So horrifying

[HowietheGreat]

Scientists create animals that are part-human - Cloning and stem cells - MSNBC.com

I'm mean, I'm almost speechless. Where will we stop? A human mind possibly created and trapped in a animal.......I'm at a loss for how wrong this all is.

[Biscuit]

Sweet, I'm going to go buy 3 bottles of wine because I can always get a sheeps liver.

(sarcasm)

[Calliso]

I seriously doubt it will go as far as creating a human animal hybrid that actually has a human mind. I mean I doubt it would ever be allowed or if it would even be possible. Really all these animals are are animals that have a few human genes..kinda like the goats with the spider gene so their milk has silk proteins or whatever in it. Now I did see that part about creating a half human/ chimpazee or whatever hybrid..I doubt that will ever happen either..even if they attempted it I doubt the embyro would live. I mean there is a big difference between having sheep with partially human livers and something that is literally half human.

Now preferably eventually we wonlt need animals to do such things as grow human organs and we will be able to do it entirely with special equipment or whatever.

[Alusdra]

This is just an expansion on how we've produced insulin for decades (human insulin gene inserted into bacteria). The bigger concern would be zoonotic diseases. With a human liver in the sheep, that's a really concerning breeding ground for giving a human scrapies, for example (sheep version of mad cow).

I'm pretty sure it would be really ridiculously tricky to get a human mind in a sheep. We don't even know what most of the brain does, much less all the myriad genes that make it happen developmentally.

The draw to making cloned animals like this is that once you get one success... then you can just breed them. The expensive part is done. Putting them in some sort of artificial system would be expensive forever.

[thalestral]

Utterly horrid. People are so undeserving of this world :/

[Tophica]

'They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.' Why don't they just use humans? You know, ones that are going on death trial, rapists instead of killing a poor sheep that organs probably won't even work in humans.

[MCR_Rox]

Originally Posted by Tophica

'They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.' Why don't they just use humans? You know, ones that are going on death trial, rapists instead of killing a poor sheep that organs probably won't even work in humans.

The stupid idiots who think that sheep are less deserving of their organs than those humans won't let it happen.

[Calliso]

Originally Posted by Tophica

'They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.' Why don't they just use humans? You know, ones that are going on death trial, rapists instead of killing a poor sheep that organs probably won't even work in humans.

You know I would agree with that if any justice system we have was always 100% accurate and we could be 110% sure that the person was actually guilty of the crime.

[Calliso]

Originally Posted by Alusdra

I'm pretty sure it would be really ridiculously tricky to get a human mind in a sheep. We don't even know what most of the brain does, much less all the myriad genes that make it happen developmentally.

The draw to making cloned animals like this is that once you get one success... then you can just breed them. The expensive part is done. Putting them in some sort of artificial system would be expensive forever.

Ahh good point about the expense part..an artifical system would likely end up being much much more expensive. Which in turn means less organs available for the people that need them..and less people that could even afford them in the first place!

[crazywiggy]

Just want to point out that actually animal use is really expensive. Artificial methods would be much cheaper, so they would be used wherever possible.

[HowietheGreat]

What makes me ill is that cloned animals have no apparent "rights" as far as I can tell. Are they protected under animal rights laws???

[crazywiggy]

I'm not sure about elsewhere, but I believe in the UK cloned animals have the same "rights" as all other animals, i.e. they still come under all relevant welfare/care/research laws.

This isn't particularly news to me - there are already a variety of GM animals being used in research - animals that have human genes introduced to their DNA. Most of them are unidentifiable as being different to normal animals, except for that one gene which is usually invisible on the outside. They're not some weird hybrid mutant species.

Obviously I would prefer them to find a way of growing transplant organs without using animals at all.

But, if animals must be used, it does make more sense (scientifically speaking) to use transgenic ones that will be more suitable.

[Calliso]

oops wrong thread...

[DaisyGP]

Originally Posted by Tophica

'They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.' Why don't they just use humans? You know, ones that are going on death trial, rapists instead of killing a poor sheep that organs probably won't even work in humans.

now there's an idea!

[HowietheGreat]

The psychatrists I work with were raising a concerned eyebrow to this as well today. Neither were pleased with what they were reading.