Only gamers and nutballs should fear minotaurs
Britain’s leading scientists have made a final plea for the right to create the first animal-human embryos for medical research using eggs taken from dead cows.
The issue is controversial because it involves scientists taking an animal egg, removing its genetic material and putting DNA from a human cell into it. This can be used to create lines of stem cells which can then be made part of studies into incurable genetic diseases such as motor neurone disease.
However, it has caused controversy as some campaigners and religious groups argue that it is unethical to mix human and animal cells in this way.
The Catholic Church has made clear its opposition. Bishops told the parliamentary committee scrutinising a draft bill to allow the research to go ahead, that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research – they believe that all life begins at conception. In a submission to the committee, they said: ‘At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and be treated accordingly.’
The legality of the procedure was affirmed in January. The predictable confrontation between science and the warriors of one or another god is now at full thunder and brimstone.
Hopefully, reason, objectivity and science shall prevail.
The RCC also didn’t want any research into whether the earth orbited the sun.
COWS and humans?======NO!!!!!!!!!!!
Sheep and humans?- – – – -RCC has to mull that one over.
From the Guardian article
“Hybrid embryos are made by transferring human DNA, such as skin cells, into eggs from animals such as cows or rabbits, and the resulting embryos are more than 99% human. Scientists hope the process will avoid the ethical dilemmas of tampering with a human life.”
I don’t see how making a human/animal hybrid is more ethical than experimentation on human embryos. Something here smells fishy.
3==you don’t see anything ethically different when experimenting on humans vs animals? human embryos vs animal embryos? white folks vs the coloreds?
Where you draw the line on what is human and what is not human is and always will be and should be very relevant, for the religious and non-religious as well.
Now, I say any percent of human dna info makes the embryo human–but its just an embryo==so fry it up for breakfast.
bobbo, I said “I don’t see how making a human/animal hybrid is more ethical than experimentation on human embryos. Something here smells fishy.”
It’s right above your comment, so try not to misquote me so obviously.
bobbo said “3==you don’t see anything ethically different when experimenting on humans vs animals? human embryos vs animal embryos? white folks vs the coloreds?”
To make matters worse you’re agreeing with my contention. So why are you questioning my statement?
Perhaps I misunderstood your sarcasm for refutation on the first read^^
I’m with nightstar on this one. I don’t see why using animal cells for this research is necessary — we should just be using human cells. Why take that 1% risk just to mollify the religious.
#5, nightstar,
Sorry buddy, but I’m a little confused by your position as well. I couldn’t tell where you stood.
*
To me, there is an ethical divide between experimentation on a human embryo and combining a human embryo with something not human. Maybe there is some prejudicial instinct buried deep in my mind’s recesses. Maybe it was reading “The Island of Dr. Thoreau” as a kid. The same goes for bestiality. This is just not my cup of tea.
Someone should tell the DU Crew to eschew the precis and Post the whole damned article. Obviously, no one here ever clicks the link and reads.
A significant portion of the new procedure is to reduce costs by a massive amount and enable a qualitative increase in the number of experiments which can be run simultaneously.
I realize that doesn’t mean squat to the Theology School that’s meeting here, this morning.
Why stop at the embryo phase? It seems to me there would be more of a scientific benefit to letting these creations come to term if possible, and maybe use the organs for sale and transfer. I’m sure there are many people that could use organs from healthy humans.
Why don’t they use chimpanzee cells? Are they going out of their way to stir up the idjits?
I sure hope these scientists actually know what they’re doing because this kind of experimentation is a hell of a lot more dangerous than something simple – like nuclear fission.
Back then it was “radiation”, “fallout”, “uninhabitable for ten thousand years”? Duh, what do you mean?
This time it might be, “Duh, a highly contagious new virus that kills all humans in hours and we can’t kill it? What do you…..?”
5–Nightstar, evidently you don’t understand how to write what you mean to say.
“I don’t see how making a human/animal hybrid is more ethical than experimentation on human embryos.” In this statement you make humans and animals the SAME in ethical evaluation. But while both entities are “alive” there are in fact some differences==atleast 9 months down the road when they become tax payers, or not.
Are humans and animals the same for purposes of experimentation? If so, then your irrittion is logical, if not made clear.
12—Cinaedh==right you are, and it will come by accident by some bright teenager who got a “gene splicer for home use” for his birthday. As technology becomes cheaper and more affordable, the rule of unintentional consequences raises its horrible head. Too bad unlike Nuclear Weapons, playing in the gene pool will soon be very affordable and accessible.
In fact, were I president of the world, I would outlaw all genetic research because of where it is going to eventually wind up, as stated above.
Bobbo, you’d need a heck of a lot of power to make it stick. You don’t have any trouble with someone having that much power, if you get to choose who that person is?
