Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Thursday August 04 2016, @11:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the heart-of-bacon dept.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is planning to lift its moratorium on chimeric embryo research:

The National Institutes of Health is proposing a new policy to permit scientists to get federal money to make embryos, known as chimeras, under certain carefully monitored conditions. The NIH imposed a moratorium on funding these experiments in September because they could raise ethical concerns.

[...] [Scientists] hope to use the embryos to create animal models of human diseases, which could lead to new ways to prevent and treat illnesses. Researchers also hope to produce sheep, pigs and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, pancreases and possibly other organs that could be used for transplants.

To address the ethical concerns, the NIH's new policy imposes several restrictions. The policy prohibits the introduction of any human cells into embryos of nonhuman primates, such as monkeys and chimps, at their early stages of development. Previously, the NIH wouldn't allow such experiments that involved human stem cells but it didn't address the use of other types of human cells that scientists have created. In addition, the old rules didn't bar adding the cells very early in embryonic development. The extra protections are being added because these animals are so closely related to humans. But the policy would lift the moratorium on funding experiments involving other species. Because of the ethical concerns, though, at least some of the experiments would go through an extra layer of review by a new, special committee of government officials.

You can submit a response to the proposal here up until the end of the day on September 4.

Related: NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
U.S. Congress Moves to Block Human Embryo Editing
China's Bold Push into Genetically Customized Animals
Human-Animal Chimeras are Gestating on U.S. Research Farms


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 05 2016, @05:19AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 05 2016, @05:19AM (#384387) Journal

    Lemurs used in experimentation (should there be any, I don't know of any personally) would be bred for this purpose specifically and not represent any diminishment of the natural population. Would you have any further objections?

    Depends on the value of the research. I view the morality of harm to creatures as being mostly dependent on their intellect. We find for the most part cannibalism and torture of humans to be abominable while no one has similar concerns about vegetables. One can see varying degree of respect for the well being of an organism by both its intellectual capacity and how readily it tugs on our emotions (the cute trick).

    I have no qualms about sufficiently valuable animal experimentation up to and including humans. But such research should be conducted with a sufficient level of respect for the organism. Needless to say, I have more respect for the intellectual capabilities of lemurs than I do of rats and thus, would advocate for constraints on research with lemurs than rats. Further, I see the considerable possibility that such organisms are over time made more intelligent and I would grant them increased respect and privileges as a result subject to certain constraints (such as requiring conversion of short lifespan, high fertility creatures into long lifespan, low fertility creatures).

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 05 2016, @06:49PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 05 2016, @06:49PM (#384588) Journal

    I'm not sure you are justified in having more respect for the intellectual capabilities of lemurs. Rats are known to be quite intelligent, on some trials performing better than humans (you've got to pick the right test).

    As for brain size, some lemurs are considerably smaller than some rats, and I wouldn't be willing to just assume that the rats have smaller brains.

    The main reason that makes sense to me is that rats are traditional enemies of grain growing humans, and lemurs aren't. A secondary reason is that it a lot easier to grow a huge number of rats than a huge number of lemurs. Emotionally I am also bothered because (almost?) all lemurs are endangered species, but if this could be used to create independent colonies that emotion doesn't make logical sense.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 05 2016, @07:41PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 05 2016, @07:41PM (#384601) Journal

      I'm not sure you are justified in having more respect for the intellectual capabilities of lemurs. Rats are known to be quite intelligent, on some trials performing better than humans (you've got to pick the right test).

      Ok, you aren't sure. Well?

      As for brain size, some lemurs are considerably smaller than some rats, and I wouldn't be willing to just assume that the rats have smaller brains.

      Then we can consider those cases as they occur and how viable the lemur species are in question for animal research. Just because I made a generalization that isn't perfectly true doesn't mean that I can't apply the rule in question on a more refined level or as new information comes out.