This story really reads like B-movie lunacy. Cybrids, chimeras and Mad scientists oh my.
Scientists are fertilizing animal eggs with human sperm and planting human nuclei into animal cells pretty much for giggles. They pretty much have no idea what they’re looking for as far as I can see but figure if they mess around enough they’re going to figure out something earth shattering.
Scientists in the UK have created at least 150 animal/human hybrids. But don’t worry. It’s all so they can come up with cures and you don’t have to worry because they’re killing them just a few weeks into their lives.
Yup. That’s supposed to make us all feel better.
The Daily Mail reports:
Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.
The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.
The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.
The 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act made this all legit.
You gotta’ love how these scientists just hold out the hope of some possible future cure of an undetermined disease as license to create and kill at will.
And we can be rightly outraged but this is just the logical extension of the complete devaluing of life in our culture. Why would be OK to kill an embryo but not turn it into a half platypus before killing it. I can’t think of a logical argument that allows the former while prohibiting the latter.
We must cling to a radical love and respect for individual life or prepare for a reckless future ruled by mad scientists promising us great cures if only they’re allowed to take one little step further.
So be prepared for a B-movie future where the mad scientist creates monsters. But normally those movies start with the monster escaping the lab. In reality, the monsters are in the lab.
July 25, 2011 at 11:14 pm
@Anonymous @ 2:17 The cowards who run the media haven't the heart to face the TRUTH nor the guts to face the evil. They like to see their name in print. When they get to hell, the devil will make them write their name on the brimstone for eternity. You know, like the good sisters used to do. "I must not talk in class" one thousand times. Well, these ungodly folks will write: "I must always tell the truth".
July 25, 2011 at 11:30 pm
Can't share ink on FB – says this link has been reported as spam: CM pl write to FB. Thanks
July 25, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Mary,
I do not understand. How is this sort of work sacrilege?
July 25, 2011 at 11:48 pm
Also, what is wrong with Dmitri Mendeleev?
July 26, 2011 at 12:20 am
Isn't informed consent required with human experimentation?
July 26, 2011 at 12:56 am
People don't typically ask cancer cells whether they consent to experimentation.
Human cells are not capable of informed consent. People are capable of informed consent.
And single cells aren't people.
July 26, 2011 at 1:40 am
"And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
July 26, 2011 at 1:58 am
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun…"
And think! It may come that skilled hands could craft such a thing as this.
July 26, 2011 at 2:10 am
"And think! It may come that skilled hands could craft such a thing as this."
Maybe we're reading the poem differently, but I don't remember it turning out that well for us. Expediting the process doesn't seem like a great idea.
July 26, 2011 at 2:36 am
I do not believe the scientist should blindly pull a switch, without thinking first about the terrible consequences of his action. When the atom first was split, was there careful consideration of what the results might be?
I also don't believe that the scientist, after his pondering is over, should always walk away.
Maybe he should consider the consequences full in the face, and seeing what curiosity has made him, pull the switch in full knowledge and full fear of what he will do.
Come what may, after the blood and dust and dark, there is the promise of a new sunrise.
The progress of knowledge may be worth the cost. Maybe we should make the lion-man, even if it kills us.
July 26, 2011 at 4:34 am
To quote an American cartoon of the 1990's ( a mouse whose genes were spliced and has a 200+ IQ) = "No good will come of this…"
July 26, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Read News. Cue Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. Surely so
revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
— WB Yeats's "Second Coming"as first printed in 1920
July 27, 2011 at 5:13 am
For anyone who wants to see animal-human hybrid embryos made right here in the U.S. and published in Cloning and Stem Cells visit Animal-Human Hybrids are so Yesterday!
July 28, 2011 at 2:30 am
The concept "because you can doesn't mean you should" is obviously lost today. Our modern-Frankesteins think they can play God in the name of science. Anyone with two neurons can see this will not end well.
July 31, 2011 at 10:30 pm
Dr Moreau, please round up your beast men!
August 1, 2011 at 1:49 am
What a poor use of our genetic material. I wonder if God would grant a soul to such a creation, since it would be only half human? I don't think He would, but I don't think we should be taking a chance either.
August 2, 2011 at 5:07 am
But what if these hybrid or chimeras or what-have you do have human souls? It wasn't right to create these people in the first place (in the same way that IVF and human cloning is wrong), but now that these people exist, destroying them is even worse. And should any hybrids be allowed to live full lives, I would hope that we naturally-born humans won't just treat them like beasts or monsters; they never asked to be created this way. The twisting of natural law is the fault of the scientists, not of their creations. If God loves them enough to give them souls (which he just might) who are we to reject them?