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American Scientists Working On Creating Chimeras: Half-Human, Half-Animal Embryos (ibtimes.com.au)
Researchers at the University of California, Davis are working on creating half-human, half-animal hybrid embryos dubbed chimeras to better understand diseases and its progression. But not everybody is thrilled about it. IBTimes reports: One of the aims of the experiment using chimeras is to create farm animals with human organs. The body parts could then be harvested and transplanted into very sick people. However, a number of bioethicists and scientists frown on the creation of interspecies embryos which they believe crosses the line. New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity." They are not alone in voicing their opinion against the idea. Huffington Post adds: The project is so controversial that the National Institutes of Health has refused to fund it. The researchers are relying on private donors. Critics of these experiments say they are too risky because there is no way of knowing where the human stem cells will go. Will they just become a pancreas? Or could they become a brain? And if they become a brain, will the pigs who house them have human consciousness?
A pig with human consciousness? They've already succeeded! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Donald Trump.
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all night.
I guess PuppyMonkeyBaby was ahead of its time.
I'm absolutely against it for organ harvesting!
On the other hand, I'm totally for it because that means we'll finally get catgirls, foxgirls, bunnygirls, etc!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Maybe this time, Jihadists won't blast an EMP device over the US.
The PTB rely on HUMAN FLESH in the FOOD SUPPLY to maintain their human appearance!
Human flesh exists in a lot of foods today. Sometimes it makes the news. These are PTB slip ups, and/or conditioning this reality.
They rely on the consumption of human flesh to retain their human appearance. They all have the same scent. They exist from the bottom to the top of the pyramid. Some are bums, some are middle/upper class, some are those dancing for you on TV, in a web of deceit to keep your mind and body occupied.
Half-snake, half-weasel!
Not a bit human!
If the problem is ethics, surely the solution would be to obtain military funding for this. A source of genetically engineered animal-human hybrids, combining the best features of both, would be invaluable to a modern military that needs new ways to fight a radically different type of enemy to that it was set up to do. The military could have at its disposal superhumans with animal senses, and at the same time push forward medical technology to benefit everyone.
What could possibly go wrong?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I suggest, for a substantial number of the Slashdot readership, getting a functional definition of "human" from a material-reductionist, i.e. scientific, context, first.
This means you, atheists. Those that instead acknowledge a wider metaphysical context containing science--no worries.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
IT'S COMING RIGHT AT US!!!
Al Gore tried to warn us about ManBearPig, but no one would listen to him.
ManBearPig
We made hybrid embryos decades ago. We're making new ones; for decades, we've been all weird about human embryos and have been restricted to a set of old embryonic lines and hybrids we made back then.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
No one worries about the animal consciences that we kill to further humanity, but I guess we're so far "above" other organisms that we can justify that without a second thought. If having a conscience is uniquely human, I guess I missed that study.
Brazilian army is the worst kind of people. I joined PUC university believing it was a high tech place, but now the retards from the army don't let me have a job outside of their enterprises, ans also keep trolling my computers with their trojan horses and sendinding stupid messages to disturb my studies with computer sciences without wasting my money to buy a degree outside that crooked university doesn't taike my interesrt, not even invitations of the boy love association (which btw was the reason I quit two university campuses). the worst part is that motherfucker Saint Jorge retarded church (the cult center of every military retard who believe in babyj) is having to bear with the constat pressure to hang out with the breed of useless "virgin" daughters. That sounds like terrorism, don't You think? Give your virgins, don't yourself up. Hmm...
You had to go an bring dualism into the discussion. Aren't all of you rushing things?
163.562 people died in 2014 due to wounds inflicted by other humans in armed conflicts around the world. 1.5 million children died in 2008 of vaccine-preventable disease and an estimated 3.5 million due to malnutrition. Considering the vast death and carnage that happens around the clock every single day, the idea that mixing genes in a test-tube is somehow dehumanizing to "our sense of humanity" is completely ludicrous
Of course, being more ethical than Crooked Hillary! is pretty damn easy.
