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Genetic Mingling Mixes Human, Animal Cells By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
Fri Apr 29, 8:44 PM ET



RENO, Nev. - On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago.

"It's mice on a large scale," Chamberlain says with a shrug.

As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.

In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.

Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.

But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent.

In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.

Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head?

The "idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered," the academies report warned.

In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.

Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice's behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.

The Academies' report recommends that each institution involved in stem cell research create a formal, standing committee to specifically oversee the work, including experiments that mix human and animal cells.

Weissman, who has already created mice with 1 percent human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also need to authorize the experiment.

Few human-animal hybrids are as advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.

Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in his experiment contain about 10 percent human liver cells, though a few have as much as 40 percent, Zanjani said.

Because the human liver regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting partial organs into people whose livers are failing.

Zanjani must first ensure no animal diseases would be passed on to patients. He also must find an efficient way to completely separate the human and sheep cells, a tough task because the human cells aren't clumped together but are rather spread throughout the sheep's liver.

Zanjani and other stem cell scientists defend their research and insist they aren't creating monsters � or anything remotely human.

"We haven't seen them act as anything but sheep," Zanjani said.

Zanjani's goals are many years from being realized.

He's also had trouble raising funds, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the university over allegations made by another researcher that the school mishandled its research sheep. Zanjani declined to comment on that matter, and university officials have stood by their practices.

Allegations about the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. First, human stem cells were injected into bacteria, then mice and now sheep. Such research blurs biological divisions between species that couldn't until now be breached.

Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have crossed yet, the Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even that policy recommendation isn't tough enough for some researchers.

"The boundary is going to push further into larger animals," New York Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. "That's just asking for trouble."

Newman and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin have been tracking this issue for the last decade and were behind a rather creative assault on both interspecies mixing and the government's policy of patenting individual human genes and other living matter.

Years ago, the two applied for a patent for what they called a "humanzee," a hypothetical � but very possible � creation that was half human and chimp.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevents the patenting of people.

Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning people into commodities.

And that's a point, Newman warns, that stem scientists are edging closer to every day: "Once you are on the slope, you tend to move down it."


Gaudior, afraid of how much further down this slope they can slide...

Many of you are probably very familiar with this already, but just in case, I decided to post a link to the prophecy of St. Nilus:

http://www.geocities.com/brizeka/psn.htm

Some have claimed it to be a 16th century Russian forgery, but no matter, it's still startlingly clear and relevant to today.

Even as a sixteenth century forgery, it's scary how accurate it is.

Has anyone seen the new commercial for the candy, Skittles? Before reading this I just thought it was weird. Now it's scary.

Vie

A human mind could never be trapped inside a sheep's body--a human mind is not a physical thing, and it is not the same thing as a human-like brain.

This is due to the fact that rationality resides in the soul and not in the body. While the mind may depend on the brain (and the eyes and the ears etc.) for collecting and organizing sensory data, abstraction and intellection are nevertheless faculties of the soul.

Thus, there is no such thing as "half-human, half-chimp," or half-human, half- anything else. God infuses a rational soul into a human egg fertilized by human sperm. The rational and immortal soul is what makes the resulting creature human. Any other kind of creature--be it ever so bizarre--could never be human in any way.

The materialistic notion of human nature (i.e. that the brain and the mind are the same thing) is based on a Darwinian worldview, which sees the difference between men and beasts as one of degree rather than of kind. This worldview, incidentally, was responsible for many of the 19th-century justifications of racism, because if the difference between men and beasts is one of degree, than there can be many degrees in between "full" white humanity and the wild savagery of "Nature" from which blacks were allegedly but one step removed.

We must keep in mind that there is an unbreachable barrier between rational man and irrational beast. Otherwise we will start acting like beasts toward each other (as we indeed already have, e.g. in the Terri Schiavo case).

LatinTrad

H. G. Wells
The Island of Dr. Moreau !!



Sam

Those prophecies are startlingly accurate for our times, and certainly scare one into desiring a greater strength of faith! May we all gain strenght of spirit from God through His Holy Spirit.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!

Christos Voskres!

Is there some doctrine behind this idea? I think it has some problems:
The connection between soul and rational function rather than to the human being itself, is, I think, very problematic. Are irrational humans or those lacking rational function altogether on the animal side of the barrier? Are higher primates that display some rational function on the human side? These questions don't arise if ensoulment is decoupled from rational function and linked instead directly to human nature - which includes many (other) characteristics, including advanced cognitive function.

I don't have time to respond now because I'm up against a hard deadline, but I'll get back later.

Man was given commission of stewardship over the animals and love of his brother. He was not commissioned to change either one into the other.

.....Nevada, Nevada....Hmm.....I propose that we recommence above-ground nuclear tests at a farm six miles outside of Reno, Nevada.

I agree with Latin Trad that what is happening here should not be though of as changing one human/animal into another species/variety. When I have viral genes expressed in my cells I am not any less human or any more a virus.

On the other hand, Andrew, you previously had written about soul, body, and mind in a way that I thought might illuminate the idea of identifying rational cognitive functions with the soul.

Right, but I would identify those functions with "the heart." I don't find the soul to be a thing or a place, but a whole person, i.e. a body and a breath combined.

'You don't have a soul. You are a soul.'


Andrew