[Malum Prohibitum]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/stor ... 55,00.html

The government has overturned its proposed ban on the creation of human-animal embryos and now wants to allow them to be used to develop new treatments for incurable diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

The proposal, in a new draft fertility bill published today, would allow scientists to create three different types of hybrid embryos.

Scientists would be allowed to grow the embryos in a lab for no more than two weeks, and it would be illegal to implant them in a human.

The first kind of hybrid allowed under the bill, known as a chimeric embryo, is made by injecting cells from an animal into a human embryo. The second, known as a human transgenic embryo, involves injecting animal DNA into a human embryo.

The third, known as a cytoplasmic hybrid, is created by transferring the nuclei of human cells, such as skin cells, into animal eggs from which almost all the genetic material has been removed.

This is this type of human-animal embryo that is being developed in British universities. Scientists say that developing these embryos will provide a plentiful source of stem cells - immature cells that can develop into many different types of tissue - for use in medical research.

The move is a U-turn on proposals to outlaw all types of human-animal embryos set out by ministers in a white paper published last December.

But the new proposal would not allow the creation of "true hybrid" embryos, which would involve fertilising a human egg with animal sperm or vice versa.

 

[Malum Prohibitum]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6534243

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.

In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.

In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.

These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses.

...

During one recent meeting, scientists disagreed on such basic issues as whether it would be unethical for a human embryo to begin its development in an animal's womb, and whether a mouse would be better or worse off with a brain made of human neurons.

 

[Malum Prohibitum]

http://news.scotsman.com/international. ... 2434192005

THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents.

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine".

 

[Tinkerhell]

:shakehead:

we are not God. As much as I'd love to be able to see in the dark like a cat or reginerate like a starfish (ok maybe not quite like that but you get the idea...) I don't think this is a good place to be playing.

 

[Cavediver]

:shakehead:

we are not God. As much as I'd love to be able to see in the dark like a cat or reginerate like a starfish (ok maybe not quite like that but you get the idea...) I don't think this is a good place to be playing.

Really? Why? Assuming they limit the cell development (as stated in the article) what do you see wrong with this research?

 

[ptsmith24]

the potential federal funding part is what i have a problem with...

 

[USMC - Retired]

:shakehead:

we are not God. As much as I'd love to be able to see in the dark like a cat or reginerate like a starfish (ok maybe not quite like that but you get the idea...) I don't think this is a good place to be playing.

Really? Why? Assuming they limit the cell development (as stated in the article) what do you see wrong with this research?

Because it's a stepping stone.

What's wrong with limiting magazine capacities? Stepping stone...

Let them do this and next they'll want to let it go longer, then longer, till one day we got minotaurs running around....

 

[Adam5]

Does this mean that in a few years I'll haev to put the factory stock back on my Hi-Point Carbine, so that it looks like a "Planet Of The Apes" gun again?

 

[Foul]

we are not God.

The government thinks they are.

 

[Cavediver]

Because it's a stepping stone.

What's wrong with limiting magazine capacities? Stepping stone...

Let them do this and next they'll want to let it go longer, then longer, till one day we got minotaurs running around....

Perhaps they will want to do so. That doesn't mean the laws or rules must be changed.

 

[Adam5]

I'm all for advancements in science. This just seems like a slippery slope though.

 

[Tinkerhell]

:shakehead:

we are not God. As much as I'd love to be able to see in the dark like a cat or reginerate like a starfish (ok maybe not quite like that but you get the idea...) I don't think this is a good place to be playing.

Really? Why? Assuming they limit the cell development (as stated in the article) what do you see wrong with this research?

Because it's a stepping stone.

What's wrong with limiting magazine capacities? Stepping stone...

Let them do this and next they'll want to let it go longer, then longer, till one day we got minotaurs running around....

+1 & rofl.

Even if it's limited here the work done in the US can & will be expanded upon outside of the US. I'd just as soon we not be contributing to some Chinese super soldier. Or anything else that comes about from cross breeding animals & humans.

Call me old fashioned or ignorant or whatever but

'TAINT NATRAL.
:roll:

 

[Cavediver]

+1 & rofl.

Even if it's limited here the work done in the US can & will be expanded upon outside of the US. I'd just as soon we not be contributing to some Chinese super soldier. Or anything else that comes about from cross breeding animals & humans.