Hell, a glass bottle is more ethical than Crooked Hillary!
He couldn't get nearly this amount of press, and he's been customizing genes for a while now.
Screw half human half animal, i want half cat half dog. Loyalty of a dog yet only shits on other people's lawns!
Bush opposed it for religious reasons which was a criminal thing to do since that is unconstitutional.
"Are we not men?"
Are you really trying to form an equivalency between genetic construction of a Chimera, and research on harvested fetal stem cells?
And really with the political shit? left-wing?
I'm a lefty (I think... hard to say these days), and I'm all for GMO chow, nuclear power, catdogs, bunnygirls, and not wasting the stem cells from terminated pregnancies. I don't feel like it's... political at all for me. Just logical.
You need to get over yourself and your politics. Try to look at issues by their merit instead of whatever your coach tells you your team is all about.
Sh*t... Al Gore was right!
The first hybrid human clone was created in November 1998, by Advanced Cell Technology. It was created using SCNT - a nucleus was taken from a man's leg cell and inserted into a cow's egg from which the nucleus had been removed, and the hybrid cell was cultured, and developed into an embryo. The embryo was destroyed after 12 days.[4]
If this means I'll be able to get a humanoid animal to keep as a pet, I'm fine with that.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
We'll create this "human organ farm" deep underground and convince all the organisms that they're the world's last hope for survival. We'll explain that a nuclear war made the vast majority of the world too contaminated for life, but a lone island presents hope for survival. We'll convince them that we'll use a lottery to "randomly select" who to send to this "island". All the while, we'll keep them ignorant and secluded, distracting them with organizational tasks like mixing particular organic molecules together to help feed growing organism embryos, and entertaining them with VR live-action versions of X-Box video games. Then, as long as we keep them secluded in this "distraction-dystopia", we don't need to worry about their consciousness, right?
welcome our new Man-Bear-Pig overlords!
Actually my first concern would be about diseases. Does having animals with human-like organs inside them make it easier for diseases which affect that animal to mutate into a version which will infect humans? Since we are talking pigs the example that comes to mind immediately is something like swine flu.
WTF is so special about human consciousness?
What would a human be like with pig consciousness?
Are we just making shit up now because we are so in-the-dark about the actual science involved?
I think we have seen this movie already.
Watch season two of Dark Angel to see how it turns out.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Are you really trying to form an equivalency between genetic construction of a Chimera, and research on harvested fetal stem cells?
I'm not trying to form a moral equivalence between the two.
And really with the political shit? left-wing?
Opposition to Bush's fetal stem cell ban certainly didn't come from the Right.
(I think... hard to say these days)
That's true.
Try to look at issues by their merit
That's such a (pun intended) God awful slipperly slope. After all, lots of Russians thought there were ten metric ass-loads of merit in the idea of raping hundreds of thousands German woman and girls. Japanese thought their actions in Nanking were highly meritorious, too. Fritz Haber thought it was highly meritorious to develop chemical weapons for use by the Fatherland in the Great War.
Shall I go on, or do you get the point?
instead of whatever your coach tells you your team is all about.
No man is an (intellectual) island, entire of itself.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
"Are we not men?"
We are Devo!
#DeleteChrome
If they had really wanted funding then they probably shouldn't be calling them "chimeras".
What was "unholy abominations of human dignity" taken?
You need to get over yourself and your politics.
No thanks. I'll keep my humanity intact, thank you very much. Murder is murder. Chopping up the victim and selling the pieces so it "doesn't go to waste" is morally repugnant, bordering on true Evil. Simply because someone's rationalized that it's "ok to crush someone's head off because they haven't spoken their first word yet" doesn't mean your bullshit sits well with truth, reason, or those who haven't sold out their souls for the female vote. Call it "logic" -- it's casual, politically-sanctioned murder on a massive scale. The only defense you can possibly offer is throwing up rationalized definitions which are nothing but the impotent screams of the damned.
