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Embryos that are less than 0.001% human - and the rest pig - have been made and analysed by scientists.
It is the first proof chimeras - named after the mythical lion-goat-serpent monster - can be made by combining material from humans and animals.
However, the scientific report in the journal Cell [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.12.036] [DX] shows the process is challenging and the aim of growing human organs in animals is distant.
It was described as an "exciting publication" by other researchers.
To create a chimera, human stem cells - the type that can develop into any tissue - are injected into a pig embryo.
The embryo - now a mix of human and pig - is then implanted into a sow for up to one month.
The process appears very inefficient - of the 2,075 embryos implanted only 186 continued to develop up to the 28-day stage.
Human-pig 'chimera embryos' detailed
(Score: 4, Interesting) by gidds on Friday January 27 2017, @02:42PM
You folks are doing pretty well with the obligatory Cameron and Bullingdon references, so instead I'll take issue with the maths.
Surely that can't be true! If you go purely by amount of DNA, then don't humans share a pretty high percentage of DNA with pigs? I can't find a reliable reference, but figures only seem to vary from 98% to 99.9%.
(Of course, percentage of DNA is a very misleading value, and I wouldn't use it to imply similarity or anything like that. But TFA brought it up.)
Even if we only share 60% of our DNA with pigs (which seems a low estimate, given that we're supposed to share over 40% with bananas and cabbages), then the value would have to be at least that high. Anything '0.001%' human couldn't be pig, or vertebrate, or animal, or even any recognisable multi-cellular organism!
Let's tabulate a few figures, assuming 60% similarity:
%_human_DNA_used %_pig_DNA_used resulting_%_human_DNA
100 0 100
50 50 80
0 100 60
-149.9975 249.9975 0.001
In other words, to reach 0.001% human DNA, you'd have to take nearly two-and-a-half pig's worth of DNA, and subtract nearly one-and-a-half human's worth! (And if pigs and humans have more than 60% DNA in common, which seems very likely, then it'd be even worse.)
It's clearly nonsensical!
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 27 2017, @04:09PM
Or you could just parse it as
Embryos that are less than 0.001% uniquely human - and the rest pig -
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @05:33PM
This is why research in such fields is a bad idea. High chance of creating more problems than solutions.
When you start making these hybrids how do you determine something is human enough to get the rights of a human? Are human societies and laws ready for such stuff? I don't think so. Some corps is going to say no it's only 0.001% human and so we can do whatever we want to it. While the creature we made might disagree[1].
And all for what? Creating spare parts for humans? We already have other tech tracks that are making good progress at that - e.g. creating spare parts for humans from human stem cells, creating minimally biological spare parts for humans, etc.
Curing genetic diseases? If prospective parents care about that, what you do is detect it and abort the embryo if there's a problem. Detection is far easier and cheaper than fixing it. We've already billions of humans on this overstrained planet so unless your DNA has amazingly great features that outweighs your bugs, why spend so much time and resources on your crap DNA? Just adopt or keep aborting your crap till you produce a non crap one (or "outsource" better DNA). If we keep aborting fetuses with bad genetic flaws we would breed most of it out of the pool. You can try the Stephen Hawking argument but please eventually some other genius would have come up with the same stuff. And it's not like not having him around would have caused a major set back for the human race - we'd still have most of our tech. And if people care that much they can go commit to sponsoring the flawed fetus to term, adulthood and beyond.
[1] We're already abusing and enslaving existing species for our purposes why create more ways for us to do evil in this world? Go tell me what _good_ we can achieve with this tech that we can't do with other tech trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27 2017, @08:24PM
Animals already have more rights then humans in some contexts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @08:19AM
A dog can pee whenever he wants to.
I can't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @08:57AM
A dog can pee whenever he wants to.
I can't.
Come, now! The actual story is that two dudes saw a male dog licking itself. One dude says to the other: "I wish I could do that!" Other dude says: "I don't think the dog would let you."
And besides, Trump voters are less intelligent, and less sentient, and more vegetative, than many animals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @05:45PM
And besides, Trump voters are less intelligent, and less sentient, and more vegetative, than many animals.
So since Trump voters are allowed to vote would you let a human-"other animal" hybrid vote?
How human do they have to be in order to vote? What is the criteria?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 28 2017, @05:40PM
You get into a lot less trouble for killing a dog than a human.
We're fine with letting dogs doing all sorts of stuff, because dogs don't get to vote. They don't have the same power and rights. And thus they don't have the same responsibilities.
Having hybrids can complicate things. And there's rather little gain.