Downright creepifying - Chimeras

POSTED BY: Connorflynn
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 18:35
VIEWED: 7205
PAGE 1 of 1

CONNORFLYNN

Thursday, January 27, 2005 6:53 PM

Quote:
Maryann Mott
National Geographic News

January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.

But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?

There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.

Ethical Guidelines

The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers.

A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though.

For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.

What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.

Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.

He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.

"There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals.

"One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain."

David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.

Human Born to Mice Parents?

For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.

"Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."

Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo.

Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines.

She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.

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MONTANAGIRL

Friday, January 28, 2005 2:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Connorflynn:
The mice with 1% human brains. I can see it now:

"What we gonna do tonight Brain? " - unknown Mouse with 1% human brain (We'll call him Pinky)

"What we do every night Pinky, Try and take over the DNC" - unknown Mouse with 10% human brain (We'll call him Brain)

"Gnarf" - Unknown Mouse with 0% Human brain (We'll call him Terry)

Pardon me while I laugh hysterically. Then add, "Zort!" "Troz!"

And with regards to the actual article, I have to agree with downright creepifyin'.

Packer fans welcome.
All others tolerated.

CONNORFLYNN

Monday, January 31, 2005 7:34 PM

You know..I thought about this a little bit more and started wondering. If this is so gorram public..what the hell is going on behind closed doors?!?!

With humans being fallible and such..the thought that we are playing god in such a way publicly, makes me afraid of what they are doing behind closed doors. Then I think about the current food chain hehe. Our current response to handling something that might upset our position on the food chain is to find it and kill it (first) then maybe dissect it and see how it ticks. What happens if someone behind closed doors and in complete secrecy makes something that can't be so easily dealt with?

Have they already done so?

SGTGUMP

Monday, January 31, 2005 8:26 PM

Quote:
You know..I thought about this a little bit more and started wondering. If this is so gorram public..what the hell is going on behind closed doors?!?!

That's true, Just like the B-2 Bomber that we didn't see until about 15 years of research and testing. Cells are a lot smaller than a plane, they could be making human-mouse Chimeras in a basement in downtown Seattle, for all we know. I personally don't beleive that it is something that is going to be stopped. But maybe our lives are going to be like old Sci-Fi movies, where we are all running from giant ants and trying to kill the mad scientists. I'm glad I own a shotgun.

BARNSTORMER

Monday, January 31, 2005 8:41 PM

I know what you mean Conner. We are just not smart enough to mess with things like this.

Whenever I read some article or other like this, I can't help thinking of Kurt Vonneguts book "Ice 9" in which a scientist develops a form of water that freezes at room temperature (just to see if it could be done I guess). The thing is that once this form of ice comes in contact with normal water, it teaches the normal water to freeze at room temperature as well.

Well, you probably guessed already the the fool scientist accidently unleashes a small sample in the real world and........Oops, all water on earth freezes.

Their are things in this world I believe should just not be f*cked with. We humans just don't know enough to not be dangerous..

Am I a Lion?... No, I think I'ma tellin' the truth.

BarnStormer

CYBERSNARK

Monday, January 31, 2005 10:16 PM

Anybody remember Dark Angel? Project Manticore is somehow not looking so far-fetched.

Quote:
Originally posted by sgtgump:
they could be making human-mouse Chimeras in a basement in downtown Seattle, for all we know.

Hmm. Maybe certain US political leaders are animaniac-style robot bodies with mice in control. . .

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

NEEDLESEYE

Monday, January 31, 2005 10:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Connorflynn:
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created.

Brings new meaning to Echo and The Bunnymen.

May I just say that this whole line of study is too disturbing for me.

Keeper of Jayne's goggles. 8)

XENOCIDE

Monday, January 31, 2005 10:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by BarnStormer:
Whenever I read some article or other like this, I can't help thinking of Kurt Vonneguts book "Ice 9" in which a scientist develops a form of water that freezes at room temperature (just to see if it could be done I guess).

Just for clarity...I think the vonnegut book was actually entitled Cat's Cradle. I think Ice 9 was just one of the subjects, but maybe my brain is missing.

RE: Dark Angel, yeah... but if you recall it was the government, not the scientific community in general, that was doing the bad.

