If the U.S. doesn't move quickly to regulate the new trend of interspecies cloning, it's safe to say that researchers will experiment until the cows come home. In the U.K., some already have. Since human eggs are in short supply, researchers in Britain applied for permission to create human-cow embryos. In America, scientists are not even required to ask for permission--because no such restrictions exist!
At the University of Nevada, Professor Esmail Zanjani has joined the ranks of Harvard and Yale scientists who have taken advantage of the lack of government scrutiny. This week, Zanjani announced that his team has created the world's first human-sheep chimera, whose cellular make-up is 15% human and 85% animal. Although Zanjani promises that the technique will give rise to a new source of organ donors, there's no telling what complications will result from the hybrid.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of ethical complications in this amoral frontier. Research like this has created a legal and moral vacuum that Congress should fill with guidance and oversight. Join us in urging your leaders to ban creation of animal-human hybrids.
Comments (2)
This is very cool technology. Xenotransplantation has been a medical dream for decades, but noone has managed to solve the rejection problems. If solving them takes chimeras, its well worth it - it would be a real medical revolution. A lot of lives would be saved.
Its still a long way from readyness, but the potential benefits are more than enough to justify working on the problem for decades, if nessicary.
March 27, 2007 4:55 AM | Comment Permalink
Oh the horror. Those scientists are doing something that I cannot show will actually do any harm and most likely will save countless lives. Maybe if I show a picture of a chimera it would scare people. Even in the picture as long as that animal has the brain of a cow, who is really being hurt by it?
March 27, 2007 10:05 AM | Comment Permalink