Chimeras: Animal-human Hybrids

[Sip]

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

 

Maryann Mott

National Geographic News

 

January 25, 2005

Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

 

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

 

 

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

 

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

 

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.

 

...

 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...5_chimeras.html

 

Any thoughts on this? All of a sudden the "creationist" perspective doesn't sound as absurd since we now get to play "God" ourselves

Edited January 28, 2005 by Sip

[Anoushik]

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

What if in the future the experiments will be so successful that it will really create mice with human brains, with the ability to understand as much as we do? Then it'd be that these human beings are trapped inside the body of mice. Shouldn't there be laws regarding these kind of experiments?

[Nané]

For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice

 

Now, this is going too far.

[MosJan]

linic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies

so soon wan you need blood - you just take your pig to the haspital ...

next tiem tsunami happens - will just send 300,000 pig's

 

you can use the blood and the meet

[Harut]

some time in early/mid 20th century, such experiments have been conducted in Kotayq region of Armenia, namely between humans and donkeys... we can clearly see the results today...

 

but it feels as though such experiments have been done for too long now and with wider scale... otherwise how do you explain the fact that there are so many people who are full of BULL$h!t, or the ones who madDOG people, or the ones with COCKy attitude, or fish with human faces... and so many more...

[Stormig]

We have lived too long.

[Maral]

some time in early/mid 20th century, such experiments have been conducted in Kotayq region of Armenia, namely between humans and donkeys... we can clearly see the results today...

 

 

 

and about the article...absolutely nauseating!

[DominO123]

What if in the future the experiments will be so successful that it will really create mice with human brains, with the ability to understand as much as we do? Then it'd be that these human beings are trapped inside the body of mice. Shouldn't there be laws regarding these kind of experiments?

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Not likely, people think that this is something really really new, it isn't in the cases of pigs etc.

 

It isn't the full blown human brain they are talking about, the human brain isn't only what you have in your head.

 

All theur neural wiring in the rest of the body etc... as well are important, what this is about, is using human genes of human brain characteristics for a mouse, it would not make a mouse as intelligent as humans, but will help researchers to study "living" brains in ways that we could not do in humans because it is not healthy.

 

Those mouses will be genetically engeneered to make them superior laboratory mouses, so that if we try treatments on them, the side effects and efficiency will be comparable to those of humans. In other cases, it will be used as potential organe donors(not mouses of course, but pigs etc.)

[DominO123]

you can  use  the blood and the meet

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Not a Muslim or Jeovah witness

Edited January 28, 2005 by QueBeceR

[DominO123]

  Now, this is going too far.

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

I already know some people having donkeys or pigs as parents, won't change that much.

[DominO123]

I already know some people having donkeys or pigs as parents, won't change that much. 

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

BTW, when will the true Jurassic park happen?

[sev-mard]

We have lived too long.

style_images/master/snapback.png

 

Stormig-jan, that is a quietly creepy yet poignant statement. I wonder how much we're really see in our Lifetime if we live to say 80. It's actually a tad scary. I'm all for advancement, but I realize what humanity mad accomplish if it is allowed.

[Stormig]

Sevig, poignant as was meant to be.

Actually, I’ve been anticipating the release of the Chronicles of Narnia films for sometime, so I’ve been recalling things a lot recently, and in the last book there was a sentence where the king or the unicorn said to the other, “We have lived too long,” to see what was coming about. I’m not talking doomsday here like they were. However, yes, the gutwrench I feel makes me wish I knew about less.

With regard to organ donors, aren't we all aware of whole pig hearts being transplanted to humans? Or was that yet at inception stage? I'm not sure.

I'm more worried about the sort of crap that can come out of the labs of a state like China. It’s one of the first cases, if not the first, to be cited in that article. Countries of the West can exercise some form of auto-control, with success to whatever extent - that one can be contested. However, not so with a country like China.

