Scientists Monkeying With Human/Animal Hybrid Research

American scientists — this time working in China — reportedly are once again experimenting with human/animal hybrids.

John Stonestreet with the Colson Center for Christian Worldview writes,

Free from those pesky regulations that protect human rights and ensure ethical research practice, the scientists injected human stem cells into monkey embryos. Their hope, they say, is to grow organs like kidneys and livers made up entirely of human cells, which could be used for transplants. Ah yes, that whole “trust us, we’re helping you” trope.

As one California scientist told the MIT Technology Review, the experiments make no sense. Such organs would be “too small” and take “too long to develop.” Perhaps, he continued, “the researchers have more basic scientific questions in mind,” such as addressing questions of “interspecies barriers.”

While stories about this kind of bizarre research sound like the stuff of science fiction and fake news, they actually are well documented and have been going on for years.

During the Obama Administration, the National Institutes for Health announced plans to scrap a policy that prevented funding from going to research that hybridized human beings and animals.

At the time, some scientists in the U.S. were injecting pig embryos with human stem cells, and the NIH was interested in supporting that type of research.

Needless to say, pro-life groups raised a number of ethical concerns about the NIH’s proposed rule change.

You would think it would be obvious to the scientific community that the earth doesn’t need half-human, half-animal creatures. Apparently that is not the case.

Buying a Baby

Our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview recently released a pointed commentary underscoring the issue of people buying and selling of children through commercial surrogacy.

John Stonestreet writes,

According to a recent ABC headline, “2020 [presidential] hopeful Pete Buttigieg says he and his husband are planning to have a child soon.” But that’s simply a misleading choice of words.

A more accurate way to put it would be how our sharp-tongued BreakPoint writer Shane Morris did on Facebook: “2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg planning to buy an egg and hire a woman to serve as an incubator so he and partner can go on playing house together and turn another human being into their prop. There,” Shane said, “I fixed your headline.”

I wouldn’t have said it quite that way, but Shane has a point. Same-sex couples don’t have children together. They’ve chosen an intentionally sterile relationship, but then borrow from God’s design to bring children into existence before denying them a mother or a father.

When Stonestreet and Morris refer to people buying human eggs and hiring women to carry children, they’re talking about commercial surrogacy, where companies and wealthy couples pay women thousands of dollars for their eggs or to have children for them.

Family Council opposes commercial surrogacy, in part, because we believe it amounts to buying and selling babies. Commercial surrogacy and egg harvesting also carry a number of health risks for women.

Arkansas law currently lets companies harvest women’s eggs for profit. That’s why we supported H.B. 1761 by Rep. Cindy Crawford (R – Fort Smith) and Sen. Missy Irvin (R – Mountain View) this year. This good bill would have regulated the buying and selling of human eggs. It would have prohibited companies from paying women for their eggs, but it contained exceptions for free egg donations and for fertility treatments.

The bill passed in the Arkansas House, but unfortunately failed to make it through the senate before the session adjourned.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Committee Passes Bill to Prohibit Public Funding of Research That Kills Unborn Children

Family Council staff member Charisse Dean (left) and Rep. Karilyn Brown (R – Sherwood) present H.B. 1399 in the House Public Health Committee.

This morning the Arkansas House Public Health Committee passed H.B. 1399 by Rep. Karilyn Brown (R – Sherwood).

This good, pro-life bill strengthens our state’s laws against human cloning. It prohibits public funding of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research.

In recent years we’ve seen examples of unethical companies using unborn children for scientific research. H.B. 1399 helps address that issue by ensuring taxpayer dollars won’t be used to create and kill unborn children in the name of science or medicine.

This is a good bill that Family Council supports. Unborn children are not lab material, and state tax dollars should not be used for research that treats them as such.

This good bill will go before the Arkansas House of Representatives, where it likely will be voted on sometime next week.

You can leave a message asking your state representative to support H.B. 1399 by calling the Arkansas House of Representatives during normal business hours at (501) 682-6211.

You can read H.B. 1399 here.