A Drive for Greater Biodiversity

I guarantee that this shit is not going to end well. There is a fresh hell that flows from dicking around in places where the downside is neither understood nor constrained.

Here is the story-line: Chinese scientists have created pig monkey hybrids – paving the way to a future in which human organs could be custom-grown in animals for transplant.

“This is the first report of full-term monkey-pig chimeras”, Tang Hai at the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing told New Scientist.

The animals had only a small amount of monkey DNA – concentrated in the heart, liver, spleen, lungs and skin cells. The team is now trying to create healthy animals with a higher proportion of monkey cells, says Hai.

While the long-term goal is to incubate human-compatible organs in pig hosts, the team chose to develop the technique using monkey cells first.

This is at the result of criticism around work done by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte’s team at California’s Salk Institute in 2017. In that case pig-human hybrids were created but concerns were raised that the animals could have partly human brains. Belmonte’s team is now working in China, while a rival team is working on a project to create a mouse with a brain made entirely of human cells.

One Reply to “A Drive for Greater Biodiversity”

  1. I completely agree. They are playing with a force, that could completely destroy them and everything around them.

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