Just my 2cents.

-Eli

If voting mattered, they'd make it illegal.

DANFAN

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 1:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Connorflynn:
If this is so gorram public..what the hell is going on behind closed doors?!?!

The folks doing stuff behind doors would most likely be the government trying to find military uses... if they have the interest in trying it.

If I were to put my guessing hat on...I'd guess we would be talking about finding more efficient muscles, eyes, or hearing in the animal kingdom to equip soldiers with. Or possibly engineering small field mice or birds with sufficiently human brains to spy in foreign territory and report back on what they see/hear.

The idea of such near-human animals is creepy enough all by itself. What makes it uber-creepy for me is how we will likely treat such creatures. The prevailing cultural attitude seems to be that there is a quantum step between humans and animals... that we are completely unique in our abilities. Several scientific studies indicate that idea doesn't seem to hold much water. There appears to be a WHOLE lot of human-like intelligence and emotion in a chimpanzee. I see more goodness in my dogs than in some people. There is a lot of evidence (presented by some factions within the scientific community) that what we regard as "human" traits exist to varying degrees in many (if not all) of the higher mammals. Sort of a "humanity spectrum."

And still, as a culture, we are all too wiling to treat EVERYTHING non-human as if it lived on the other side of some immeasurably high wall... no better than inanimate objects.

This trait even exists in the scientific community. There is still a raging debate in scientific circles whether any creature on this planet besides humans can feel emotion. For those who hold that animals don't have emotions, they say that what appears to be emotion in the higher mammals is really "instinctive behavioral programming" that confers some survival advantage. The animals are really just complex organic automatons. To most of us, it seems incomprehensible that such a claim could be made with a straight face. I fear that we would be all too likely to put visibly animal chimeras on the other side of that wall as easily as we do all natural animals.

What if some of the creatures we put on the other side of that "not-human" wall have some significant measure of humanity that we put into them? Something like a mouse with a human-architecture brain as smart and self aware as a 3 year-old human child? It could be a tragedy of monumental proportions. In the articles that this thread prompted me to read, most of the naysayers dwell on "diluting the integrity and dignity of the species." I didn't see anyone speak on the humanity of such modified creaturs... it's like no one has the nerve to consider the possiblity. Until we have a consensus on whether humanity is an all or nothing proposition.. and how much "human" it takes to confer "humanity"... we should be VERY cautious messing with this stuff.

Sorry. End rant...

MONTANAGIRL

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 2:56 AM

Quote:
What if some of the creatures we put on the other side of that "not-human" wall have some significant measure of humanity that we put into them?

I was just reminded of "The Island of Dr. Moreaux" by H.G. Wells and the similar questions he raised.

Packer fans welcome.
All others tolerated.

SOUPCATCHER

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 3:29 AM

First off, article from original post, definitely creepifying.

In reading your post, danfan, I was reminded of one of the rationales for slavery - that the black race was sub-human and therefore should be treated no differently than animals. Or the justification for some of the genocides that we humans have engaged in where the victims were thought of as soulless, and therefore less than human. So I guess what I'm saying is that in our very recent history we've denied humanity to members of our own species in order to either exterminate or exploit them. I would expect us to act no differently to chimeras.

Now to wander off on a tangent... I'm very concerned about the secret research that is most probably being conducted as we speak. For every group like the Raelians (who are up front about their attempts to clone humans - and have the financial backing and scientific expertise to take a decent stab at the problem) I'm sure there are hundreds of other groups working toward similar goals in silence. We'll probably never know until there is a fait accompli (or a big screw up - Resident Evil anyone?).

---------------------
"What sort of raw meat do you people feed your cruiser captains, Hamish?" - Queen Elizabeth III of Manticore

CONNORFLYNN

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 1:35 PM

Hehe.. I'm also reminded of the GELFs (Genetically Engineered Life Forms) from Seaquest? I believe.

The government has been working on these types of projects for decades. They usually spend the most money and have the largest percentage of brilliant scientists working in these programs. I was thinking of something along the lines of an episode from the old "X-Files"..believe it was called "Eve-8" that supposedly was based on a true X-file from the early 50's.

