Christian Doctor Warns Against Radical Human Hybrid Research
by Jenni Parker and Mary Rettig
December 3, 2004
(AgapePress) - The head of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations says crossing humans with animals is a path science should not travel. However, a number of these human-animal hybrids, known as chimeras, have already been created.In biological research, chimeras can be artificially produced by mixing cells from two different organisms, often of different species. For instance, in 1984 a chimeric "geep" was produced by combining embryos from a goat and a sheep. And in another case, a chicken with a quail's brain was created by grafting portions of a quail embryo into a chicken embryo (Wikipedia.com).
But this investigative research took a sinister leap in August of 2003, when researchers at Shanghai Second Medical University in China reported their "successful" creation of the first human-animal chimeric embryos, accomplished by fusing bio-material from a human being and a rabbit. The embryos were allowed to develop in the laboratory for several days before they were destroyed in order to harvest their stem cells.
Dr. David Stevens of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) says the idea of the chimera is not a new one, but it is currently being pushed with new emphasis by proponents of embryonic stem cell research. The reasons given for such explorations, he points out, can often sound harmless and even beneficial.
For instance, Stevens says, "The reason that Dolly [the sheep] was made by cloning was the hope that she was going to be able to secrete human breast milk. They were actually inserting a gene into her genetic makeup which caused her to secrete not sheep milk but human milk so they could give it to premature infants."
The researchers' intention in cloning Dolly, the Christian doctor says, was to create one sheep that had this capability, and then "to clone a whole herd of sheep to produce human breast milk" for infants in need of supplemental nourishment.
While this might sound like a good use for the technology, Stevens says scientists today are continuing to push the envelope, wanting to go ever further in their experiments. Scientists have developed pigs with human blood in their veins and mice with human brain cells; and some, he warns, are seeking to change the nature of animals outright and see how human-like they can be made.
The CMDA president considers this kind of research dangerous, and says he gets "increasingly concerned" about it because "the Bible tells us we should reproduce after our kind." However, he adds, "when you begin to change the kind, when you begin to make a new species that's a combination of two other species, I think that's unbiblical, I think it's immoral. You no way of knowing what you're going to end up with."
With the advent of embryonic stem cell research, Stevens believes the radical idea of creating artificial human chimeras will be increasingly debated. Still, he insists that whatever possible benefits are touted by supporters of this type of research, making human-animal hybrids remains a dangerous and ethically questionable idea.