It's a much easier argument to say that the hybrid fetuses were "never technically human" because they aren't -- any more in a genetic/biological sense than a chimpanzee. Human fetuses, as the result of two compatible human gametes fusing into a zygote, are biologically human -- genetic code doesn't change at birth.
> Critics of these experiments say they are too risky because there is no way of knowing where the human stem cells will go. Will they just become a pancreas? Or could they become a brain? And if they become a brain, will the pigs who house them have human consciousness?
That's a super interesting question.
The GOP presidential candidate called, he wants his false equivalencies back!
And to answer your question, its in the summary:
New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity."
I don't know what an evolutionary biologist can be, if not left wing.
Note: You started this partisan bickering....
Look, when we said Bush has the brain of a turnip, we didn't mean that he literally had a turnip's brain.
It was a figure of speech, that's all.
I really want him to provide a definition of what a "sense of humanity" is, and apply it equally to a pool of well known individuals (Dalai Lama, Joseph Stalin, Charles Manson, Nelson Mandela) and try to avoid miring that definition in some sort of wishy-washy, mythical or biblical masturbation.
However, a number of bioethicists and scientists frown on the creation of interspecies embryos which they believe crosses the line.
Oh, well that's easy to settle, if there's a line. And not just a line, but the line.
Honestly, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Regard the line, people!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's interesting that everyone but the person donating the organs gets something. The only reason there aren't enough organs is because of price controls. Allow people to sell organ futures and we would have plenty of organs for everyone that needs them.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
The idea that harvesting other homo sapiens for organs makes us "less human" is also nonsense. We're simply removing a few cells and people die every day, so it's no big deal if someone's grandma is harvested for their organs. And don't get me started about brains. Frankly, there are quite a few out there that ought to be in mint condition given their lack of use....
Opposition to Bush's fetal stem cell ban certainly didn't come from the Right.
........WHAT?
Never mind.
Keep your religion to yourself and you can keep doing it.
Try to make me part of your delusion and you loose the privilege.
This doesn't make the pigs "half-human, half animal" any more than Escherichia coli cells modified to produce human insulin protein are "half-human, half-bacteria" (or a human with a prosthetic leg is "half-human, half-machine").
Ridiculous sensationalism. Bah.
Personally, I'd argue "humanity" is a state of mind rather than a bundle of body-parts, but that's a whole separate issue.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Stop it.. and start working on what all of us in the USA want...
Make the CatDog.
yes one end cat, one end dog... Give it to us!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Let's be honest if the pig did have a human conciousness, would it not be a tastier bacon?
I'm not trying to form a moral equivalence between the two.
Then why are you bemoaning the lack of left-wing "outrage" on the matter? If I could point you to some left-wing outrage on the chimera research funding moratorium, would you feel better? Here you go:
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/11/researchers-urge-lifting-of-nih-funding-restrictions-on-chimeric.html
Perhaps the lefties are holding their outrage until they see if the NIH will resume funding in this area...it is after all a moratorium while the NIH "considers a possible policy revision in this area."
You wouldn't want any outrage until an actual policy has been made, would you? Where's the fun in that?
Of course, I might also ask why you have a need for some sort of counterbalancing outrage from "the left" to begin with. Perhaps you should just relax and stop getting worked up over things that haven't even been decided yet.
You assume that religion is required for those thoughts. Very disappointing.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
. . . we didn't even call it murder until something like what, five/six/seven thousand years ago? Before that whole writing/language/agriculture thing, that was just the way it was. Nothing amoral, unethical or illegal about it.
All it will take is one person saved by just such an organ grown in an animal, and the idiot pundits and politicians will be swept aside like, what was that thing from the American writers class? Like a spider's legs in a roaring fire!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The GOP presidential candidate called, he wants his false equivalencies back!
You saying it's a false equivalency doesn't actually make it a false equivalency.
New York Medical College Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Stuart Newman calls the use of chimeras as entering unsettling ground which damages "our sense of humanity."
Using baby parts because the mother decided "she didn't want to" damages "our sense of humanity", too.