This is the same state that conducts nuclear experiments in the Taklamakan desert with no concern for the environment or health of the resident minorities, engages in numerous human rights abuses in Tibet, shoves off communities for humongous gorge dams, inflates the population with the drive of one leader and then punishes the second child of couples with the decrees of another - whatever the leaders deem fit for the moment - most of it under-reported for us. I did not miss the Tiananmen Square Incidents - for there you touch upon not just the brutality of the administration for squishing protesting civilians with tanks but also civilians burning policemen alive and throwing them off bridges - next to not reported in the rest of the world, in incidence with the reputed American finger in those incidents. We out here are upset to see two people fighting in the streets while passers-by walk away and seldom intervene to break them up, with older people shaking their heads and murmuring, “What has become of this world?”

Now compare that with what I heard someone tell they saw on a visit to China - two men going at their blows at each other, in the street, while passers-by stop and watch with smiles on their faces, like they're watching a cock or dog fight, which is disgusting enough in itself, while blood and teeth fly all over the place.

What I'm trying to get at is, there ought to be an understanding of morals, ethics, quite different from ours out there, in ways that would defy much of our reasoning, even way down in the grassroots. Perhaps the most demonstrative example of this was when a few years ago they were copying software with no understanding or regard to copyrights and contracts and there was a whole uproar because it was so systemic and also because Bill Gates was upset. And, for all their animosity, I understand that the Japanese are much like the Chinese in those respects, too – Sevig, maybe you could share what you saw about that with us if anything corresponds.

This is the same administration paranoid enough about its interests to fear archaeology in the desert and decapitate blond, blue-eyed mummies – National Geographic channel – and there seems to be next to no concern among the people themselves, as long as they can have their personal liberties, get plastic surgery done to widen their eyes, follow world trends in music and adapt, and have pre-marital relationships, going against the grain of their parents who were raised as nice communist asexuals. Too much change, too many concessions in some areas, while the core still isn’t healthy.

Now imagine how they'd react to any figment of meddling in their labs. It's not like you can sanction them for carrying out nuclear activities or something.

OK, so China is far away. But, for the life of me, if someone so much as unleashed a half-human creature frothing in the mouth in my neighbourhood, I’d go after them for giving me that scare in the first place.

That, of course, assuming that such organisms can live, let alone be functional for “purposes”...

On the whole, I’m not strictly against testing on animals, but, like it says in the article, it is possible to carry out simulations on computers. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, I’m led to believe – but I don’t really feel well about some of this engineered stuff. Just how much of it is necessary, to what extent, and after what point?

[Nakharar]

Thanks Stormig for the great post. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who feels that way.

The Chinese were using the Taklamakan desert for that purpose solely. The same resoning why the British did the same in Australia. Or the Japanese experiments on prisoners of war. I won't even mention the Russians. We have to start a new subforum just to cover their crimes.

That fight scene you described that's nothing out of the ordinary especially in most European countries. In Germany there was this incidence where someone ran off in the streets of a city with the head of the person he had just decapitated. What I found incredible and unbelievably disgusting is that he ran like that for more than an hour without anyone intervening or calling the police. We have become so desensitivized that sometimes it is best if we all perish.

I don't know about Japan, but I'm not too surprised after I heared an aquaintance tell me about a scene that he witnessed in a bookshop where this downtrodden man opened a porn magazine and started to masturbate in the view of everyone present. What amazed him the most was that this man was so oblivious to it all and the unfazed reaction by the people around him.

I don't know why but this really upset me. I wonder what this man was like before he became an outcast with no single opportunity to wrest himself out of his condition. The make or brake education system which determines who will branded a failure in later life, no hope for social mobility and most importantly the total lack of empathy must have caught up with him.