The hypothetical teenager is a bad enough risk, but it is further into the future. More immediatly, the various third world meglomaniacs will soon be able to set up their own labs to breed a slave race, the perfect concubine, or a virus intended to kill whatever group they decide is an “inferior race”, and that makes me very nervous.
Even more nervous than the controls Yahoo! and Red China have agreed on for the net. (I was just over in Groklaw.)
#2, bobbo, you’re a funny guy. That thought is hilarious!
#14 – bobbo
“…the rule of unintentional consequences raises its horrible head.”
Well put!
I wonder if there is an ultimate “rule of unintentional consequences”? If there is, by its’ very nature I suppose we’ll be lucky if we never know about it.
I’m just wondering how the cow eggs will be fertilized… before or after?
Will all the embryos be related to Britain’s leading scientists?
Cripes! I should look up the proper plural for “”wuss” to post here, today. We’re talking about fracken zygotes – alive in test tubes for a few days to a few weeks – and some of you are whining like it’s all the souls from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
Worried about larger, more complex organisms? Then bring your whining back when someone’s actually proposing to do something like that – what your shorts are all bunched up about.
Same old Luddite crap that everything from powered looms to computers encountered. Just tidied up with PC semantics.
#19 – moss
You’re being awfully presumptuous.
In fact I consider myself the opposite of a Luddite and I was worried about something very small and not very complex at all.
That’s the problem, not the solution to the problem.
This is a path better not traveled. Is the 50% human meat or man? How about the cow with the brain of a man? Or a man with the brain of a cow?
These questions lie further down the path, but they are on the path.
I’ll clarify my position a little bit.
It seems to me there are multiple controversies at the core of this issue. Human embryonic stem cell research being one. Another is interspecies recombinant DNA experimentation. The third issue I perceive is conducting research on the resultant chimera embryos.
I got the impression that the chimera embryos were intended to appease anti stem cell activists from the following sentence in the article.
“Scientists hope the process will avoid the ethical dilemmas of tampering with a human life.”
I don’t understand how someone who eschews stem cell research on humans could be alright with the same research on these creations.
Personally I’m more apprehensive of the production of quasi-human creatures than human embryonic research.
19–Moss, you are wrong again. While you look up wussies, also look up ludite. It does not mean “anyone who is against something new.” Similar, but not exactly that as you use it.
No==the very power of genetic engineering for “good” runs the exact same parallel path for “bad.” Now all we have to calculate is the value of the Good verses the probabilty of the bad.
The good==people that should have died inutero are able to live until they are 310 years. The bad–if people will make viruses for fun for the cyberworld, there aint no doubt in my mind AT ALL, that the same will be done in the real world. Kiddies are like that, always messing with the old folks.
bobbo, I sincerely hope this statement was facetious.
bobbo said “3==you don’t see anything ethically different when experimenting on humans vs animals? human embryos vs animal embryos? white folks vs the coloreds?”
I don’t see any differences in the ethics of experimenting on “white folks vs the coloreds” do you or did you intend sarcasm?
22—Nightstar, go back to the dictionary. Look up human, animal, chimera. Three different things. Maybe the loonies will buy into it and basic research can continue with government funding.
“I don’t understand how someone who eschews stem cell research on humans could be alright with the same research on these creations.” ==OBVIOUSLY, the hope is that something that is not 100% human, not 100% made in Gods Image, will be considered not human and therefore subject to Man’s Domain and subject to experimentation. What wires do you still have crossed?
24–Nightstar, good. You see, what is human and subject to protection verses what is not human and not subject to protection, is purely definitional. Used to be that blacks could be slaves because they weren’t humans.===see the black skin? All humans have white skin, therefore ok for blacks to be slaves.
With the march of time, same argument with % of human dna. Still just definitional.
Why did anyone even ask what “the church” thought?
bobbo I don’t accept your differentiation between animal and human. To me humans are a species of animal.
I don’t believe in your god.
I don’t believe in creation.
I don’t have my wires crossed.
If the dictionary is your alternate authority to the bible for definition of taxonomy I think we have a problem. Get an old dictionary and check out whether people with dark skin are human, then get back to me.
28–Nightstar, I presume you are drinking early this fine day?
So, because humans are animals, all animals are just the same, or in this case, the same with regards to ethics in embryonic research?
Well, simply stated, 99% of people disagree with you. The other one percent are licking their own balls and coughing up fur.
12 This time it might be, “Duh, a highly contagious new virus that kills all humans in hours and we can’t kill it? What do you…..?”
Agreed. Something that would make influenza or bubonic plague seem tame – since no one in the world would have any inherited resistance to it.
I’m reading David Stannard’s American Holocaust, and it is depressing to read how many millions of people died from disease.
http://books.google.com/books?id=RzFsODcGjfcC