As for animals not having emotion, /boggle. We have our dog on anti-depressants because he suffers from severe seperation anxiety disorder and will actually hurt himself if we leave him alone for longer then 15 minutes and he's the friendliest sweetest muttley I've ever met LOL.

DANFAN

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 6:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
So I guess what I'm saying is that in our very recent history we've denied humanity to members of our own species in order to either exterminate or exploit them. I would expect us to act no differently to chimeras.

I'd have to agree... our record is all too often shameful. It seems we only occasionally rise to our own human potential. I too fear that we would treat animals imbued with human characteristics as nothing more than animals. However, we might succeed in making them sufficiently intelligent to be AWARE of the injustice of that treatment. I don't want that to be my generation's legacy. Hence my desire for caution in this field.

In my opinion, if scientists are still engaging in a vigorous debate over whether animals can feel emotion, we aren't ready to consider the implications of animals that feel human.

BARNSTORMER

Tuesday, February 1, 2005 10:49 PM

Yes your right, it was titled Cats Cradle. Well, I suppose I should have looked up the correct title instead of relying on my memories of 35+ years ago.

Damn, I hate getting old....

Thanks for the correction.

Am I a Lion?... No, I think I'ma tellin' the truth.

BarnStormer

MOHRSTOUTBEARD

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 6:24 AM

I hope Steven Segal or Jean-Claude Van Damme are available to kick-box these chimeras into submission when they inevitably escape and wreak havoc on the populous.

"You've just gotta go ahead and change the captain of your brainship, because he's drunk at the wheel."

CYBERSNARK

Wednesday, February 2, 2005 3:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by danfan:
For those who hold that animals don't have emotions, they say that what appears to be emotion in the higher mammals is really "instinctive behavioral programming" that confers some survival advantage. The animals are really just complex organic automatons.

I have encountered the same thing argued about humans --and about potential AIs. Especially when talking to "scientists" about things like love, fear, hope, and family.

Are we more than our programming?

Quote:
I seek to improve myself. The B4 does not.

--Data, St: Nemesis

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

PIRATEJENNY

Monday, February 14, 2005 10:44 PM

Resident Evil anyone

I'm sure they are and have been doing all kinds of stuff

JAZAF

Thursday, February 17, 2005 6:01 AM

When I read the Article on Chimeras, I could hardly believe that it actually happened. These people are stepping onto dangerous ground and tampering in things that I doubt should be bothered. As beneficial as the Chimeras may be there is always a potenial for abuse. There is no telling how damaging such ....theoretical ideas can be if brought into reality.

I fear the road that the world is starting to take will eventually, no inevitably bring chaos.

---------------------------------------
Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with till you
understand who's in rutting command here.

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Thursday, February 17, 2005 4:52 PM

The idea of this being used to develop super-human hybrids is one that would have made the Dark Angel people jump for joy, back in the day.

But I’ve always said that it is unlikely that a Western government would ever create or attempt to create such things. Highly democratic and liberal governments are subject to the ranting of special interest groups, “civil rights” groups, to say nothing of the ranting of Congress and the Courts. I just don’t see how the government could pull this off. Now a less open government, such as China or Russia, well, there might be something there.

Although I’ve also said that I’m not very sure that such genetic “enhancements,” to the extent that one might reasonably expect them to be applied, would be very useful in a combat arena. The ability to field super-strong warriors is something that might have been useful 800 years ago, but today, less so.

As far as the mice are concerned, we already know that this has been done. It’s not talked about much. It is a secret. Have none of you heard of NIMH, the National Institute for Mental Health!

“We can no longer live as rats. We know too much.”

DTUCK

Thursday, February 17, 2005 10:54 PM

Yarr... Seeing this subject torn to bits by the extremists on both sides would be too terrible for words.

"It would be a human rights issue... but they're not human." - '100% Human' Groups in Support of Chimeras (for medical/experimental purposes)

"Humans shouldn't have to pollute their gene pool with animal DNA, and no animal should have Human DNA." - '100% Human' Groups not in Support of Chimeras (for any reason)

"If even a smidgen of their genetic makeup is human, they should be treated like humans." - Chimera-Rights Supporters

While there would undoubtedly be thousands upon thousands of variants concerning the Rights of Chimeras, those would be some of the most basic. Support for medical reasons, absolutely not, and 'treat them as though they were 100% human'.

