A trio of thought-provoking articles this past week

In the U.K., Human-pig hybrid embryos given go ahead:

"A licence to create human-pig embryos to study heart disease has been issued by the fertility watchdog.

This marks the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the first since the Commons voted in favour of this controversial research last month.

An HFEA spokesman said it had approved an application from the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, University of Warwick, for the creation of hybrid embryos..." Full article accessible here.

From Uganda's leading website: Genital Mutilation - Women Grapple With a Deadly Tradition - "In the scorching afternoon sunshine, Philis Yapchemusto stands in the compound of a tiny building that houses the headquarters of Reproductive, Educative and Community Health (REACH) programme. The community-based programme was established in Kapchorwa to improve reproductive health conditions and stop female genital mutilation." Full article can be read here.

From Scientific American: What is self-awareness?
"Can a lobster ever truly have any emotions? What about a beetle? Or a sophisticated computer? The only way to resolve these questions conclusively would be to engage in serious scientific inquiry—but even before studying the scientific literature, many people have pretty clear intuitions about what the answers are going to be. A person might just look at a computer and feel certain that it couldn’t possibly be feeling pleasure, pain or anything at all. That’s why we don’t mind throwing a broken computer in the trash." Rest of the story here.

We're Not Monkeying Around (or are we?)

[Cross-posted from blog.bioethics.net]:

After what it calls "a series of detailed deliberative sessions", Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority gave the go ahead Wednesday for the creation of embryos that would contain both human and animal cells. Such research is banned in Canada and President Bush has called for it to be forbidden in the US*. Here's more from HEFA's statement:

Having looked at all the evidence the Authority has decided that there is no fundamental reason to prevent cytoplasmic hybrid research. However, public opinion is very finely divided with people generally opposed to this research unless it is tightly regulated and it is likely to lead to scientific or medical advancements.

This is not a total green light for cytoplasmic hybrid research, but recognition that this area of research can, with caution and careful scrutiny, be permitted. Individual research teams should be able to undertake research projects involving the creation of cytoplasmic hybrid embryos if they can demonstrate, to the satisfaction of an HFEA licence committee, that their planned research project is both necessary and desirable. They must also meet the overall standards required by the HFEA for any embryo research.

There are already two applications for human animal chimeric embryo research before the regulatory panel. The applications include proposals to inject human DNA into the embryos of cows or rabbits, ultimately in an effort to produce stem cells.

The May 2007 AJOB Neuroscience featured a target article about the proposed human neuron mouse. This summer Hank Greely, one of the target article's authors, and Francoise Baylis, who authored a peer commentary, both appeared on a bioethics.net podcast to talk about the ethical implications of human-animal chimeras.

-Greg Dahlmann

*Or, at least, we think he did. In the State of the Union Address, Mr. Bush used the term "hybrid" which isn't the same thing as a chimera. US Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) has proposed legislation to ban human animal chimeras (the bill actually uses the word) and apparently the President supports this legislation.