If you would prefer NPR as a source, here you go. Also, yes, this was a stem cell creation. Not grafting. This was over that line. It is the first step in going forward to full baby from those embryos. It also brings up the ethics of "when is life created?" At conception or at a specific date later in the process?Note where this came from. The Sun is mostly known for printing outrageous sensational articles rather than truthful ones. This is in no real way a human monkey hybrid. This is stem cell research and is only done with embryos. The experiments are terminated after 20 days. I don't think that even if they were allowed to go to term that they would be different in any real way from a regular monkey.
If this makes a human monkey hybrid I know a couple of people that are human-pig hybrids. If installing stem cells in a monkey makes that monkey human than my friends became pigs when they had pig heart valves installed. A HYBRID is made by combining genetic material NOT by grafting on parts. A monkey with human stem cells is still genetically 100% monkey. To do the research which may someday allow us to correct certain birth defects among other possibilities in humans you need to learn by experiments. If not a monkey it would have to be ape or human embryos to be worth much.
There is a lot of grafting done that is cross-species. I read a story about a little boy that lost an ear. They grew him a new one on the back of a white rat. They are working on pigs that may have O-positive blood that would be human-compatible.
In the past, a lot of the vaccines were made from serums from various animals. Their antibodies would protect you from diseases like tetanus and other things. Now they are laboratory made but the origins were people being inoculated with cells from animals.
Scientists Create Early Embryos That Are Part Human, Part Monkey
An international team has put human cells into monkey embryos in hopes of finding new ways to produce organs for transplantation. But some ethicists still worry about how such research could go wrong.
www.npr.org
From the article:
But this type of scientific work and the possibilities it opens up raises serious questions for some ethicists. The biggest concern, they said, is that someone could try to take this work further and attempt to make a baby out of an embryo made this way. Specifically, the critics worry that human cells could become part of the developing brain of such an embryo — and of the brain of the resulting animal.
"Should it be regulated as human because it has a significant proportion of human cells in it? Or should it be regulated just as an animal? Or something else?" Rice University's Matthews said. "At what point are you taking something and using it for organs when it actually is starting to think and have logic?"
Another concern is that using human cells in this way could produce animals that have human sperm or eggs.
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Also, as the grandmother of a T1D who needs a pancreas, I fully, completely get the medical needs issue.
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