I'm on the fence with the issue. I'm just gonna cross that bridge when we come to it.

Edited to say: I wouldn't mind gettin' my eyes upgraded though... *squints to see screen*
__________________________________

The best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

SIGNYM

Friday, February 18, 2005 1:11 AM

"As far as the mice are concerned, we already know that this has been done. It’s not talked about much. It is a secret. Have none of you heard of NIMH, the National Institute for Mental Health"

Did I miss a emoticon somewhere? Or are you setting yourself up on purpose, as in...

1) NIMH? Maybe YOU should check into it!

2) National Insitute for MENTAL Health? I thought it was National Insitute of MOUSE Health!

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, February 18, 2005 1:45 AM

Only you. On the other hand, I was pretty certain it would obvious enough that I didn’t need a smiley. Although maybe you young’ns don’t get my eighties humor.

NIMH
www.nimh.nih.gov

DTUCK

Friday, February 18, 2005 1:55 AM

Wha? Choo don't think we kids know the secret of NIMH?

__________________________________

The best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. - Oscar Wilde

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, February 18, 2005 2:01 AM

I thought you probably did. But it was a long time ago, and it didn’t get much fanfare.

Back before them fancy computers started cranking out Final Fantasies and digital Yodas.

SIGNYM

Friday, February 18, 2005 2:24 AM

The Secret of NIMH???

AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!

Actually, I don't think I'm too YOUNG for this move, I think I'm too old! Maybe that explains the mental lapse!

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Friday, February 18, 2005 2:28 AM

That's the ticket.

REEQUEEN

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 3:57 AM

DTuck:

Quote:
I'm on the fence with the issue. I'm just gonna cross that bridge when we come to it.

Edited to say: I wouldn't mind gettin' my eyes upgraded though... *squints to see screen*

Probably the most sensible take I've seen yet.

(Rant following addressed generally, not simply to the person who happens to be the one to whom I chose to reply.)

I don't understand, myself, what all the fuss is about. Animals with human DNA? So what? How, exactly, is it creepifying?

It's not as though animals differ that greatly, speaking of DNA, from humans in the first place. Using animal tissues, of various sorts, to try and ensure longer life in human beings has been going on since (probably) the beginning of last century. Now that I think of it, probably much longer than that.

It isn't even as if the whole human bits on animals is a new thing, either. They've been growing human skin on shark cartilege for burn victims, and they've been growing human organs inside pigs for quite some time.

So we're playing with smaller and smaller bits, what's the problem? It was bound to happen, and someone wants to be a Luddite about it, then they can say "no" to any engineered parts they might otherwise be eligible for later on.

We don't live in a comic book world, people. Honestly. There are no super villains breeding strains of monstrous-looking human-animal crossbreeds to annihilate the Two Legs. As with every other technological advance, there will be good things and bad things coming out of this research, and I betcha, the good things will outweigh the bad things by a very large margin.

Things change, they will always change, there will always be something new and scary to moan about, but there is no stopping it. Get over it, get used to it, and move on.

As for the whole "human rights" thing, it's completely ridiculous. Soon they'll engineer them without brain function, or simply grow the bits in vats. That's where the research is headed, precisely because of the concerns regarding how human is human. This is why cloning is such a good thing, and we'll be lucky when the folks in charge finally pull their collective heads out of their asses.

Yeesh.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

DIEGO

Wednesday, February 23, 2005 9:48 PM

My first source of annoyance is with the claim that there is some kind of line between animals and humans that is being defied Dr. Moreau fashion.

There is no obvious "line between human and animal" that you can point to. People have been trying to define some sort of threshold that delineates human-ness from the rest of creation. I have no problem if someone believes that there is such a thing as souls and that only humans have them, but the thing about a soul is that you can't measure it. We all know about the discoveries of animal cognition and language abilities that have required constant revision of the defining uniqueness of humans. Anatomically and physiologically there is even less that we can point to as being unique characters that provide a comfortable gulf between humans and other animals. We're lucky that we only have the other hominid apes as our closest surviving relatives. If some other hominines (like Australopithecines and Homo erectus etc) had produced other extant lineages than we'd have a devil of a time defining human. As it is, physical anthropologists have trouble deciding if a fossil is an early example of modern H. sapiens or is a member of a very similar pregenitor species.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

I assume this is to serve as additional blood donors? And this is a bad thing, why? The only concern I might have is whether it might facilitate viruses jumping host species. Pigs are already similar enough to us to make them a great reservoir for inflenza.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

That's completely ridiculous. There is no way these will be "human brains" in any way that anybody should be concerned about. Fetal cells transferred from a human to a mouse would not produce a human brain even though they have he genes to make a human brain. Cells grow in an ontogenetic (embryonic development) context.

Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.

I am not trying to comment on the ethics of using animals for research or as organ donors. I think such work should be limited and done as humanely as possible (note that humane doesn't have to apply to just humanity). But I think that's a different issue than simple paranoia about the production of chimeras.

What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?

These are good questions, but I don't think we need to wait for human-whatever chimeras to be produced to grapple with them. They are the sort of questions we need to ask ourselves anyway. Are chimpanzees eligible for human rights? The spectrum already exists.

And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.

These organisms are, strictly speaking, transgenic, not chimeras.

What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.

For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.

I can't even imagine anyone ever thinking this was a good idea. It seems like more of a strawman extreme than the sort of research that might actually be contemplated. I agree that there should be ethical watchdogs, but I think black-and-white knee-jerk reactions can be just as bad as going overboard with a new technology or research avenue.

Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.

What does one percent human even mean? I assume that refers to the percent of neurons that came from human cells as opposed to mouse cells. But it might be just as reasonable to say

RUE

Friday, February 25, 2005 5:26 AM

As far as I can tell, the actual experiment did not fuse human and rabbit nuclear DNA, it transferred human DNA into a rabbit egg which had already had its nucleus removed. The rabbit egg was sort-of an incubator for the human nucleus -
http://www.medtech1.com/new_tech/newtechnologyfeature.cfm/138/1 Unfortunately, reports like this one http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6528365.htm?1c "Human, rabbit DNA are fused" are severely misleading. Further down, the article reads "They fused those {human} cells with New Zealand rabbit eggs from which the vast majority of rabbit DNA had been removed" but failed to say the reamining DNA was mitochondiral, not nuclear.

There will of course be limitations on the direct application of any of these experiments, as humans will reject tissues that carry foreign antigens (from animals). For example, pig skin is eventually rejected (sloughed off) while pig heart valves must be "decellularized" http://microvet.arizona.edu/Courses/MIC419/Tutorials/transplantation.h
tml.

Experiments using animals with select human genes or tissues will be best used to more closely study human diseases in animals other than humans.

Some recent pitfalls in stem cell experimentation recently uncovered were the stem cell contamination problem - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4201565.stm.
and the problem of cell fusion of stem cells and adult cells - http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v416/n
6880/full/416485a_fs.html.
There is also the problem of zoonosis from previously unrecognized animal viruses, as exemplified by the polio vaccines of 1954. http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/cancer/default.htm "SV40 is a virus found in some species of monkey. Soon after its discovery in 1960, SV40 was found in polio vaccine. Over 98 million Americans received one or more doses of polio vaccine during the period (1955-1963) when some of the vaccine was contaminated with SV40."

Anyway, as much promising research as there is being done on stem cells - and there is a tremendous amount of data already on how stem cells can cure fatal conditions in animals - we won't be seeing animal/human hybrid farms soon.

SOUPCATCHER

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 10:38 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
We don't live in a comic book world, people. Honestly. There are no super villains breeding strains of monstrous-looking human-animal crossbreeds to annihilate the Two Legs. As with every other technological advance, there will be good things and bad things coming out of this research, and I betcha, the good things will outweigh the bad things by a very large margin.

I've been meaning to respond because I think you hit the nail on the head. When I read the original post I made the mistake of conflating two completely unrelated issues - the research being talked about and cloning humans in their entirety - and had a knee jerk reaction (cloning humans = bad, this stuff = also bad). In retrospect, after thinking things over in a more rational manner, I completely agree with you.

Of course, the thread died out almost a month ago so I won't add to the discussion

. Just a quick thank you note for your post.

REEQUEEN

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 6:35 PM

You've been very cool, SoupCatcher, thanks.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114