Science and technology continue to stretch the conventionally acceptable boundaries for research, especially in genetic engineering. Bioethicists sometimes allude to the “yuck factor,” wherein the description of a research study lying at – or beyond – these boundaries may generate revulsion or disgust among the public.
Researchers at Newcastle University in England recently announced they had successfully replaced the original DNA in eggs taken from cow ovaries with human DNA, producing human-cow embryos that survived for three days. Electrical impulses were used to stimulate division of the cells in the embryos, and these stem cells then were harvested.
The long-term objective of this research is to develop a method to supply human embryonic stem cells that can be used in the development of drug therapies and for the treatment of such diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s but without the need to rely upon the relatively scarce human eggs that are gathered from fertility treatments.
The chimera of Greek mythology, as described in Homer’s “Iliad,” was a creature with the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent and the body of a goat. By blending cells and embryos from two animals, interspecies chimeras have been artificially produced, such as the geep spawned in 1984 by uniting the embryos of a sheep and a goat. Such an animal has four parents, because each of its individual cells retains the characteristics of either one species or the other, with two distinct sets of these cells forming the organism....more
