Should this scare the shit out of me? because it kind of does.
Please talk me down from the ledge.
Quote:
So far, none of the interspecies embryos have been allowed to grow beyond four weeks. However, the experiments are raising profoundly sticky moral and ethical issues — including the remote but not impossible risk human cells intended to morph into a new liver, pancreas or heart could wend their way up to the animal’s brain. Could that part-human chimera somehow develop human consciousness?
The more human-like we make living organisms the more valuable for research purposes they become, says Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy. “But of course the more we humanize an animal, the more we raise questions about animal ethics,” he said.
The work also provokes a kind of psychological and visceral creepiness. “The first concern is public perception: does it violate some notion of boundaries, or the natural order of things,” says renowned bioethicist Arthur Caplan.
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U.S. scientists create human-pig chimera embryos to grow human cells