In Search For Cures, Scientists Create Embryos That Are Both Animal And Human

Many scientists in the United States are trying to do something that many people find discomforting and very disturbing. They are trying to make embryos part human and part animal.

 “The researchers hope these embryos, known as chimeras, could eventually help save the lives of people with a wide range of diseases. One way would be to use chimera embryos to create better animal models to study how human diseases happen and how they progress. Perhaps the boldest hope is to create farm animals that have human organs that could be transplanted into terminally ill patients. But some scientists and bioethicists worry the creation of these interspecies embryos crosses the line. “You’re getting into unsettling ground that I think is damaging to our sense of humanity,” says Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the New York Medical College.”

“One of the concerns that a lot of people have is that there’s something sacrosanct about what it means to be human expressed in our DNA,” says Jason Robert, a bioethicist at Arizona State University. “And that by inserting that into other animals and giving those other animals potentially some of the capacities of humans that this could be a kind of violation — a kind of, maybe, even a playing God.”

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