Are We Playing God with Human-Animal Embryos?
Last week scientists were given the green light to begin to create human-animal embryos at a mix of 99.9% human, 0.1% animal. Religious nuts are outraged and want to put a stop to it. They say that scientists are playing God.
The scientific community counters that the hybrids will allow them to discover treatments which could lead to a cure for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
The shortage of human eggs has put a damper on the progress being made to stem cell research. There is only two or three a month that are donated or released. However, animal eggs are always in high supply. So why not mix the two so that the process of finding cures can be expedited?
Dr Helen Watts of the Catholic Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics tells Sky News:
“Human conception is someting very special which should be kept separate from animal reproduction. Not only are we creating this embryo for destructive experiments, but we are further demeaning it by giving it a non-human parent.”
Yes, the embryos are still banned from being set into a human womb and scientists will still need to receive permission. Yet wouldn’t it be immoral to ban research that denies patients their health and lives? I say yes.
[Sky News]
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Clyde said
am September 20 2007 @ 11:50 pm
At least your not pussy footing around the subject. Its time to get our asses in gear and start finding cures for diseases that should have been written off long ago.
If this helps that cause then so be it.
Jerad Kaliher said
am September 21 2007 @ 7:52 pm
@Clyde, hey man good to see you commenting here. Yeah I agree with you as I’m sure you’re well aware. It’s time to stop looking at ways to go backwards and start innovating with what we have now. That means using animal DNA to foster faster results.
Connie T. said
am September 24 2007 @ 8:51 am
Enough of the lies!! According to the National Enquirer, the scientists are secretly planning to grow a human/pig hybrid army to take over the world!!!
In all seriousness I will admit I’m in great awe and even slightly terrified by what science has accomplished these days. There is no limit to progress, which is both a good and bad thing, generally speaking. But does the insatiable need to find all the answers that leads to “tampering with nature” go too far? I’m not sure, but I definitely think that human drive and curiosity is part of natural evolution.
Oh but wait…evolution doesn’t coincide with literal translations from the Bible.
Does it go against “God?” To that I answer with a quote from good ole Joseph Campbell: “God is a metaphor for that which trancends all levels of intellectual thought….Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.”
Quite frankly, I wish that “religious people” would focus more of their energy on saving God’s Creation rather than hinder medical research that would save human lives.
Jerad Kaliher said
am September 24 2007 @ 9:42 am
@Connie T., I can’t agree with you more – there is no limit to progress. Every time that you tell someone, no, you can’t do that – you are simply slowing down our path to preserving life.
And I think you have the right notion as well. The fundamental flaw in the “tampering with nature” argument is that it wasn’t God that wants His so called natural order to be preserved, it’s conservatism and fundamentalist religion that wants to preserve their agendas.
Probing the very essence of our being is not a privilege to be fought for, it is an inalienable right. It is what social contract theory would say is our natural right as humans.
Ryan said
am September 24 2007 @ 11:37 am
0.01 % my ass. Results take chances and drastic measures, if our government didn’t have to worry about critics and litigation, we would be far more technologically superior to other countries than we are today. Our wealth and resources could discover many cures to illnesses around the world, but we worry too much on how we go about creating the cures. Is creating a biological weapon capable of causing a global outbreak any less admirable than creating a gene-freak hybrid who has a father/mother, at one hundreth of a percent, who is an animal? If the accepted animal traits could be controlled and harnessed per se for beneficial reasons as the article/blog suggests, then why not go ahead and give the green light? Im sure the .01% trial is just for media purposes and much more significant trials are being performed behind closed doors. All I know is that if they can hybrid using shark DNA, maybe when I hit old age, they can find a way to keep me alive past the ordinary one-centuary limit, give or take. IF sharks can age without the deterioration of brain cells, then why not humans. Sharks have had a couple extra million years to develop, why not speed up that process for humankind. On a similar note, they outlaw gene therapy on humans for advanced growth and ect. If they were allowed to treat a human subject with gene therapy and allow for the developement of a substantially larger brain could that subject then not also be trained and developed to a higher level of intelligence (atleast potentially). If machines can progress to higher and higher levels of intelligence, why not humans. Admittably i wouldnt want to see cone-heads walking around the earth, but if we had a few hundred Einsteins every centuary instead of just a select few, wouldn’t problems be solved faster and technology flourish? It seems tragic that we may train computers to one day have a true artificial intelligence, like terminator and other sci fi movies suggest, but that we will remain at a plateau of what we are truly capable of. If we only use, on average, a tenth of our brains, why not focus more on waking up and training the use of the other 9/10ths of the brain? There is too much open to possibility to allow social constructs and the moral agenda to block progress, change will happen no matter if we like it or not. If we don’t develop these new fields, other countries will. Knowledge is power and what keeps countries in control. The invention of the atom bomb brought us into light as THE super power of the west, and whats to stop a new technology – in this generation that consisting with biological developements – from bringing in a new super power to reign?
Jerad Kaliher said
am September 24 2007 @ 9:51 pm
@Ryan, it is the constant watering down by both sides of the political spectrum that is deteriorating our ability to innovate at our true rate. I agree that we need some measure of moral ethics involved in the process, yet adopting the common ethics of “the people” may in fact be the worst turn of events.
For instance, most of the conservatism that places these types of issues as bay is by lobbyists who are supported through religious affiliations. If you were to poll most learned scientists on earth today they would tell you that issues like these are very misconstrued and are little understood by people outside of the field.
Then WHY are we allowing the majority of the populace make the decision for what is right and wrong if they don’t even have the proper data. I may be going out on a limb here, but I would say that the majority of the scientific community would tell you that they do not believe in a personal God and that the moral issues of people who do believe are close to ridiculous.
If the minority that are highly educated in this country were the governing body, if they held the right to decide what was moral and immoral we might be better off.
Sure that raises a whole question of creating an aristocracy that can spiral out of control… so I guess we’ll have to deal with what we have for now until we can think of a better solution.
As a side note, I think I would be pretty disturbed if there were cone heads walking around too.
Pete Balasch Jr said
am October 19 2007 @ 3:52 pm
Yea Right 1 half Human 1 half Dog will make you some thing to cure restless Leg Syndrome. You really Believe this Crap ?
Jerad Kaliher said
am October 19 2007 @ 4:41 pm
@Pete Balasch Jr., I think you’ve misunderstood the idea behind the research, like most people who have not studied genetics.
First off they are only using a mere .01% of animal material, not half. They are forced to do this because human embryos are released to scientists too slowly to keep up with research. This will allow for a much larger degree of testing to be performed.
You must also be under the assumption that these embryos will hatch into dog-men or Satyrs. Yet these embryos will stay in the lab and will be used purely for research.
I don’t think we’re in the habit of injecting a human egg with foreign animal material just to plop it into a woman so she can give birth to some monster.
David Ooten said
am January 6 2008 @ 12:54 pm
The religious community has held science back for far to long.
Humans are beginning to wake up and realize truth through science.
And this puts GREAT fear in the religious communities of this world.
what will they do, when there LIE is exposed for what it truely is and they no longer have control over the human race and access to all there Money.
Wake up All You SHEEP!!!