Plan to create human-cow embryos

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UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs.

Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence.

Here’s a link to the rest of the story: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6121280.stm
It starts here… how far will it go?

Warmest regards,
-Ben
 
Ble, Thank you for the article. In Australia, the push is for using rabbit eggs to bypass the shortage of oocytes from women.
Likewise cloning advocate Prof Alan Trounson suggested using rabbit eggs to clone human embryos – a process which does indeed leave rabbit DNA in the embryo and makes the clone a human-animal hybrid.

Trounson said last year, “Since there are plenty of rabbit eggs around, if we could make that work it would remove the concern about accessing human eggs in any numbers”.
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davidvangend.blogspot.com/2006/08/animal-human-hybrid-clones-who-said.html#links%20

They are also considering using gametes from aborted female fetuses, cadavers and ovaries removed from women during surgery. Thus the precursor cells from an aborted baby girl could become a mother of a cloned embryo - it too tagged for destruction. If unscrupulous doctors already trick Ukrainian women into late term abortions so that they can sell them for fetal research it is not a stretch to think some surgeons might be tempted to excise ovaries for profit too from unsuspecting women who go in for exploratory pelvic surgery. Some researchers are just that conniving, desperate and greedy.
 
Let’s not forget the mice.
Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine has also created mice with brains made up of as much as one percent human neurons. His goal is to create a mouse with a brain made entirely of human cells.
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lifesite.net/ldn/2006/aug/06081001.html
 
I dont see the big deal. If the product is not human, then what is the concern? either you are human, or you are something else.

to be human, you need to have greater than or equal to 45 chromosomes of human origin. why 45? because there is an XO genotype where one sex chromosome is deleted. some people have 49-54 chromosomes, and are gentic mosaics.

so anything with 44 or less chromosomes of human origin is not human, and can be experimented on ethically as by IACUC and Church teaching on humane treatment of animals (non-humans).

you cant get around that fact. 98% human DNA is NOT human, as rhesus monkeys share 98% sequence homology with humans, and are routinely experimented on in laboratories.

if i take 43 chromosomes of human origin, and add 3 chromosomes of rabbit origin, i sure as heck did not create a human being. so where does the line begin?

empty egg + empty sperm= not human

human sperm with 10 chromosomes + human egg with 10 chromosomes= not human

human sperm with 22 chromosomes + human egg with 22 chromosomes= not human

these 3 examples can ethically be created and experimented on because the result is not a unique human identity, only a compliation of non-functional chromosomes that lack full genetic sequence.
 
Fraken meat. UGH

Will not eat anything spliced with human DNA. Veggi or Animal.
 
The problem is that human eggs for research are in short supply and to obtain them women have to undergo surgery.
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That is why scientists want to use cows’ eggs as a substitute.
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They would insert human DNA into a cow’s egg which has had its genetic material removed, and then create an embryo by the same technique that produced Dolly the Sheep.
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The resulting embryo would be 99.9% human; the only bovine element would be DNA outside the nucleus of the cell.
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It would, though, technically be a chimera - part-human, part-animal.
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Does 99.9% human count as human? Does this count? I don’t know, but my initial reaction at this was disgust, so that is what I am going with.
 
Dr. Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has written of the “wisdom of repugnance” in analyzing human cloning: “Revulsion is not an argument … in crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason’s power fully to articulate it… Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.” Perhaps such is also the case with instinctual repugnance at human/animal combinations. The council recently published Reproduction and Responsibility, in which it advises prohibiting "the production of a hybrid human-animal embryo, by fertilization of human egg by animal sperm or of animal egg by human sperm," or the transferring of a “human embryo into the body of any member of a nonhuman species.” The report states emphatically that “an ex vivo human embryo … belongs only in a human uterus.”
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The Ethics of Chimeras and Hybrids by Taya Seyfer
lifeissues.net/writers/sey/sey_02ethicschimeras.html
 
what next? Dog-Human? Elephant-Human? Tiger-Human? This is what happens when you let science get out of control. God save us all!
 
BioCatholic said:
I dont see the big deal. If the product is not human, then what is the concern? either you are human, or you are something else.

to be human, you need to have greater than or equal to 45 chromosomes of human origin. why 45? because there is an XO genotype where one sex chromosome is deleted. some people have 49-54 chromosomes, and are gentic mosaics.

so anything with 44 or less chromosomes of human origin is not human, and can be experimented on ethically as by IACUC and Church teaching on humane treatment of animals (non-humans).

you cant get around that fact. 98% human DNA is NOT human, as rhesus monkeys share 98% sequence homology with humans, and are routinely experimented on in laboratories.

if i take 43 chromosomes of human origin, and add 3 chromosomes of rabbit origin, i sure as heck did not create a human being. so where does the line begin?

empty egg + empty sperm= not human

human sperm with 10 chromosomes + human egg with 10 chromosomes= not human

human sperm with 22 chromosomes + human egg with 22 chromosomes= not human

these 3 examples can ethically be created and experimented on because the result is not a unique human identity, only a compliation of non-functional chromosomes that lack full genetic sequence.
Click to expand...
“They would insert human DNA into a cow’s egg which has had its genetic material removed, and then create an embryo by the same technique that produced Dolly the Sheep.
The resulting embryo would be 99.9% human; the only bovine element would be DNA outside the nucleus of the cell.”

