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.
Totally beyond the ends justifies the means mentality.
Instead you get trolls like in post 51......
Since you don’t know what a nucleotide is, I’d wager LOTS of things are incoherent and beyond you.
Come on —spout me some more hackneyed platitudes, since it spares you the pain of THINKING just a tad.
Exactly what evil, “means” do you think I’m trying to speciously justify...?
I'm not taking that bet -- accusing people of being "trolls" is the last refuge of the incompetent....
Uh...let me check my understanding, here; since my post doesn't say as you do that when genomes intermix they ip so facto CORRUPT each other, then it's beyond the scope of the thread....? That's pretty convenient, don't you think?
Since I don't think what you do I'm irrelevant..?
By that measure the Earth would still be flat:
"Shuttup Mr. Basketball Earth-kook, you're detracting from our well-defined model of the world..."
Here's a solution; why not just keep CC'ing a million folks to come over and pile on, since you can't speak to anything I'm claiming?
**YOU** ARE THE NOOB.
Y-O-U are a noob.
See how easy that was for me? Yes, check me.
See...? I didn’t do that to you, because it didn’t bear on any claim you’d advanced.
Remember —*I* am the evil, unGodly one, right..?
Nobody used the word troll but you.
If the shoe fits.....
At your insistence......
Creating human/animal hybrids, chimeras as they’re known, which is what this thread is about, is immoral and corrupt.
Embryonic stem cell research CAN be done, but is immoral and shouldn’t be done.
Divorcing scientific endeavor from moral constraints and considerations is a recipe for disaster.
You can mock and ridicule and malign and misrepresent in typical liberal evolutionist fashion, but it gets you nowhere. All you did was tip your hand.
Just because something CAN be done, doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be done.
If you don't want people to think that you believe the ends justifies the means, then don't post comments that tell people that you believe it.
We recoded the DNA of an organism that then expressed a protein that had the effect of directing growth of midget kids.
YOU TELL ME HOW THAT’S BAD.
—>YOU TELL ME THAT NOW<—
“It’s bad because ___________”
Fill in the blank.
"Taking part of poo poo, and using it to give normal stature to runts who'd been PICKED ON at school have normal stature is bad cuz ___________"
Fill in da blank.
Now that's funny coming from someone who's knee jerk response to something they don't like is to invoke Nazism.
You gave up the battle with that try.
And not to mention that that it shows up on the very first page of this incarnation's posting history.
Death culture propagandists would like for us to believe that, but there are no data to support it. The available data, and realistic projections would put the global population between 4.7 and 4.9 billion.
"Small-scale farming without high tech can feed about one billion."
Farming without "high tech" is the only thing that possibly can feed the world. "High tech" farming is killing the world rapidly.
You're about twice as ignorant as the average noob.
And the only reason ANY of them are starving is due to socialist totalitarianism.
Farming without "high tech" is the only thing that possibly can feed the world. "High tech" farming is killing the world rapidly.
Because that is the goal.
You're about twice as ignorant as the average noob.
I've long since quit being surprised how stupid the trolls are.
They have to be stupid.
Anyone with more than two brain cells connected can see the flaws in their reasoning.
Theirs must get pretty lonely in there.
While that's true, you don't stop restricting it because others aren't.
Someone has to stand up for what's right somewhere.
//God help us. The end has got to be nearer than we ever imagined.//
I hear you.
This is the stupidest statement I have ever seen on the Internet, and that's saying something.
Obviously, if low-tech farming could possibly support six billion people, the population would have grown to that size during the centuries when low-tech farming was practiced.
No, anymore than I’d quit locking my door just because others don’t or because even locks can be defeated.
The laws of a people are an codification of their morals so that even if they cannot be enforced with 100% effectiveness they still are valuable.
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