Call me old fashioned or ignorant or whatever but

'TAINT NATRAL.
:roll:

Does that include a better immune system? Anti-cancer agents & gene therapy? Regeneration or repair of spinal tissue? New skin for burn victims? A new heart for a little girl or boy? Livers, lungs, on and on and on... All because of a few cells in a dish or an egg that someone might misuse?

Because it's a stepping stone.
What's wrong with limiting magazine capacities? Stepping stone...

You know, I think you're right. This does sound like the beginning of a gun ban, you and I just see it from different sides.

 

[Rammstein]

Cool.

Science for the win.

 

[Tinkerhell]

Does that include a better immune system? Anti-cancer agents & gene therapy? Regeneration or repair of spinal tissue? New skin for burn victims? A new heart for a little girl or boy? Livers, lungs, on and on and on... All because of a few cells in a dish or an egg that someone might misuse?

You have a valid point & I certainly understand it, but you have to keep in mind my personal perspective that there are far too many people in the world today anyway. I'm not a big fan of prolonging the average life span of the human race to 100, 110 or more. And, again call me odd or whatever, but I believe that sometimes some people aren't meant to live (and I'm not just talking about the idiot that kicks in one of our doors at 2am expecting an easy haul...)

Guess it's just one of those things where I think the benifits are not justification for the potential abuses/perversions of the knowledge. Oppenheimer regretted what his research made possible. What are the leaders in this branch of science going to regret 50 years from now?...

 

[Rammstein]

Oppenheimer regretted what his research made possible.

But the use of his team's creation saved hundreds of thousands of US soldiers, sailors, and marines lives. I'd say turning some Japanese into crispy critters was a fair trade off. Besides...if they didn't want to get nuked they shouldn't have started something they couldn't finish.

 

[Tinkerhell]

I never said I agreed or disagreed with Oppie.
It certainly ended the war & saved US soldiers.
+100 for us.
Just making the point between what he was originally thinking & then what ended up happening with his work.

Yeah,

a better immune system? Anti-cancer agents & gene therapy? Regeneration or repair of spinal tissue? New skin for burn victims? A new heart for a little girl or boy? Livers, lungs, on and on and on

is all great in theory now but what might it mean 25 - 50 years from now. What might this be used for that today's scientists aren't imagining?

To defend my position a bit further (although I'll grant it's a weak point it's mine & I like it :wink: ) with the nuclear theory analogy, you could argue that we wanted a bomb to defend ourselves against an attack from an enemy force - Japan in this case - that threatened our entire way of life as a nation.
This kind of hybrid gene research isn't something that's going to "save us from an enemy". It has the potential to save some lives in the world, but we don't have any epidemic (Right now. Who knows what super bird flu we humans will eventually cook up killing 98% of us & have zombies roaming the world in search of brains to eat) that is threatening the existence of our way of life and needs a cure. Cancel and burn victims and everything else is bad but I also see it as the way life goes. You live & you die. Some people live longer than others. Sometimes lives are cut tragically short. I personally believe that there is a purpose behind it all and that things happen for a good reason no matter how hard it is to see or accept that reason.

Now, being the horrible debater that I am I'll point out my own difficulty. I believe that God wants things in a natural way - that whole you live & die etc etc thing - but I believe that God made us smart enough to do things for ourselves that aren't exactly natural. I'm pretty sure you can't go pick anything that will function the same way a Z-pack does for a bad case of the flu. I chalk that up to God giving us enough brains to figure things out. So why is this different I ask myself? And I'm not sure that I can explain it but I think it is. I guess maybe I feel that if the good Lord had wanted human and turtles to be able to "combine" he would have made it possible for it to happen in nature. I don't know. I guess I'm rambling. I suppose I'll just have to fall back on my prior statement in that, to me,

'TAINT NATRAL.

 

[Cavediver]

I cannot argue with the fact that there is great potential for misuse. It's there, like it or not. Unfortunately, everything on this great Earth has the potential for misuse. From the Cane Toad to the dinner fork.

Potential misuse is the very reason the grabbers want guns to be banned.

Absolutes suck, don't they?

 

[Rammstein]

but we don't have any epidemic

I'd say AIDS is an epidempic, if not already at pandemic proportions.

I believe that God wants things in a natural way

And that is fine. Just don't use your god to tell others how to live. Decisions that affect others are not solely your to make.

 

[mzmtg]

Help! Help!

I'm stuck in a Robin Cook novel!