Posted on 06/04/2010 2:30:34 PM PDT by nickcarraway
In the new movie "Splice," a human-animal hybrid terrorizes people. In real life, scientists argue mixing human and animal cells could save lives.
Dren, the half-human, half-animal hybrid set to terrorize Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley in the new movie "Splice," is pure science fiction, but politicians across the country aren't taking any chances.
In the last month Ohio and Arizona have both passed laws forbidding research of animal human hybrids.
Proponents of the laws fear Dren-like creations and object morally to the combining human and animal cells. But scientists say the research could lead to cure for AIDS, immunize people against cancer, or grow replacement organs.
The potential for medical cures or advances is huge, said Esmail Zanjani, a scientist at the University of Nevada Reno who has created sheep that produce livers that are up to 20 percent human.
"But just because we can do something doesn't mean we should," said Zanjani. "We need to have a full discussion with the public," about this kind of research.
In a recent interview, "Splice" director Vincenzo Natali said that his inspiration for "Splice" was the earmouse, a 1995 experiment where scientists grew a large, human-shaped ear from cow cells grown on the back of a hairless mouse.
Despite the fact that no human cells were used in the ear mouse (the scientists placed cow cells on a polymer shaped like the human ear), the research sparked controversy and raised hopes that replacement organs would soon be available.
Since then research into animal human hybrids, or chimeras (after the lion, goat, and snake creature from Greek mythology) has exploded. Over the last 15 years scientists have created sheep with human livers and pancreas cells, mice with human immune systems, and many other combinations of human and animal cells.
None of the modern chimeras look like something out of Dr. Moreau's menagerie. They look like normal animals. The difference is on the inside.
The blood flowing through their veins could be human. The liver or kidneys could contain discrete human liver or kidney cells. These are not transgenic animals, said Zanjani. They are discrete cells, either animal or human. The DNA is not mixed.
If a human had, say, hepatitis, and their liver was dying, scientists could extract liver cells from that person, insert them into a developing sheep, and then harvest a human liver, made from a person's own cells (to reduce the chance of organ rejection), and replace the old liver.
Infected cells can't fight off an infection, whether it is HIV or some other disease. But if uninfected human stem cells were placed in an animal's body, scientists could train those cells to recognize and fight off the infection.
Once they are ready, the cells would be harvested from the animal and introduced back into the original human's body. There the retrained immune cells would fight off the infection.
The same technique could work for cancer, said Jeffery Platt, a scientist at the University of Michigan exploring this very scenario.
Millions of lives could be saved using human-animal hybrids, say scientists, but some people have strong moral objections to mixing human and animal cells. Earlier this week the Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 243, which prohibits "the creation, transportation, or receipt of a human-animal hybrid, the transfer of a nonhuman embryo into a human womb, and the transfer of a human embryo into a nonhuman womb."
Anyone who violates the new law could spend five years in prison and face up to a quarter million dollars in fines. Other states, including Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arizona have also banned research into chimeras.
National governments have also stepped in. The United Kingdom approved chimera research in 2008, when it granted a Newcastle University stem cell scientist Lyle Armstrong a permit to use cow eggs filled with human DNA to develop therapies for Parkinson's disease and stroke victims. (All cow DNA would be removed before the human DNA would be inserted.)
Canada bans all chimera research, but the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009 failed to pass the U.S. Congress.
Fears about new technology are nothing new, said Platt; the advent of railroads sparked controversy about how fast the human body was meant to travel. Nor are they unnatural; people fear what they don't know. But the potential of chimera research to save millions of lives should also be added to the equation.
"Where it becomes a problem is if government responses with undue constraints that are not justified," said Platt.
Genesis Chapter 6. Why do you think the world had to be flooded out....
OK so you don’t know what nucleotides are, right?
OK I’ll be more specific:
Word are composed of letters, yes? Sequences of letters. In the manner that songs are composed of a great number of musical notes. You would admit this?