Note: You started this partisan bickering....
What's your point?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You just know those dratted felines will want their own litter boxes.
You wouldn't want any outrage until an actual policy has been made, would you? Where's the fun in that?
Ask any partisan on any side of the fence. Fear is a great donation motivator.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The sensations that come from our organs (other than the brain) profoundly influence our consciousness. Our mood, our thoughts, everything.
What if our consciousness is not just centered in the brain but spread throughout the whole body?
Do organs have their own consciousness that is a direct constituent of the highest-level consciousness of thought? Are there thoughts that you have that are a direct reflection of the sensation of a specific organ other than the ears, eyes, nose, and tongue?
People are trained like dogs to eschew these kinds of questions, for precisely the reason that they interfere with commerce. But they must be answered eventually or humanity's greed will catch up with it: we will develop arts too powerful and create something we don't understand that consumes us. Possible candidates so far are the media, nuclear energy, and artificial intelligence. What next?
The simple truth is this: some people are taking advantage of the relative standstill in the last ~2000 years of human moral development and education to do something horribly wrong, in every sense of the word, that they do not understand the implications of.
Indeed, this is the story of modern civilization in general.
For billions of years on earth, every life form has endured discomfort and unpleasantness. Some evolved in a new, more efficient form, others were left behind. The process continues today and includes humans. Individuals of every species can expect difficulties and the strongest will carry on the genes. Humans have anointed some species protected- meat & dairy animals, domestic pets; and others condemned- experimental animals, disease carriers. Human individuals continue to suffer unpleasantness in many forms and none are surprised at that. Generally life goes on as always.
Now we are to be shocked and upset because of some new experiment using human/animal DNA? How is this different from our centuries of experiments on animals and humans? Many of us wouldn't be here but for the knowledge gained from the suffering of others. Should we now say "OK, I'm here and I'm healthy so the experiments can stop because I don't care about future generations."
Presumably the scientists who want to do this are more rational than the general public. They expect that human beings will benefit from the work. They know there will be suffering, setbacks, mistakes etc but they expect it to be worthwhile. It's the natural order of life to suffer, but these scientists will limit the suffering to a few animals in the hope that many humans will have less suffering.
...omphaloskepsis often...
What is delusional about what I said? That human embryos are human? The DELUSION belongs to the people that excuse their moral qualms by repeating the lie that a human embryo is anything else.
Defend your delusion by screaming at others that they are delusional? Please.
It was particularly cute when you tried to punctuate your point by suggesting a removal of my First Amendment rights. Like that's a great argument showing proper moral reasoning and cognition. I suppose that's why you are so pro-abortion -- literally taking on someone your own mental size.
Edward Jenner developed the smallpox vaccine in 1796, from cows.
This was quite controversial at the time, because it involved injecting bits of cow into humans and... what could go wrong? Caricatures of the time show cows "breaking out" of people after the cow vaccine was given.
In religious terms, how ethical is it to inject humans with pieces derived from the lower animals? Didn't Jenner's vaccine meddle with God's great plan and pollute the integrity of the human form?
Pure ethics can be based on suffering, so there shouldn't be any problem. Later on we'll develop methods for growing organs without the animal host to reduce suffering even further.
It gets murky when you think ethics is derived from some religious dogma with irrational basis and no interior logic. Once you believe there's something special about the human form/genome/purpose, you start to have ethical pangs for no good reason.
Give it a couple of years, it'll become mainstream. Like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis, eventually everyone will see the usefulness and ethics more clearly.
Pigman Seinfeld clip
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I want to die.
Murder is unlawful killing. Our laws are somewhat complex on the issue. You, too, condone murder, unless you're a rather extreme pacifist. For my part, I recognize that the compact of violence that engenders societies has no fundamental limits, certainly not as practiced. Some rhetoric on the matter assumes an inviolable right to life, perhaps as a cruel irony to those simple enough to believe it, as no society has ever practiced such a thing.