It sounds like the egg will have 46 chromosomes of a human embryo. If it didn’t, I’d wonder how useful the stem cells will be for humans.
 
jman507 said:
It sounds like the egg will have 46 chromosomes of a human embryo. If it didn’t, I’d wonder how useful the stem cells will be for humans.
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In that case it would probably be fuzzy. But consider this:

Not all cell types of the body use EVERY chromosome. After differentiation, there are some chromosomes that are not needed or used by liver cells.

In theory, we could fertilize a human egg with a modified sperm that lacked 4-6 chromosomes that the liver doesnt seem to use, thereby keeping the total number of chromosomes under 45. If we could get that cell to divide, and start differentiating, liver cells could be created that look and act just like adult hepatocytes. This would circumvent any and all concerns about cloning and destruction of embryos. Not even the Church could oppose this on moral grounds.

Remember, it is not unethical to experiment with human gamtes, as they are not a unique human identity. So as long as we keep the total number of chromosomes under 45, the product is not, and can never be, human.
 
BioCatholic said:
In that case it would probably be fuzzy. But consider this:

Not all cell types of the body use EVERY chromosome. After differentiation, there are some chromosomes that are not needed or used by liver cells.

In theory, we could fertilize a human egg with a modified sperm that lacked 4-6 chromosomes that the liver doesnt seem to use, thereby keeping the total number of chromosomes under 45. If we could get that cell to divide, and start differentiating, liver cells could be created that look and act just like adult hepatocytes. This would circumvent any and all concerns about cloning and destruction of embryos. Not even the Church could oppose this on moral grounds.

Remember, it is not unethical to experiment with human gamtes, as they are not a unique human identity. So as long as we keep the total number of chromosomes under 45, the product is not, and can never be, human.
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Quite possibly, it sounds very grey and a bit more complicated than that, but it sounds some variety of that could work out. There would be a lot of debate, especially cause of the gravity of it.

Here’s an interesting article I found. slate.com/id/2114733/
 
Here is the big problem

What makes someone human
The presence of a soul.
That is why a just concieved baby is still human.

If a human brain was put into the body of a cow and still had intellect and will, it would still be human. It would probably no longer be considered homo sapiens.

In the same way, if there were to be aliens who came down from the sky, they would be human, but not homo sapiens.

The Church does not disagree with things on biological grounds, but on spiritual, metaphysical, and moral ones.

A lone Raven
 
BioCatholic said:
So as long as we keep the total number of chromosomes under 45, the product is not, and can never be, human.
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What if techniques are developed that allow us to combine chromosomes, while still maintaining full chromosomal expression? In such a case, the total number of chromosomes might be 45 or below, yet productive of a human.
 
A human chromosone is not a sheep chromosome is not a cow chromosome. Human beings are defined by the descendency of their chromosomes not the number of their chromosomes.

While qualitative analysis would see close similarities between chromosomes of two mamalian species, their identity is tied to their expression in the growth cycle.

This is a unexplored area that we need to shed light on first to make sure that it is indeed not a gray area, not rush headlong into.
 
BioCatholic asked:
[sign]I dont see the big deal. If the product is not human, then what is the concern?[/sign]

After Jman507 explained the concern is for the human embryo BioCatholic quipped:
[sign]In that case **it **would probably be fuzzy[/sign]

**The only thing fuzzy here is such nonsense. An embryonic human child is not an “it”. At fertilization the sex of the unicellular human zygote has already been determined. Furthermore, human beings are not “products” even if they were created in a laboratory. It is bad enough when a child is denied conception within the shelter and warmth of his/her mother but to go one step further in denying the child conception within the maternal oocyte is even more disturbing. **

While research objectives are purportedly based on compassionate grounds the rhetoric of commodification is a complete contradiction of stated purpose. BioCatholic is inconsistent with his own definition of what constitutes a human being, “to be human, you need to have greater than or equal to 45 chromosomes of human origin”. After all, 46 chromosomes is a full set of genetic material in humans.

**If these cloned children aren’t human what else could they be? **
 
BioCatholic has suggested:[sign]so anything with 44 or less chromosomes of human origin is not human, and can be experimented on ethically as by **IACUC **and Church teaching on humane treatment of animals (non-humans).
[/sign]

Thank you BioCatholic for s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g my imagination.

Am I to understand the creation of “transgenic” humans will now put them under the protection of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC)? You expect the Vatican will have no problem with this as long as they are humanely treated? :dancing:
 
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