[In 2017, Nakauchi and his colleagues reported the injection of mouse iPS cells into the embryo of a rat that was unable to produce a pancreas. The rat formed a pancreas made entirely of mouse cells. Nakauchi and his team transplanted that pancreas back into a mouse that had been engineered to have diabetes, The rat-produced organ was able to control blood sugar levels, effectively curing the mouse of diabetes1.]
WOW :O
Was it the hitch hikers guide that said, "As a result of their time on Earth, mouse scientists had developed the means to cure all mouse diseases, allowing their civilization to survive in perpetuity."
I hoped technology would reduce animal exploitation. It does in some areas, like cell farming to create food without animals. And synthetic models for pharmaceutical research. Maybe this branch of research can evolve to eliminate animals as well.
There will still exist a fascinating dichotomy, up until we can predict result without either simulation or animal models. An ideal engineered organism would be a delightfully weird homunculus, and a sufficiently advanced simulation could be deemed to be a living creature too.
Perhaps it is best to make sure that lab technicians feel a great deal of empathy for the animals they work with.
The sheer number of animals abused and killed for food [0][1] is 3 orders of magnitude larger than the number for research [2] (at least in USA). Animal research is more abstractly upsetting-sounding than killing animals for food (perhaps because we've been doing it for a briefer part of our species's existence), but the horrid conditions of most livestock raised for food in the US don't seem any better than those of lab animals; at least rats are anesthetized for the more gruesome experiments. There's also no clear reason to eat meat other than pleasure and food tradition, whereas animal medical experiments provide a unique means to massively improve our physical wellbeing.
I think that once we've reduced our meat consumption by 99.9%, then it might make some sense to spend energy coming up with alternatives to animal testing for medicine. For now, it's hard for me to see animal testing as the key bottleneck. If you profiled your code and found that one badly-implemented function was taking up 99.9% of your execution time, why would you ever waste any time optimizing the 0.1% function?
These damn ethics committees are just slowing down much needed progress. Let's not pretend that DARPA and other black military scientific experimentation sites around the world have, and are, operating under the ethical radar and keeping their findings classified and to themselves and highly doubtful to the betterment of mankind. Let's just call a spade a spade and loosen the restrictions on the scientific community that actually operates with the public good in mind.
Let's move fast and break things, including our ethics.
Counties have done unethical experiments on humans before, and maybe they do it now. Why should we hold ourselves to a standard, if other groups do not? I couldn't possibly think of a reason why the scientific community would hold themselves accountable, rather than think they know best and act as if they were superior to the larger community they work to improve. I mean, that mindset has never gone wrong.
Personally, I like seeing a community doing some attempt at self regulation. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
As usual, Japan is ahead of things.
Maybe in not-so-distant future we'll see human DNA modification.
It's the only way towards, as devolution will dull us otherwise with all these bad, useless habits too available.
I understand (and agree with) all these moral related questions and why so many downvotes in this topic. What is interesting, when one nation develops this tech and their people will live, say, 150 years, will these morals survive in other countries?
Might be. But it is quite different from iPhone manufacturing. It actually could more dangerous than nukes. West will just buy this you say, but why it is not possible now to just buy several intercontinental ballistic missiles? There are people with enough money and desire to buy this.
When I heard Alex Jones on Joe Rogan saying that there was human-animal experiments being made I thought he was exaggerating.
In my opinion this kind of research crosses some ethical lines that shouldn't be crossed. If one considers an embryo as an independent life, what species the embryo belongs to? Wouldn't be the ones in this experiment half humans with human rights? After all, the scientist doesn't know all, and the cells he put in could evolve to a chain reaction of the hybrid developing human conscious.
Just my opinion tho, as I know nothing about genetics and biology.
I saw you had been downvoted and I upvoted you, despite disagreeing very strongly with your opinion, because you stated your opinion without vitriol and while I might disagree I'll still fight for your right to say it as long you do so in a way that isn't hurtful.
I think the line of inquiry into replacement organs can be researched ethically but the how of the research may cross ethical lines if not done carefully. Given diseases we have, I think we need to do the research and find an ethical way to make this kind of organ production happen, if we want to extend human lifespan.
I knew I would be, but its fine. Thank you for your words! I share the same belief regarding freedom of speech.
About the research, I hope I am wrong and the advances that came out of it help save lives and extend the human life. I just wish they take those ethical questions in consideration too.
Human-animal experiments are done for quite some time. Cloned mice receive tumor grown on human derived tissue so-called xenografts. And it's immensely helpful in checking whether certain drugs work.
I agree. But even the ignorant on the matter can raise relevant questions, more so when the subject cross boundaries on other less "restrict to the experts" topics, like ethics.
Readit News
Perhaps it is best to make sure that lab technicians feel a great deal of empathy for the animals they work with.
I think that once we've reduced our meat consumption by 99.9%, then it might make some sense to spend energy coming up with alternatives to animal testing for medicine. For now, it's hard for me to see animal testing as the key bottleneck. If you profiled your code and found that one badly-implemented function was taking up 99.9% of your execution time, why would you ever waste any time optimizing the 0.1% function?
[0] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/report...
[1] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/report...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218261/
Beyond that, I'm afraid it'll be business as usual.
Counties have done unethical experiments on humans before, and maybe they do it now. Why should we hold ourselves to a standard, if other groups do not? I couldn't possibly think of a reason why the scientific community would hold themselves accountable, rather than think they know best and act as if they were superior to the larger community they work to improve. I mean, that mindset has never gone wrong.
Personally, I like seeing a community doing some attempt at self regulation. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.
Why not? That's how we got vaccines, isn't it? (Stated completely without any ironic intent.)
In my opinion this kind of research crosses some ethical lines that shouldn't be crossed. If one considers an embryo as an independent life, what species the embryo belongs to? Wouldn't be the ones in this experiment half humans with human rights? After all, the scientist doesn't know all, and the cells he put in could evolve to a chain reaction of the hybrid developing human conscious.
Just my opinion tho, as I know nothing about genetics and biology.
I think the line of inquiry into replacement organs can be researched ethically but the how of the research may cross ethical lines if not done carefully. Given diseases we have, I think we need to do the research and find an ethical way to make this kind of organ production happen, if we want to extend human lifespan.
About the research, I hope I am wrong and the advances that came out of it help save lives and extend the human life. I just wish they take those ethical questions in consideration too.
Arguments from ignorance are rarely helpful.
Becker, "The Body Electric" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_Electric_(book)
But then he died and most research dried up, but now there's Levin: https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/