150 human animal hybrids grown in UK labs

Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.
The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.
The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.

Last night a campaigner against the excesses of medical research said he was disgusted that scientists were ‘dabbling in the grotesque’.
Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that 155 ‘admixed’ embryos, containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act.
This legalised the creation of a variety of hybrids, including an animal egg fertilised by a human sperm; ‘cybrids’, in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell; and ‘chimeras’, in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.

Scientists say the techniques can be used to develop embryonic stem cells which can be used to treat a range of incurable illnesses.
Three labs in the UK – at King’s College London, Newcastle University and Warwick University – were granted licences to carry out the research after the Act came into force.
All have now stopped creating hybrid embryos due to a lack of funding, but scientists believe that there will be more such work in the future.
The figure was revealed to crossbench peer Lord Alton following a Parliamentary question. Last night he said: ‘I argued in Parliament against the creation of human- animal hybrids as a matter of principle. None of the scientists who appeared before us could give us any justification in terms of treatment.
‘Ethically it can never be justifiable – it discredits us as a country. It is dabbling in the grotesque.
‘At every stage the justification from scientists has been: if only you allow us to do this, we will find cures for every illness known to mankind. This is emotional blackmail.
‘Of the 80 treatments and cures which have come about from stem cells, all have come from adult stem cells – not embryonic ones.
‘On moral and ethical grounds this fails; and on scientific and medical ones too.’
Josephine Quintavalle, of pro-life group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: ‘I am aghast that this is going on and we didn’t know anything about it.
‘Why have they kept this a secret? If they are proud of what they are doing, why do we need to ask Parliamentary questions for this to come to light?
‘The problem with many scientists is that they want to do things because they want to experiment. That is not a good enough rationale.’

Earlier this week, a group of leading scientists warned about ‘Planet of the Apes’ experiments. They called for new rules to prevent lab animals being given human attributes, for example by injecting human stem cells into the brains of primates.
But the lead author of their report, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, from the Medical Research Council’ s National Institute for Medical Research, said the scientists were not concerned about human-animal hybrid embryos because by law these have to be destroyed within 14 days.
He said: ‘The reason for doing these experiments is to understand more about early human development and come up with ways of curing serious diseases, and as a scientist I feel there is a moral imperative to pursue this research.
‘As long as we have sufficient controls – as we do in this country – we should be proud of the research.’
However, he called for stricter controls on another type of embryo research, in which animal embryos are implanted with a small amount of human genetic material.
Human-animal hybrids are also created in other countries, many of which have little or no regulation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/...vely-past-years.html

I'm relatively sure that we are simply not enlightened enough to understand why this is a good thing.

------------------
Ron

"Do no harm"
vs.
"If it can be done, DO IT"

There are pros and cons to everything.
A lot of scientific and medical research and experimentation involves risk, someone has to make a decision of if the risk is worth the desired result. But who should make that decision in a time when the risks are almost incomprehensible?
As much as the scientific community tells us how they can do things in a controlled environment they themselves in most instances really don't know the long term effects of their actions, they are experimenting! They are shooting for the results they want to achieve but in reality they don't know what the result will be until the experiment is complete.
I am a strong supporter of research and expanding our knowledge of the natural world, but get nervous when we start dabbling in changing and manipulating the natural world. The longterm effects cannot be known and once the Genie is out of the bottle it is usually very difficult if not impossible to put it back in.
I see the interest in such experimentation by those in the field, but personally I think it's a very dangerous road to go down.

------------------
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem, work hard to improve.

quote Originally posted by blackrams: I'm relatively sure that we are simply not enlightened enough to understand why this is a good thing.

I am covinced that we will never be enlightened.
It seems people resist it with all the strength the security of the past provides them.

I truely believe that people clutch their beliefs (the collection of "knowns" that makes life a solidity that they can fuction in and take advantage of) so tightly that they would rather die then consider that the ideas they are functioning under may be outdated and no longer prudent in current situations, that things continue to change and evolve, and so must our thinking and actions.

