Pushing the Chimeric Envelope
Posted by Osagie K. Obasogie March 30, 2007
Biopolitical Times
After President Bush’s 2006 State of the Union, I wrote an op-ed for
the San Francisco Chronicle that tried to contextualize what many
thought to be his out-of-the-blue call for legislation to prohibit
human–animal chimeras. When I wrote the piece, the reported proportion
of human cells being injected into animal fetuses was relatively small
(circa 0.1%), which led some to discount ethical objections to this
research. Yet I did note:
Can this really comfort us? Is there any question that scientists may push the envelope as far as they can, from 0.1 percent to 1 percent to 10 percent? Why not 100 percent?
Sadly, it looks like this may have become true sooner than I thought. It was reported this week that Esmail Zanjani at the University of Nevada has created the first human-sheep chimera, with 15% human cells. That’s right: the decimal point is to the right of the five.
The biomedical rationale for this research is to create animals with organs that could be transplanted into humans. Given the significant number of people waiting for organ transplants, this is surely a laudable goal. Yet substantial ethical considerations still remain.
As these procedures advance and transplanting organs from chimeras to humans becomes more feasible, the proportion of human cells may come to rival the number of animal cells. And we currently don’t even have the language to think about these animals’ social and legal standing, let alone any public policies to govern this research or these organs’ use.
So now we face ethical questions about harvesting human body parts from partial as well as from full humans. How to assess this is a difficult question that deserves more thought than this blog post. What is clear, however, is that mutton lovers might want to eat up now. Their favorite dish may soon be regarded as a form of cannibalism.
Can this really comfort us? Is there any question that scientists may push the envelope as far as they can, from 0.1 percent to 1 percent to 10 percent? Why not 100 percent?
Sadly, it looks like this may have become true sooner than I thought. It was reported this week that Esmail Zanjani at the University of Nevada has created the first human-sheep chimera, with 15% human cells. That’s right: the decimal point is to the right of the five.
The biomedical rationale for this research is to create animals with organs that could be transplanted into humans. Given the significant number of people waiting for organ transplants, this is surely a laudable goal. Yet substantial ethical considerations still remain.
As these procedures advance and transplanting organs from chimeras to humans becomes more feasible, the proportion of human cells may come to rival the number of animal cells. And we currently don’t even have the language to think about these animals’ social and legal standing, let alone any public policies to govern this research or these organs’ use.
So now we face ethical questions about harvesting human body parts from partial as well as from full humans. How to assess this is a difficult question that deserves more thought than this blog post. What is clear, however, is that mutton lovers might want to eat up now. Their favorite dish may soon be regarded as a form of cannibalism.