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Wednesday, June 8th, 2016

Scientists attempting to harvest human organs in pigs create human-pig embryo

Author:     Nicola Davis and Kevin Rawlinson
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Monday 6 June 2016 08.51 EDT
Link: Scientists attempting to harvest human organs in pigs create human-pig embryo
Stephan:   The Chimera Trend, about which I have written several papers over the years, confronts us ever more urgently. This technology is developing in the absence of almost any public debate, except in the small academic scientific and medical world, which has considerable reservations. Just start with how many human genes do you have to have to be considered a human? Do we have the right to turn animals into organ machines? We are embarked upon a course with grave ethical issues and it is not being discussed properly, and augurs consequences that we cannot even comprehend today.
Human stem cells in a tube on the right, being injected into a pig embryo to create a chimera. Credit: Pablo Ross/UC Davis

Human stem cells in a tube on the right, being injected into a pig embryo to create a chimera.
Credit: Pablo Ross/UC Davis

Scientists trying to grow human organs inside pigs in an attempt to tackle a shortage of donors have successfully created part-human, part-pig embryos.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis combined human stem cells and pig DNA and allowed the embryos to mature for 28 days, before terminating the experiment and analysing the tissue.

Inside the ‘black box’ of human development
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They believe the animals, which if they had been carried to term would have developed a human internal organ, but would have looked and behaved like any other pig. The goal is that in the future, similar animals could potentially act as a ready source of organs for life-saving transplants.

To create the “chimeric” embryos, the scientists […]

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