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.