Slashdot Mirror
First Human-Pig 'Chimera' Created in Milestone Study (theguardian.com)
Scientists have created a human-pig hybrid in a milestone study that raises the prospect of being able to grow human organs inside animals for use in transplants. From a report: It marks the first time that embryos combining two large, distantly-related species have been produced. The creation of this so-called chimera -- named after the cross-species beast of Greek mythology -- has been hailed as a significant first step towards generating human hearts, livers and kidneys from scratch. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who led the work on the part-pig, part-human embryos at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, said: "The ultimate goal is to grow functional and transplantable tissue or organs, but we are far away from that. This is an important first step." The study has reignited ethical concerns that have threatened to overshadow the field's clinical promise. The work inevitably raises the spectre of intelligent animals with humanised brains and also the potential for bizarre hybrid creatures to be accidentally released into the wild. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) placed a moratorium on funding for the controversial experiments last year while these risks were considered.
The Hyperpigs in Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series were also human-pig chimeras created originally for human transplant organs;
"The soldier whipped the blanket away from the huddled figure.
The prisoner, crouched into a small foetal shape, squealed against the sudden intrusion of light, hiding its dark-adapted eyes.
Clavain stared. The prisoner was nothing that he had been expecting. At first glance it might have been taken for an adolescent human, for the proportions and size were roughly analogous. A naked human at that - unclothed pink human-looking flesh folded away into the hole. There was a horrid expanse of burned skin around its upper arm, all ridges and whorls of pink and deathly white.
Clavain was looking at a hyperpig; a genetic chimera of pig and human...
Somewhere before the dawn of the Demarchist era, in the twenty-first or twenty-second century, not far from the time of Clavain's own birth, a spectrum of human genes had been spliced into those of the domestic pig. The intention had been to optimise the ease with which organs could be transplanted between the two species, enabling pigs to grow body parts that could be harvested later for human utilisation... The genetic intervention had gone too far, achieving not just cross-species compatibility but something entirely unexpected: intelligence. " From Redemption Ark, by Alastair Reynolds, 2002
Oh no... it's the future.
They are using human cells because they want to be able to grow a human kidney, lung, heart, pancreas, etc. and transplant them into people that need them.
The current wait for a kidney is almost 10 years in certain states. Average life expectancy on dialysis is 5 years. You do the math.
The procedure works as follows. Take the human cells and break the genes that make neurons. Take the pig embryonic cells and break the genes that makes kidneys. Add a single human cell to the pig embryos. You get a pig that's brain is 100% pig, whose kidneys are 100% human, and the rest of the body is 95% pig, 5% human. Take the kidney and transplant to a human in need.
Like me for example.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
For those scratching their head, this is a Fullmetal Alchemist reference, where an alchemist transmuted his daughter and his dog into a chimera.
As a Muslim I can tell you that we would be just fine with this.
Just about all prohibitions are waived in life or death situations. We can eat pork to avoid starvation, drink alcoholic beverages to avoid dying of thirst, etc.
Also, we don't have anything against pigs, we just don't eat them, same as we don't eat insects or dogs. Some of us turn this into an emotional thing, but that's their personal stance, and not that of the religion.