Human fetuses are neither particularly valuable nor particularly scarce. They are not members of any society, and society owes them nothing, certainly not at the expense of the potential mother. Whatever your beliefs, you're going to have to accept that not only is this killing perfectly acceptable to societies, but that this is never going to change.
See you in Hell.
" ... will the pigs who house them have human consciousness?"
The more important question is will they still have tasty bacon?
The Apple Macintosh needs to know
It's the simplest solution to the whole ETI conundrum, if you cant find them, make them. And in other news the lion man has fleas.
Using baby parts because the mother decided "she didn't want to" damages "our sense of humanity", too.
Hi - you seem to think some human females should be enslaved to a parasite they don't want. If a barely pubescent girl is raped by her retarded uncle, does that mean you still feel the same way? Are you PERSONALLY volunteering to be/pay for a surrogate and have the embryo implanted in you, free of charge, and at your own expense? Are you registered somewhere we can verify that that:s true?
No, you want to spend tax dollars to prohibit a girl/woman from making that decision on her own? Then FOAD you hypocrite.
...as long as I get a rakunk as well.
Sorry, when I see test tube things I immediately think of gelfs from reddwarf.
I am now identifying myself as a house cat. Looking for a single lady that I can lay around on her couch/lap all day while she pets me. Once I get past that licking myself clean it will be all good........
which bathroom?
Frankly, I'm anti-nationalism and I don't really feel that I need to be superior to animals. I am quite sure that my humanity is something that enables me to do many things and thankfully keeps me at the top of the food chain. I honestly have no ethical issues with what they're attempting to accomplish beyond this...
1) How many animals would they need to raise, maintain, etc... to build a "warehouse" of organs to ensure that when they are needed a "match" can be found? Wouldn't this require insanely massive populations of animals for even relatively simple to match organs? Then there's supply and demand... I could easily imagine needing a million+ having to be breed and fed, etc...
2) What about sterility and mating them? If you have a million+ farm animals, do you snip-snip them all the males? How do you keep them from breeding so you can maintain an accurate database of organ characteristics?
3) How long would it take to raise a farm animal to an age where the organ would be beneficial? Would a one year old pig have a heart that would match a 40 year old adult human? Would it have to be 5 or 10 years old? If so, then how many more animals would we need to farm to have a supply?
4) Tissue printing instead? Aren't we doing pretty good things so far with research to print organs? Isn't this more likely to yield the desired results?
Historians will say the Egyptian gods came back to earth around 2000-2200 and decimated the human population* for believing in false gods. Maybe someone will discover corrupted Stargate videos and then promotional Stargate toys will be viewed as religious icons.
*Though war, sickness, climate change, or whatever we end up doing to ourselves.
Ethically, a dog head with a human body wouldn't be viewed as human and thus ripe for organ harvesting or for a head transplant when your body starts getting old.
You know what damages people's sense of humanity even more? Dying miserably even though modern medical technology could make you well, because some prick called Stuart Newman takes the position that a pig is more important than a human or thinks that a human kidney somehow gives a pig a soul.
Sounds to me like the sort of decision that mother should be making. How about you stay out of my vagina?
No amount of feminist dogma changes the fact that I am biologically entitled to be in your vagina whenever I want. Woman are subservient to men and always has been. That's in everyone's genetic code.
A bit of research shows this story to a load of knackers. Latest news at the university website has no mention of this nor does a search of the names and the university return any (credible) hits.
I just wanted to reach out and say “thanks” for mentioning YOUR BRAND in your excellent article.
http://indguru.com/2016/sbi-po-recruitment-sbi-co-in-notification-download/10750/
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The morality wizards are at it again. " Our sense of humanity" is so abstract that it can not be damaged. I doubt that there is much agreement at all on what our sense of humanity is. What moral wizards actually do is get attention, power, and positions for themselves. Yes, a pig could acquire a sense of self. But that pig need not know fear or know about death at all. Put the pig to sleep covertly and harvest what is needed from the pig. That pig could have a very happy life. Meanwhile you just might save millions of human lives with the parts and processes derived from these chimeras. So what kind of balance scale does one need to weigh a human life against "our sense of humanity"? Well "our sense of humanity"has zero weight on a balance beam. Hopefully even one human being has real weight.