If the attitudes of resistence to even the slightest change of thought by members seen here at Pennocks is any indication to humanities progress tword "enlightenment", the world ain't gonna' never see it.
"Kill them all & let God sort them out" ("them" being those that aren't "us", whichever "us" is convienent at the time) is a pretty powerfull security blankit to wrap your "knowns" in.

found this other info:
A humanzee is the mixture of a human and a chimpanzee
The humanzee (also known as the Chuman, or Manpanzee) is a hypothetical chimpanzee/human hybrid. Chimpanzees and humans are very closely related (95% of their DNA sequence, and 99% of coding DNA sequences are in common[1]), leading to contested speculation that a hybrid is possible, though no specimen has ever been confirmed.
further reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...mosomal_polymorphism

This photo looks fake,but has some good reading here:
http://xenophilius.wordpres...2008/12/07/humanzee/

just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks......

nowhere near any "real" understanding of how life works yet, just have found a few neat "tricks" in DNA.
there is an underlying machine/intellegence at work with DNA, which has yet to be even identified.

Just FYI, a human shares about 98% of its DNA with a chimpanzee. And believe it or not, we share about 1/3 of our DNA with a tree. So I'm not all that surprised that scientists have figured out how to mix human and animal DNA.

That said, I firmly believe that when we get to the point where we can fiddle with our own genome (i.e. "babies made to order"), it will probably be the end of us, as a species. Because, as the saying goes, power corrupts. And the more power we have over our own DNA, the more we will corrupt it.

quote Originally posted by Blacktree: That said, I firmly believe that when we get to the point where we can fiddle with our own genome (i.e. "babies made to order"), it will probably be the end of us, as a species. Because, as the saying goes, power corrupts. And the more power we have over our own DNA, the more we will corrupt it.

Agreed.
I think it will come in the form of no more viable reproduction by any means.
We will have unintentually removed a magic in the secrets of life that we were unaware of.

We may very well end up as those bad guys in "Dark City", inhabiting the recent dead while subjecting the remainder of the human race to evolutionary acceleration in search of the secret to immortallity to preserve what is left of The Human Race.

[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 07-25-2011).]

quote Originally posted by Pyrthian: just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks...... nowhere near any "real" understanding of how life works yet, just have found a few neat "tricks" in DNA. there is an underlying machine/intellegence at work with DNA, which has yet to be even identified.

We're at a point where we know how the major stuff works,, and are now studing the machine's more intricate pieces, but have yet to fully comprehand how those pieces all communicate and function. It's one thing to know the pieces, and where they go, but quite another to know how the genes are expressed - it'll be awhile before they'll be able to create a complex 'tailor made' organism. I have no doubt that in time, they will be able to, but it's one thing to make a flying iguana, it's another to get all the intimate systems working together

Gaining a deeper understanding of how we tick will help us battle things such as Diabeties and cancer (learning how to 'turn on' or 'beef-up' our anti-tumor systems, for instance...)

Also, there are layers of things ar work we don't fully undertstand(and/or can fully control) such as aging. Or women. No scientist has fully figured THEM out yet.

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: Also, there are layers of things ar work we don't fully undertstand(and/or can fully control) such as aging. Or women. No scientist has fully figured THEM out yet.

No, but Midol has!

What, too soon?

quote Originally posted by Boondawg: I am covinced that we will never be enlightened. It seems people resist it with all the strength the security of the past provides them.

Maybe enlightenment happend long ago and has been forgotten thru generations.

quote Originally posted by 2.5: Maybe enlightenment happend long ago and has been forgotten thru generations.

Well, not in the time since they were nailing "verbal troublemakers" to crosses.
Before then?
Nope, the unknown & unexplaned held all manor of monsters that were the blame for ALL the problems beset on man...

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: We're at a point where we know how the major stuff works,, and are now studing the machine's more intricate pieces, but have yet to fully comprehand how those pieces all communicate and function. It's one thing to know the pieces, and where they go, but quite another to know how the genes are expressed - it'll be awhile before they'll be able to create a complex 'tailor made' organism. I have no doubt that in time, they will be able to, but it's one thing to make a flying iguana, it's another to get all the intimate systems working together Gaining a deeper understanding of how we tick will help us battle things such as Diabeties and cancer (learning how to 'turn on' or 'beef-up' our anti-tumor systems, for instance...)

