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Friday, January 27th, 2017

Scientists Have Created An Embryo That’s Part Human, Part Pig

Author:     Amy Norton
Source:     US News & World Report/HealthDay Reporter
Publication Date:     Jan. 26, 2017, at 2:00 p.m.
Link: Scientists Have Created An Embryo That’s Part Human, Part Pig
Stephan:   I haven't done anything on the chimera trend in some time, so I read this with considerable interest. There are so many ethical and moral issues about creating cross species human non-homo sapien animals that this line of research is fraught with problems. I am sure you can imagine them. How many human cells does a pig have to have before it becomes a human?

Researchers have successfully used human stem cells to create embryos that are part-human, part-pig.
Credit: iStock

It might sound like science fiction, but researchers have successfully used human stem cells to create embryos that are part-human, part-pig.

Scientists said the long-range goal is to better understand and treat an array of human diseases

The researchers hope to ultimately cultivate human tissue that can be given to patients awaiting transplants.

But that’s a long way off, said Jun Wu, who worked on the research.

“This study is reporting an important first step,” said Wu, a staff scientist at the Salk Institute, in La Jolla, Calif.

That step, specifically, was to insert human stem cells into pig embryos. Weeks later, some of the embryos showed signs that the human cells were beginning to mature and turn into “tissue precursors.”

Such embryos are known as chimeras, and they are controversial.

In 2015, the U.S. National Institutes of Health declared a moratorium on funding chimera […]

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1 Comment

  1. Carolyn Koch on Friday, January 27, 2017 at 6:00 am

    Edgar Cayce said pigs were originally Atlantean experiments with human and animal mixing.