 

I still have much more sympathy for the Chinese than the Japanese. If the Chinese were any smarter, which I don't think is the case, they should heed the lesson of what can go wrong when a medieval society is cast into an industrial one within a generation. What has happened in Japan and what their people are coming to is mindboggling and sad. We can see the signs of it already in China. While the coastal areas in China are growing at an accelerated pace, the Chinese leadership is totally ignoring the interior of the country. They started to shut down all the state enterprises without giving the people any economic and social cushion to fall back on. I wonder what they will be doing when more than 400 million starving people will descend on their glitzy showcase cities. There is nothing more divisive and dangerous than uneven growth among different regions and segments of society. Until now their Confucian mindset (or Confucianism with a Communist face) has preserved some stability and rationality. The greatest fear of the Chinese ruling elite from the Emperors down to the Politburo has been, more than the barbarian hordes beyond their walls, has been the large-scale disruption and even collapse of their social order. This happened quite frequently after the breakup of Chinese dynasties. Countries and socities in transition are in a very precarious state and I sincerely hope that the Chinese experiment doesn't fail for their sake. It's an experiment and I can think of similar experiments such as Chung Hee Park's Korea or Lee Kwan Yew's Singapore which met with great success. They have been lucky so far, maybe that's because their social fabric hasn't unravelled yet and they are still able to live off their small plots.

[Nakharar]

This article is pretty interesting:

 

Anime and the Acceptance of Robotics in Japan: A Symbiotic Relationship

 

http://www.generation5.org/content/2004/anime-robotics.asp

[Nakharar]

Sev, I'm trying to find a book by a French author who writes about Japanese society. I had no luck at all in finding his name and the title of the book. I know that it caused quite a controversy. Can you help me?

[sev-mard]

Nak, sorry that's a tad vague, maybe if you could enlighten me to the topic of the book?

 

As for the similarities between the two cultures, I think at this point in time they may be a tad less than people really belive. While Japan has an unbelievabely rigid and effective social structure in place, I think the Communist nature, and Confucian ideals of China are what affect it's ethics, views of the world and practices.

Also Chinese people because of the Communism seem to have more of that "hustler" in their nature than Japanese people, and the Japanese people in Japan do refer to Chinese much like Americans do Mexicans here. As "those ppl" trying to get into our country and live off "our" riches and elevated way of life. While things like the software piracy and the like exist in the Japan I would have to say it's on a vastly smaller scale than in China because of that "hustler" nature that Chinese people may have had to develop under the yoke of Communism. The ability to get the most of our situation because you know that your outside income will be limited.

 

The mindset of places like China and Japan, like most others, is very ancient and historic, the thing is, the ability to alter and intereact with the mindset, by foreigners, has either been forbidden(Japan for many years) or heavily monitored and altered (China and some parts of Korea). So actions and modes of thoughts that they may have will be secular and birthed of a homogenous thought process, which truthfully can be genius or absurd. So many times I was there and observing a siutation that despite my desire to see the world and interact with new and exciting peoples, I just failed to understand the releavance and sanity of certain actions.

 

Simply imagine if your immediate family was very tight, shunning contact with others, and then you're off to college and you have to inteact with a pleathora of new individuals. Many of those people might be put off by your idea, actions and thought processes.

 

As for your references, Stormig, to human rights violations and like. The historic, monarchial paradigm in China has always created a distinction between those "above" and those "below". So the new royalty is of course the government, who goes out of it's way to instill social order and discipline upon it's subjects, so if they uprise, the govt. damn near feels obligated to get them back in line, brutally and effectively, because they should have known not to step out of line in the first place. This isn't a singularly Chinese mode of thought, the US I believe would do the same thing but has supposedly built this nature on human rights and democracy, so it can not respond in such an overt way. But the not so distant past shows that America can do the same. From Dr. King, to Huey Newton and members of the Nation of Islam, America has showed the ability to do the same. I just think the idea that people not in government, or not in power, or without question less than those that are, is still very prevelant in Chinese society.

 

These are just my ideas and observations, not gospel truths.

[Nakharar]

Thanks buddy. I only know that the author is French and that it was about alienation in Japanese society and its manifestations in various subcultures.