Little Bo-peep has crossed with her sheep
Moos and views you can ewes
I told you this Island of Dr. Moreau stuff was coming, didn’t I?
First, an article in the BBC news announced back in November that scientists from Newcastle University and Kings College London have applied to the UK’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority for a 3-year license to conduct some human genetic experiments
Their goal: To produce human/cow hybrids.
That’s right, these folks want to bring to life the Minotaur out of Greek mythology. Only, thankfully, they don’t want to nurture it to adulthood – only to the days-old embryonic stage, for stem cells that can be used in human medicine.
Just last month, I wrote to you for the very first time about stem cells. In my 2-part series (Daily Dose, 3/6 and 3/9/2007), I brought you up to speed on the various types of stem cells, a few of their pending potential applications, and I touched on some of the ethical and legal quagmires that surround the technology
Well, despite the “creep factor” in making hybrids of humans and bovines, there seems to be a very worthwhile justification for the scientists’ application. You see, the best and most medically applicable types of stem cells come from human embryos – a politically charged source, indeed. Generally, it would take large numbers of either aborted fetuses or cloned embryos to generate enough stem cells to be of any real clinical use. Both of these sources push the envelope of what’s medically and morally ethical.
Besides this, to produce these embryos by cloning also requires a huge number of human eggs – not the easiest thing to come by, believe it or not. However, these UK scientists have found a way to strip a cow’s egg of its genetic material, then insert human DNA into it at the proper stage, and voila!
The end result, in theory, would be large numbers of embryos that are human enough in origin for their stem cells to be therapeutically valuable, yet that couldn’t grow up into human beings – and that haven’t been aborted from anyone’s belly or derived from healthy eggs that any young woman has sold off for pub money
In my view, this is a better solution than some of the alternatives, if it works. At the very least, the experiments will teach us worlds more than we now know about the boundaries of chromosomal compatibility between species – something that a lot of people bent on human genetic enhancement are wondering about. But these Minotaur embryos aren’t even the weirdest or creepiest news on the real-life “Dr. Moreau” front.
Think the cow/human embryo plans from the UK are weird? A group of American scientists have left this far in the rear-view mirror on “Creep-o” street
They’ve bred a herd of sheep that are roughly 15% HUMAN.
Though the animals look like ordinary sheep, their internal organs – namely, their hearts, lungs, and livers – are genetically more than half human. A team of scientists from the University of Nevada has pioneered the research over the last 7 years. Their objective is to produce vital organs (like in-demand livers) that are human enough to be viable for transplants on a mass scale.
They accomplish this feat by injecting stem cells extracted from an individual patient’s bone marrow into a sheep fetus at precisely the right time, and in precisely the right way. The result is either an individual or multiple lambs born with organs that are not just significantly human, but whose human component is genetically identical to the donor
Hopefully, this will translate into high viability, and more lives saved in the future among those who’ll need organ transplants in the future. Many who need livers, for instance, die after months or years on a waiting list – ample time to grow an entire herd of replacement organs.
Pretty encouraging, isn’t it? I mean, once you get over the “yuck” factor. But I haven’t told you the creepiest part yet
The Nevada scientists can do this with sheep BRAINS, too.
