of creating actual human embryos -- which depends on the specific technique -- it devalues human procreation to interact this way with animal reproductive processes. 

What can be done?  We can fight for amendments that prohibit abuses, or mitigate their effects -- without, however, telling anyone how to plan, or carry out, such abuses. An example would be birth certificates, which can and should record donor conception, for the benefit of any child conceived.  At the end of the line, we can oppose the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, braving any repercussions this involves, and supporting others with any repercussions they experience.  And, of course, we can pray.

 

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Joel likes: It's science, not a freak show

New York Times

We are already partly down the path of mixing human and animal cells or organs. Although it once seemed odd and unsettling, no one worries much anymore about transplanting pig valves into human hearts or human fetal tissue into mice. The key reason may be that these manipulations don't visibly change the fundamental nature of either the human or the animal. People become much more concerned when they think a transplant may alter the mind or appearance of the recipient. Nobody seems eager for a human with an animal tail, or an animal with human hands or sensibilities.

Fortunately, real-world scientists have much more prosaic experiments in mind. In the superheated area of embryonic stem cell research, for example, they want to put lots of human-brain stem cells into mice to see how they perform in a real body as opposed to a laboratory culture, possibly shedding light on how to treat neurological diseases. The researchers appear to be proceeding cautiously, and the scientific community is erecting ethical barriers to guide such research. This is hardly a freak show.

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