I’m not terribly musical, but suppose that the very simple song, “chopsticks” does contain the musical note, middle C, OK? Suppose that.
Now let’s say Mozart likewise has a song that contains the musical note middle C —following me?
Would you say that the act of “borrowing” middle C from “chopsticks” and putting it into this more sophisticated song has the effect of POLLUTING and ADULTERATING the more sophisticated song?
Cuz:
We have reprogrammed E. coli to make insulin, ok? We snipped in DNA sequences to make a slightly altered organism. This made insulin for diabetics. And with similar mechanisms growth hormone was made to make stunted kids grow properly.
You grow it up, and then harvest the protein, and inject it into patients —done alll the time. The same basic principle is used at community colleges, even (though without injections, obviously).
And not only was that good and commercially valuable, but I didn’t think of this new E. coli as being evil, or somehow less “E. coli”-like.
I didn’t hate the E. coli, but it was happy to be my medicine slave. It never complained or anything, and it did it’s job (?) well.
It was in the garden, and.....it seemed almost like I was SUPPOSED to pick it up and use it.
NeoCaveman: “Why do you think the world had to be flooded out....”
Because man was using animals for medical purposes???
A case of genetics gone horribly wrong.
gaijin: “It was in the garden, and.....it seemed almost like I was SUPPOSED to pick it up and use it.”
There are all sorts of things in nature that people COULD say are evil. What about splitting the atom? Clearly mankind is NOT supposed to split the atom. That’s tearing apart what God put together, right?
No. Again, scripture is a trustworthy guide on this as well as many other issues. Not only that, but scripture is complete. In other words, it contains all guidance necessary to live a righteous life.
I don’t understand how genetic engineering violates the supreme commandments:
Love God with all your heart, mind and soul.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
If my fellow Christian’s can point to something in scripture that says man is not permitted to do this or that it’s evil to want to cure people or earn a living, then I’ll follow it.
A gun is just a gun. It can be used for evil or good. Should we eliminate all guns because people use them to murder or people build them to make money? I don’t think so. Guns also defend us and protect us. What matters is what comes out of the heart of the user.
Corrupted DNA from mating of humans and giants.
[cue “Dueling Banjos”]
Instead, why not work towards growing my new liver in place with either my own DNA or that of a close family member with a healthy liver history?
God said if you get appendicitis, you die in hideous agony.
Man said if you get appendicitis, we'll cut it out for you.
I'm taking the latter option.
Where have I heard this "race purity" stuff before?
There are about six billion people in the world.
Small-scale farming without high tech can feed about one billion.
What's your proposed alternative? Everybody play Russian Roulette with five loaded chambers?
Yep. This sort of "Frankenstein Complex" is, at root, no different from leftist hatred of "Big Business" -- in both cases, it's simply mindless lashing out at something one doesn't understand so that there's something (other than one's own mistakes) to blame when things go wrong.
I am reminded of a picture I once saw of an anti-biotech protestor. She was holding up a sign reading "NO DNA IN OUR FOOD!"
As I noted above, this procedure does not involve any moral concerns (unlike, for example, embryonic stem cell research, which does raise obvious moral issues).
In fact, ignoring any promising means to cure disease would itself be immoral, for obvious reasons.
Bro that's HILARIOUS..!!! You owe me a new keyboard..! hahahahah!
Hey, noob. Don't even try going there.
BTW, interesting posting history you have there. Things dull over at DU? Suicide run or something?
You know about zots on your first post ever?
What was your previous screen name?
You never provided any Scriptural reference to back up your statement in post 30.
“You..you are saying that God did not say that everything in the Garden of Eden is for mankind?”
What the rest of your irrelevant post has to do with the moral considerations of corrupting humans or animals with each other’s DNA has to do with the topic of this thread, is beyond me.
The ends does not justify the means.
Nobody said technology is evil. A strawman if I ever saw one.
God giving man dominion over the planet is not a license to engage in immoral pursuits.
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