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Scientists Give Human Organs to Lamb
TK Interior writes "Myrtle Beach Online reports the existence of a lamb-human chimera-- a blend of two different species. Not only has a lamb been given a human liver and heart, but mice are sporting human brain cells. At what level is a chimera 'too' human? Where do you draw the line between human and animal? How will this affect evolution?"
Too human is perhaps the point when, if, we get to making an animal that can perform as the midspecies link between two diseases?
A disease that affects sheep maybe can gestate over years in a flock of sheep and then suddenly because they have many human organs its affecting humans too. It opens a door of potentials not all of which are good
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than a human with a pig heart is a pig. It's about DNA, not body parts.
I wouldn't consider transplanting human organs into an animal a chimera. When they can put human DNA and make human organs grow naturally in an animal, then we'll have a chimera (and a little problem on our hands).
~Ilyanep
To get message, take amount of carrier pigeons at each stage mod 2. Then decode binary.
"How will this affect evolution?"
Many things effect evolution... Medical science has been effecting evolution for a very long time as people who would have died because of genetic illness have lived on through medical science. The human species has not had real natural selection for a long time because we do not die from genetic problems as often.
The only evolution humans are likely to undergo is a scary one. Stupid people are having more children than smart people, therefore people are going to get stupider. Maybe it's already happened
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How will this affect evolution?
Not at all since the reproductive cells are not affected.
-Colin
...because there is no line to draw. "Animal" simply means "A multicellular organism of the kingdom Animalia" - Animal is a classification, and humans are part of the Animalia kingdom. Thus, humans are animals.
Lambs are animals.
Humans are animals.
Simple as that. Humans are not some special exemption - they are animals, and so to say "when do you draw the line between humans and animals" is just plain wrong. Go take a basic high school Biology course.
Perhaps what was meant to be said was "species" - a species is defined as a group of related organisms capable of interbreeding. Although humans could technically breed with sheep (and living near Wales, I should know...), the offspring would be sterile...
As a conservative Christian, I think the objection on the grounds animals should "multiply according to their kind" is weak depending on the methods used to create these chimeras. Obviously combining human gametes with animals' would be beastiality, which most people would still object to. But using adult stem cells or transplantation to do this isn't objectionable in my opinion.
The only real problem I see is illustrated in the following quote: If two such chimeras - say, mice - were to mate, a human embryo might form, trapped in a mouse.
Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result.
"What would be so dreadful?" asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It would simply die, she told the academy.
Such a callous disregard for human life underscores the objection many people have to things such as embryonic stem cell research and abortion. This person obviously believes the unborn child is "alive"- otherwise it could not logically die. However, she does not care that it dies because of her irresponsible actions.
I think the medical profession above anybody has a responsibility to preserve life- even when it is just begining. In cases where there is a conflict between preserving two lives (as in embryonic stem cell research), the professional should look for alternatives- such as cord-harvested stem cells- that do not involve killing one human to preserve another.
That said, conservatives need to be open to those practices that, though unorthodox, have potential to preserve life without taking it.
As it stands asia is the source of virtualy all flu and africa the source of all Ebola. In both cases it's believed to be because of the biological conditions that put animals and humans in close contact where the viruses can jump between species. In the case of flu the host animal is birds which then jumps to mamals via pigs. Pigs are close enought o human that the jump to human is easy. and then it's flu season. In the case of Ebola no one knows what the host animal is. Apparently its not harmful to its host since it would slauter it wholsesale if it were as deadly as it is in humans. When it jumps to human's the only good nes is that it is so lethal it tends to kill it's host quicker than it spreads in rural africa. NY city might be a different story.
Some people think that ebola's natural host is a monkey or an ape.
Apes get many diseases we dont. For example Simian Aids. What would happen if we were to put human cells in an ape, then simian aids learned how to infect these cells. Then it jumped to the human population.
We are porting disease from the antire animal kingdom to our own without considering the consequences
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, I can think of situations where a person no longer qualifies for your definition of human. Quick example - someone in a coma. An infant probably wouldn't qualify either.
And this portion, ability to be part of a society, probably disqualifies half of the people reading this message.
A person in a coma, who is not going to come out of it unassisted, and who does not have anyone care about them one way or the other, is effectively not any more human than a forgotten dead person is, at least as far as anyone else is concerned.
