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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.
Many of the issues they appear to be studying do not require the use of human cells. For example, they talk about not knowing what would happen if the animal were to complete gestation since pigs only gestate for 112 days, but human embryos gestate for 9 months.
Well, then use two different animals that have vastly different gestation periods, and see what happens. You don't need to use human cells to find that out.
They also talk about not knowing whether or not the cells would migrate to the brain.
Again, use something else. Like, a mouse and an elephant. Or whatever.
It seems premature to be using human cells in these experiments if they haven't already answered these questions with other animal chimeras.
Which makes me wonder, why are they using human cells at all? Are they just going for headlines or what?
Ki...llll.....mee....eeee
Are they working on an orangutan chimera? If so, I know a good place to start.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
There are many animals that are quite intelligent, but it's exceedingly unlikely that we would ever have the capability to genetically engineer an animal like a pig to have a human-like brain, even if we wanted to.
The reason is simple: our brains are way bigger than pig brains (human brain: about 3.5lbs, pig brain: 0.4lbs). In order to have a pig with a human-like brain, you'd have to completely reshape it's skull, and because a pig skull is very different from an ape skull, you'd have to do it in a very different way than humans do. To do this, you'd need to generate a wide variety of novel adaptations to make it so that a pig can support a brain that's about 8 times the size. That's just not happening.
What is being done in these kinds of experiments is far less ambitious: to use small amounts of human DNA to make animal tissues compatible for transplantation. This kind of research has gone on for a long time: it's common to genetically engineer mice and rats to have human immune systems, to make them better test subjects. In this case, if the research continues, you'll have a pig growing a pig liver, with some of its genetic markers changed just enough to fool a human body into thinking that it's a human liver rather than a pig liver.