| This contest is fueled by the following news: |
| | For the first time in history of genetics and bioengineering,
scientists have created a human chimera, which has 15% human cells and
85% of sheep cells. It's important to note that human and animal DNA is not mixed with each other and is stored in separate cells, which are mixed with each other. The species looks like a normal sheep and human
cells are mostly located in the sheep's organs, such as liver, kidneys,
heart and brain. Such organs can be considered half human and are in principle
suitable to be transplanted into human body.
Technically the human chimera is created by extracting stem cells with DNA from
the donor bone marrow and implanting them into fetus of a sheep. When
a lamb is born, it has the organs that are partially human.
The whole idea on this multimillion dollar scientific project is to be
able to create new partially human organs from the stem cells of
donors in need of transplant. The development cycle of sheep allows
only months for creating adult organs that are suitable for transplant
to a particular donor and already contain his cells, which would
prevent organ rejection. The idea is to implant stem cells into
several fetuses, to make sure that even if one or two of them die
before they grow into adult animal, there are still others chimeras
left which by then have developed fully grown organs suitable for
transplants to the particular donor.
There are thousands of people in the US who are waiting for organ
transplants and most of them will die because transplants will not
become available in time.
So the research sounds good and needed, and will save lives.
But there are many critics of the human chimera methods pointing to
moral and biological issues. Moral side of it is "scientists
playing God" which interferes with the creation and evolution and may
result in strange mutants. Biological hazard of this approach is the
potential to bring so called silent viruses into humans. Such viruses
are harmless to animals, but can be deadly to humans, especially when
silent viruses start to mutate.
Such was the case with HIV - the silent virus which lived for
thousands of years in monkeys which are not affected by it. Humans got
infected with this virus through the contact with monkeys and the
result was the mutated virus which is deadly to humans and is one of
the biggest challenges to the modern science. |
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Scientists have created a