I wonder how far they can push the argument that we will eventually cure our illnesses by doing this.

Does science honor ethics? Does it only become a problem to your average Joe when the outward physical traits appear to change? Maybe when the animal looks sad or unhappy at its predicament?

The article is short on details and long on speculation. Nowhere did they actually give any details on these so-called "hybrids" and the level of development. Maybe there is a link to something more comprehensive?

[This message has been edited by TK (edited 07-25-2011).]

If the Christian God exists as s/he is described, do the moral/ethical implications still matter? What if we are truly destined to take control of our own evolutionary path and this, among other technological advancements is just a small stepping stone in that direction?

I read this yesterday, and while I'm certain it's a work of fiction, it is thought provoking.

More or less just thinking aloud...

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: "Do no harm" vs. "If it can be done, DO IT"

vs do what we can to learn....

quote Originally posted by 2.5: Maybe people don't like enlightenment.

Exactly my point.
Change means reliquishing some degree of percieved personal power over the immediate world around you.
Constant addaptation is scary stuff.

To the dominator, change is dangerous.
To the dominated, it offers them empowerment.

[This message has been edited by Boondawg (edited 07-25-2011).]

So will England now be renamed The Island of Doctor Moreau?

quote Originally posted by TK: The article is short on details and long on speculation. Nowhere did they actually give any details on these so-called "hybrids" and the level of development. Maybe there is a link to something more comprehensive?

well, the above posted stuff only mentions "human-animal hybrid embryos".
at the root - even "human" embyos are pretty much human-animal hybrids. gills. tails. flippers.

my fav fictional "blend" was the sharks with human barins

quote Originally posted by Boondawg: Exactly my point. Change means reliquishing some degree of percieved personal power over the immediate world around you. Constant addaptation is scary stuff. To the dominator, change is dangerous. To the dominated, it offers them empowerment.

Yeah we probably agree. But still might be talking about different things.
I think people want the enlightenment to be saying "you're just fine keep doing what you are doing, I'll take care of you if anything bad happens". I think enlightenment is there, we just don't take it because it involves responsibility.

Okay. I'm going to take the "road less traveled".

By most conservative Christian beliefs, human life (and the beginning of a soul) is believed to begin at the moment a human sperm fertilizes a human egg.
By definition, if one of those entities is not human, the result will be not human.

We've cloned sheep. We've cloned other animals. The sky didn't fall. The world didn't end.
I believe that, somewhere, there is probably a cloned human walking around. (I certainly hope not, though. I have problems with that.)

As for hybrids, I say let them have at it, if it might be of some medical benefit.

I bet it is just a hoax to stir up thoughts for the new Planet of the Apes movie coming out soon.

but what do I know?

quote Originally posted by TK: The article is short on details and long on speculation. Nowhere did they actually give any details on these so-called "hybrids" and the level of development. Maybe there is a link to something more comprehensive?

They are embryos it seems. I guess sort of a point of mine is when does it matter what stage they are at, where would the line be drawn?

Wiki says:"A parahuman or para-human is a term used to describe a human-animal hybrid or chimera. ...
There is no scientific field of parahuman research. Ethical, moral, and legal issues of parahuman research are speculative extensions of existing issues that arise in actual research.
Other ethical issues (shared with genetic engineering in general) involve the legal and moral status of a hybrid individual or race, whether the decision-making power over its creation should lie with governments or individuals, whether a distinction should be drawn between strictly medical treatments (restoring lost function) and those enhancing humans above some "normal" standard, whether medical ethics allow doctors to offer parahuman-related treatments, and whether xenotransplantation poses risks of cross-species disease transfer."

Reuters:
"If you come home and your parrot says 'Who's a pretty boy?' that's one thing. But if your monkey says it that's something else," said Christopher Shaw of the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.
http://www.reuters.com/arti...dUSTRE76K7Q220110721

NAT GEO (from 2005):
"Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans. Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.

But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have? There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues. "
http://news.nationalgeograp...050125_chimeras.html

There is a very good reason why people are not fond of "enlightenment" and change. Here is a brief list from the last century:

Lenin promised enlightenment and change with the results being that Stalin killed tens of millions of people and Soviet Communism failed before the end of the century anyway.

