Chimeric Experiment Produce Animal-Human Hybrid: Has Science Gone Too Far?

[chlamor]

Humanism is a stubborn and arrogant philosophy. Not only is it Prometheus unbound but also heavily subsidized. An article by Jeremy Rifkin about this at link below. A few snippets:


What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious experiment recently carried out by a team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University.

Scientists injected human brain cells into mouse foetuses, creating a strain of mice that were approximately 1% human. Weissman is considering a follow-up that would produce mice whose brains are 100% human.

<snip>

Now, scientists have their sights trained on breaking the final taboo in the natural world - crossing humans and animals to create new human-animal hybrids. Already, aside from the humanised mouse, scientists have created pigs with human blood and sheep with livers and hearts that are mostly human. The experiments are designed to advance medical research. Indeed, a growing number of genetic engineers argue that human-animal hybrids will usher in a golden era of medicine. Researchers say that the more humanised they can make research animals, the better able they will be to model the progression of human diseases, test new drugs, and harvest tissues and organs for transplantation. What they fail to mention is that there are equally promising and less invasive alternatives to these bizarre experiments, including computer modeling, in vitro tissue culture, nanotechnology, and prostheses to substitute for human tissue and organs.



<snip>

Some researchers are speculating about human-chimpanzee chimeras - creating a humanzee. This would be the ideal laboratory research animal because chimpanzees are so closely related to us. Chimps share 98% of the human genome, and a fully mature chimp has the equivalent mental abilities and consciousness of a four-year-old human.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1437701,00.html

[fob]

1. Hehehe. Countdown to someone posting a bush* pic, 5..4..3..

[Dave Reynolds]

2. Backward engineering

the missing link.

[karlrschneider]

3. Too late, we already have a "human" "president" with a mouse brain...

:eyes:

[jdots]

4. We have several ways to go with this

It is alot like that first atomic bomb blowing off,in the hands of greed and fear we are in big trouble.There is nothing in between
use technology or let it use us.

[chlamor]

6. Technology is not neutral

What comes with extracting materials to manufacture say a cell phone? Very toxic.
What comes with the damming of rivers to harness the energy? No more salmon.

We are so completely eviscerated from the the source of all our strength and sanity-The Land. The technological imperative is destroying our life systems. There are a whole host of unseen consequences that go unacknowleged when we analyze sciences' "contributions" and the consequences of our technologies.

[SoCalDem]

5. Just GREAT ! Soon they will not fall for our tricks

[Selteri]

7. It's been comming, I'm not surprised

1 - It makes a lot of sense sinse we're finding we have to grow the organs in some place since the laws are lining up against any kind of human cloning.

2 - It was bound to happen the sooner or later anyway and likely will become voluntary soon enuogh for people who want to live in the oceans or extreme places where humans can't normally live, including out there in space. This has been postulated and talked about for years.

3 - We need to put laws in place to define the line between the animal and sentient, then define rights for all sentience, not just humans.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. in response to post number one, something along these lines.....

the monkey parts are under the human-like clothing