People in comas who have relationships with other people, are definitely part of the network of human society, even though it may be passive. You can make a case for them being human in some senses but not others. Same applies for infants.
Even if you disagree with these sorts of criteria for determining human-ness, you have to acknowledge that the DNA-based one makes no sense at all. Or else attack me for the inhumane way I subject soiled hankerchiefs to chemical warfare when I do the washing.
The question isnt about evolution, the question is about ethics. Should we as humans be "playing god"?
I believe so. Thats not to say that I am correct though.
Was this a waste? Looking at the rate of organ rejection and other complications not to mention the recepient already being in bad health, it could have easily failed inside of a human and worked in a sheep.
There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people waiting for organs who go without everyday because people don't sign their organ donor cards or because family members refuse to let them be a donor.
If anything let this article serve as a beacon of hope for the future and a reminder to let your family know if you are an organ donor.
Even with the rate of failure of transplants, you don't need them when you're dead.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Evolution is dead, and that isn't a bad thing. You can't live in a technological society without first doing a number of evolution. In order to have fancy things like computers, you need humans to not only live well past 30, but you need a lot of them, and they need lots of free time. In other words, you need to make people live longer and healthier lives with surviving to do. You need to put them into shelters, give them more food then they need, protect them from infection, and insure that they can crank out lots of babies that all live to see adulthood (instead of suffering terrible childhood mortality rates).
What do you get when this happens? You got a few billion people with the collective capacity to undergo agricultural, industrial, and eventually post industrial revolutions. Sure, your stock might be less discriminating then the stock of the past, but who cares? One the advantages of being a technological species is that you can do evolutions work. For instance, I was a horrible asthmatic when I was young. I should have died 10 times over when I was young. Modern medicine absolutely saved my life on more then one occasion. These days I am a perfectly healthy adult. People with poor eyesight wear glasses. Weak people don't need to run to survive. Half of the population (namely woman) have been freed up to contribute to technology and society of this choose.
The places where this all leads is a good one. Well within the next 100 years, you can almost rest assure that we will start to tinker more with our own genetic code and enhance ourselves further with technology. Things like asthma and diabetes will start to be cured and removed from the population. It wouldn't surprise me if a human 500 years from now is not recognizable as human because it is such a technological and/or genetic wonder.
Evolution is hard at work through technology. For us humans, it is headed for better places.
These things have the potential of being extremely dangerous. Unknown viruses that have become harmless to the animal may be lethal to humans. In a chimera, the virus may mutate to be able to pass from one human to another, even through airborn contact.
This is the greatest nightmare of the Centers for Disease Control. They strongly discourage experimentation and research involving chimeras, even (and especially) research using animal organs for human transplant.
This is not a joke, or poorly written science fiction.
Speaking as an evolutionary biologist, I'd say the above post was the work of someone who has the higher brain functions of a chimp with a botched lobotomy. Lemme put that in small words so you can understand it: you're a fuckin' idiot. Plus, anyone who would "me too!" it is a moron.
Darwin did say life was tough, and that therefore those least fit to survive the struggle, tend not to survive. This is a statement about how the world is. It does not logically follow that the world oughtto be this way. It's simple, morals = how the world ought to be, science = how the world is, so the two do not have a lot to do with each other. Jesus fucking Christ. Read a philosophy book once in a while. For that matter, read a book once in a while.
Two things here:
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
At what level is a chimera 'too' human?
When it is sentient.
Where do you draw the line between human and animal?
In the current definition "human" means species homo sapiens. The only significant distinctive feature of humans, is sentience, that is a result of a particular advanced structure of human brain, that, among other distinctive features, provides capability for development of abstract thought, structured language and production of tools. First never develops in animals or machines (machines can perform operations that are part of abstract thinking process, however only humans are currently capable of developing abstract structures from external stimuli without pre-existing knowledge of their structure, so development is still specific to humans), second and third are not developed by anyone but humans except in the simpliest forms possible. In theory, there may be, or will be other sentient beings that should be considered human, even if they do not share the same origin, and some creatures that have the same or close origin, yet lack sentience, and therefore can never be considered human.
How will this affect evolution?
Not at all. Evolution happens only through hereditary changes in organisms.
Can we go home now? I mean, didn't humans develop a better definition for themselves than "Two-legged, without feathers"?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
An example of (1) would be Stephen Hawking.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.