Hitler promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of people in his quest to spread his brand of master race and eradicate all inferior races.

Mao promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of Chinese in his quest for power.

Pol Pot promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of Cambodians.


Enlightenment and change has a habit of killing millions of people. As the Communists say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." It is always the other guy that turns out to be the eggs. Funny how that works, isn't it?


.

quote Originally posted by Doug85GT: There is a very good reason why people are not fond of "enlightenment" and change. Here is a brief list from the last century: Lenin promised enlightenment and change with the results being that Stalin killed tens of millions of people and Soviet Communism failed before the end of the century anyway. Hitler promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of people in his quest to spread his brand of master race and eradicate all inferior races. Mao promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of Chinese in his quest for power. Pol Pot promised enlightenment and change and he killed millions of Cambodians. Enlightenment and change has a habit of killing millions of people. As the Communists say, "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." It is always the other guy that turns out to be the eggs. Funny how that works, isn't it? .

Wait, I remember Candidate Obama promising us Hope and Change we could believe in. I know he mentioned enlightenment several times. What's that about breaking eggs?

------------------
Ron

Are we Humans that important to the World, that we have to become permanently here?
Is it of such great importance that everybody gets to live three score and ten or more years as a right? Or are we so obsessed with our importance, which exists only in the minds of Humans , that we are stepping over the boundaries of WHAT we should be doing ? Isn't it good enough that a majority of people now live into their seventies or eighties??
And another reference to a post I made somewhere else: If Heaven is so great, and so easily obtained, why are we so determined to remain here below???? )I personally think that deep down, NONE of us truly believe in Heaven, otherwise there would be celebrations at somebody's passing, not misery and sadness.
And by ensuring more and more people continue to live beyond their appointed time, our social systems will crash and burn, and Wars and Riots, looting and mugging will be as commonplace as going to 'The Game' each weekend.
The Ogre's sig says it all IMHO.
"Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
(Jurassic Park)

[This message has been edited by fierofetish (edited 07-25-2011).]

quote Originally posted by fierofetish: Are we Humans that important to the World, that we have to become permanently here? Is it of such great importance that everybody gets to live three score and ten or more years as a right?

Well Yeah, at least for anyone that owns a Fiero.

------------------
Ron

That counts ME out then, Ron

quote Originally posted by fierofetish: And another reference to a post I made somewhere else: If Heaven is so great, and so easily obtained, why are we so determined to remain here below????

Easily obtained I suppose is in the eye of the beholder.

Why are we determined to stay? Love of loved ones, love of the familiar, fear of loss? Fear of nothing, fear of Hell? Might differ for each person I guess thats in the eye f the beholder too.

quote Originally posted by 2.5: Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories...

Interesting. I just watched the science-fiction movie, Splice earlier this month. I thought it stunk, but it's kind of scary thinking this technology is here... now.

[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 07-25-2011).]

Think your neighbors dog bugs you now barking all night?

Wait until they get the vocal chord gene, yak yak yak all night long, and you think you want to know what a dog says. It probably goes something like this.

Dog1 :" I HEARD SOMETHING, I THINK!"
Dog2:" I HEARD SOMETHING TOO, PROBABLY YOU, BUT WE CANT BE TOO CAREFUL"
Dog3:" DID YOU GUYS HEAR THAT?!?!"
Dog4-15" CRAP I HEAR IT TOO!! WHAT IS THAT, HEY WAKE UP PEOPLE YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS!!"
(meanwhile dogs 1,2, and 3 are sound asleep).
Dog4-15:" OMG, WHAT IS THAT NOISE!! WE GOTTA KILL IT!!!"
Spread around the neighborhood 50-60 times, and repeat through the night.

Brad

quote Originally posted by fierofetish: The Ogre's sig says it all IMHO. "Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." (Jurassic Park)

C.H.U.D. !!!

quote Originally posted by turbotoad: C.H.U.D. !!!

Ha! I saw that movie,Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller

[This message has been edited by James Bond 007 (edited 07-25-2011).]

quote Originally posted by mike-ohio: The Island of Doctor Moreau?

First thing I thought of when I saw the thread title.