Japan to Allow Human-Nonhuman Mixed Cloning

Sara Chan writes: "Japan has decided to allow combined human-animal embryos to be produced through cloning, which could result in mixed-species creatures. The intended purpose is to permit transplant organs to be produced in specially-bred animals. The original story is in a Japanese newspaper, but you can get an English summary here."

Comments

Re:Gigantic moral issues

[Bi()hazard]

Consider for a moment that the chimpanzee shares more than 99% of its DNA with humans. Your first reaction may be, "Phew, I suppose adding human DNA to animal embryos won't have such a drastic effect overall." However, that would be missing the point: miniscule changes in DNA are capable of creating drastic and unpredictable mutations in the resulting organism. Having interned in a biotech lab, I can tell you scientists are well aware of this. Current bioengineered organisms are created using the most conservative methods available. For example, the GE corn is modified only with a single well known and fully documented gene at a time. That's why we don't have true designer foods yet-scientists know that they can only control simple processes they've observed occurring naturally. Anything more would be completely unpredictable-a drastically mutated corn could even be poisonous, due to extensions of the same biological processes they prize as natural pesticides now.

We can only hope the scientists in Japan are as cautious. Adding carefully selected human genes to replace closely related animal counterparts could result in a source of transplantable organs, and a huge supply of failed test subjects. However, reckless experimentation could create monsters. We wouldn't see catgirls, we'd see the sort of deformed, unrecognizable things I'm sure a few of the trolls are going to link to. (Don't worry, I'm going to spare you the sources for all of these) A pig with one and a half heads, a calf with organs on the outside of its body, and retarded mice with skulls too thin to protect their brains from being damaged by wind have all been documented in nature, but they are extrememely rare and immediately culled by natural selection. A laboratory environment makes these disasters very likely, and allows for propagation of their genetic lines.

Even if we put aside the moral implications of creating and sustaining these creatures, there are practical dangers. Such organisms would likely possess immune systems too weak to defend against the sort of pathogens normal organisms never notice. Look at what happens to late stage AIDS patients-they often contract rare diseases doctors have never seen before. They fall prey to bacteria assumed to be harmless, or fungal infections that have never been observed growing in living things before. These diseases could use a large supply of debilitated mutants as incubators to develop until natural selection produces strains capable of surviving in healthy organisms. We could see the emergence of a virus as unexpected and deadly as ebola. This is only one of the dangers posed by genetic experimentation. However, the potential benefits are too good to resist. There is no choice but to experiment, and we can only hope the experiments are done responsibly.