Posted on 04/10/2021 4:11:14 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Experiments that create tiny brainlike structures from human stem cells or transplant human cells into an animal’s brain have made some scientists, ethicists, and religious leaders uneasy in recent years. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has restricted some of this research. Now, a U.S. scientific panel has weighed in with advice about how to oversee this controversial and fast-moving area of neuroscience.
The report was requested by NIH, together with the Dana Foundation, which funds neuroscience research. It arrives as NIH ponders whether to lift a moratorium on funding chimera experiments—studies that create animals carrying human tissues or cells—that has been in place since 2015, even after NIH announced it would be lifted. The moratorium on chimera research suspended not only brain studies, but also projects that aim to grow organs for transplantation in pigs and sheep.
The committee examined three types of experiments: those that create neural organoids, tiny clusters of human brain cells in a dish sometimes called minibrains; those involving neural transplants, which add human cells to the brains of animals; and those that create chimeras, a type of transplant in which stem cells from one species are injected into the early developing embryo of another. Such experiments have raised concerns that the animals or organoids may have primitive forms of consciousness or feelings.
But the committee concluded organoids aren’t capable of consciousness because they lack the many cell types and connected structures of a brain. Even recent organoid experiments that claimed to detect brain waves similar to those in a fetus found “relatively nonspecific” signals, Sanes says—the panel didn’t find this work ethically troublesome
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
And, what could go wrong?
Josef Mengele would be so proud
“Ethics Committee” = Rubber Stamp; the “White Washed Tomb.”
Don’t these people watch science fiction movies.
In other words, Fauci will now get one of his pet contractors to send NIH research dollars to secret China labs.
Fauci And the NIH again, didn’t learn a lesson
Human brain cells to animals? Are they trying to make animals stupider?
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