Some things just sound better in a sci-fi movie or book than they do in real life. Like the idea of a real honest-to-god human-animal hybrid. Its terrifying to think how this could work in real life. But Japan has indicated that it wants to go ahead and make it possible.
The country just lifted a controversial ban on human-animal embryo experiments. Previously the ban was in place but with certain limits in place. It allowed scientists to conduct human-animal embryo experiments, they just weren’t allowed to bring the development to term.
Now scientists can transplant hybrid embryos into surrogate animals, and also bring them to term. This really sounds like something from Resident Evil, the hit video game franchise that turned into a movie with Milla Jovovich shooting zombies.
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Human-Animal Hybrid Experiments
Japanese stem cell biologist Hiromitsu Nakauchi is excited about the prospect. He was part of the University of Tokyo’s experiments that involved inserting human cells in pigs and sheep embryo, creating ‘chimeras‘. (yes, they’re really called that).
These hybrid embryos or chimeras were previously terminated at 14 days as per the law.
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Now that the ban has been lifted, human cells will be grown in rat and mouse embryos. These chimeras will be brought to term with the help of a surrogate animal. The experiments will be carried out at the University of Tokyo.
The University of Stanford geneticist Nakauchi intends to create human organs for organ transplants through this experiment.
Humanized Animals and Chimeras
Besides the ‘scientists playing God’ argument, bioethicists are concerned if these human-animal hybrids could be more integrated (think Beta Ray Bill from Thor).
It is argued that if human cells stray beyond the targeted organs into other areas of the animal, we would effectively be creating a ‘humanized animal‘.
Just imagine. A creature that is part animal, part human is going to open a can of worms. And of course there are going to be questions about how ethical is it to conduct these experiments. Human-animal rights anyone? The University of Tokyo does not want that either.
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A ‘humanized animal‘ is less likely to occur than we think. But that will depend on how far these experiments go.
Previous experiments involved sheep embryo which contained 10,000 or less human cells in 28 days of development.
For Growing Organs Not New Lifeforms
The key aim of these experiments is to just grow organs, not human-animal hybrids.
This is one reason why Nakauchi plans to take things slow with these human-animal hybrid experiments. Because no one really wants to create Frankenstein’s monster now, do they?
“We don’t expect to create human organs immediately, but this allows us to advance our research-based upon the know-how we have gained up to this point.”
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What Nakauchi hopes to do is to ‘transform lives’. For example, there are 116,000 patients on the transplant waiting list in the United States alone. Many people end up dying, just waiting for an organ transplant.
If scientists could harvest human organs from animals, this would result in a major medical revolution.
via Independent UK
