Those Ethical Scientists…

Very interesting…

Seems that scientists, those paragons of ethics we all know and love, have injected human cells into the fetus of a sheep producing a chimera sheep. Very nice. I’m sure there’s some ethical scientific purpose in turning human cells and animal fetuses into living chemistry sets.

Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera – which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells – and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s foetus.

Anyone care to field this one?

I wish I could find the article but I wrote about this a few years ago, and in the article I said that it wouldn’t be long before scientists started trying to mix species and so on and I was told I was nuts.

Yup. It’s all my imagination.

The Mail via Boing Boing

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  • Bridget

    “their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t this already happened?
    “Six baboon kidneys were transplanted into humans in 1964, a baboon heart into a baby in 1984, and two baboon livers into patients in 1992.
    Although all the patients died within weeks after their operations, they did not die of organ rejection. Rather, they died of infections common to patients on immunosuppressive drugs.”
    (from the website http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/596_xeno.html) They are making it sounds like it’s never happened before and this is the only way for it to be a success. Maybe they should start looking at the infections that are common due to immunosuppressive drugs?

  • Bridget

    “their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t this already happened?
    “Six baboon kidneys were transplanted into humans in 1964, a baboon heart into a baby in 1984, and two baboon livers into patients in 1992.
    Although all the patients died within weeks after their operations, they did not die of organ rejection. Rather, they died of infections common to patients on immunosuppressive drugs.”
    (from the website http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/596_xeno.html) They are making it sounds like it’s never happened before and this is the only way for it to be a success. Maybe they should start looking at the infections that are common due to immunosuppressive drugs?