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?

Comments

Re:"our sense of humanity." put in perspective

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

And collectively human beings have never killed other human beings in such low levels ever in history. Get this human beings inherently violent, xenophobic and have gut level antipathy for everyone outside their extended family or clan. It is a great testament to the control of mind over instinct, they overcame this genetically wired violence and have peaceful, for the most part, by and large

Focusing on the existing violence alone, and not putting it in proper context with historical trend lines is what called "making the perfect the enemy of the not-bad-and-its-getting-better".

Re:It depends

[meerling]

We already use pigs for certain organ harvesting already.
Where do you think most of those heart valve replacement 'donors' come from?
All this would really do is increase the human viability of more tissues and organs.
As to the brain, the porcine skull can't hold anything close to a human brain, and 'brain tissue' anywhere else would not be viable as a human brain either due to structural limitations, size, and vulnerability to damage from everyday actions. The human brain is on average 1320g, while a pig brain is only 180g. So the human brain is over 7 times the mass & volume. (I'm making a guess that their densities are relatively similar.)
Sounds like more people afraid of more proof that humans are just a different kind of animal with specialization in generalized intelligence.