I'm a Bible thumping right winger and I have no problems with this. I'll probably need a heart or liver some day. Harvesting a custom made organ from a pig and transplanting it is fine with me. Even better, send me home from the hospital with bacon made from the leftover pig.
Is growing human organs even a new thing? There certainly is already cross species blending of genetics.
The objection to this seems like it comes from a time when people didn't know we were just another of the animals lucky enough to have thumbs, the physical requirements for auditory speech, and a brain capable of utilizing those things. Animals, even those of lesser intelligence than humans (which is not all, some are believed to even have superior intelligence) are known to have consciousness. Only a human could have "human" consciousness but there is nothing special about it, that's just a label. Human intelligence is still just animal intelligence.
I for one would welcome giving dolphins arms and hands with thumbs in addition to their flippers. How about thumbs for other primates? Everyone jumps on this as way to grow organs for humans and the like. What about giving our cousins a helping hand?
Finally I can be sure where the cartoon Cat-Dog came from.
The ethical problem with chimeras is similar to the one with abortion. How do we define a 'person?' We have the same DNA as a lot of other life forms. As it is, we can use a pig heart as a temporary replacement for a human heart. Do we define a person based on one's ability to reproduce? A person and a sheep can't reproduce with one another, or we'd have seen plenty of chimeras already, based on the rumors I've heard about farmers in various parts of the world. However, plenty of people are unable to reproduce with certain members of the opposite sex, or at all. Does that disqualify them from being a person? The more we discover about our natural world, and the more we learn to tinker with its many mechanisms, the more we blur the line between us and everything else.
Many people claim that we are moral actors, and therefore are held to higher standards than animals. Men shouldn't kill a rival male, take his mate, and slaughter his children, but some animals do that. Men should also refrain from forcing copulation on a woman, but some animals do that. If we mix human DNA with other animals, at what point do we start expecting lions to be moral actors? At what point do we stop expecting humans to be moral actors? I don't have any answers. Clearly there are benefits to be had here, just as their are benefits to researching embryonic stem cells. At the same time, we need to consider the wider impacts this will have on our society, culture, and sense of self.
People behaving like animals turn people into animals
Well one thing is for sure. They will never be able to create pig sized elephants or elephant sized pigs. Haven't you heard that song by Loverboy "Pig and Elephant DNA just won't splice."
But maybe the can create a man-bear-pig.
By your reasoning, you find merit in pulling stuff out of your ass and putting it on Slashdot. It's possible to do something and not consider it an actual good thing to do. I haven't read claims that it was good to rape all those Germans, just that it was understandable. I don't think you're going to find very many references to Japanese claiming that the Rape of Nanking was actually a good thing.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I haven't read claims that it was good to rape all those Germans, just that it was understandable. I don't think you're going to find very many references to Japanese claiming that the Rape of Nanking was actually a good thing.
Of course not now, after the fact. I was referring to the actual soldiers doing the deed.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I believe many animals are conscious in that they are aware of themselves and aware of others. Think not only of themselves and their well being, but also of those they love. I find it all kind of pious to think that they are not aware, in the same sense that we created the gods to be in our own image. Sometimes I think this is an excuse for the horrible things we do to animals, but don't want to think about. If consciousness is a defining human characteristic, then what about those who are born with much lower intelligence or awareness? Are they less human? Because some animals are smarter then them. If they create an animal with more intelligence, it does not make it human. The idea that we should fear intelligent animals is ridiculous, because they already exist. What we should fear is an animal with better limbs, because if they could use a gun... many of them would and probably are justified to do so.
I am only half joking here. But humans are so stuck up. When really, we are nothing more than chimps with dolphin brains.
Just sayin'
Bioethicist = Father Clancy puts on a lab coat
Humans = Animals