This is WRONG: sheep with human cells

[Duppers]

Now scientists create a sheep that's 15% human

By CLAUDIA JOSEPH - »Last updated at 15:53pm on 27th March 2007

Scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.

The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.

Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep's foetus.



He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444436&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=



It's NOT the part about "playing god" that gets me; it's creating a chimera that could conceivably have a half-human brain, then destroying it. Is this ethical, even to save a human life? Taking an animal's life is bad enough, but taking an animal's life whose brain could possibly be 50% human brain is another.
Damn! this REALLY bothers me (and I'm not religious).



Sorry, I just did a search in GD and found this thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=526282

sasha031 put it well:

If people were wise and moral which most are not, they would choose death, I know I would.

People are so afraid of dying yet they profess god and faith, well their version of god and the golden gate, would be bolted.

They are afraid of giving up their TVVees and SUV's, they will say it's for the family, another bog lie...

Other species don't count, hell people don't count, so what would you expect of a race that is subhuman.

[Coventina]

1. We have become a death-worshipping culture

by trying any method possible of avoiding our own.

It seems that modern, western culture wants to deny that individuals WILL DIE. We all will die, but any extrordinary means of putting off the inevitable is okay.

Any amount of animal testing, even human testing, human-animal hybrids, it's all okay, as long as some human somewhere gets another day of life.

It's insane.