Scientists create monkey-human Chimeric embryos
Embryos that are part human, part monkey, have been created in the lab by scientists who say the chimeric creations will help them study ways to produce new organs for transplants in humans.
The study was published April 15, 2021, in the journal Cell, and one of the first questions that critics asked was: Why are researchers literally pushing the ethics envelope on this without “having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do?”
One critic said, "Nobody really wants monkeys walking around with human eggs and human sperm inside them … [b]ecause if a monkey with human sperm meets a monkey with human eggs, nobody wants a human embryo inside a monkey's uterus."
On the flip side, bioethicists and the scientists who created the embryos defend what they’ve done with the argument that the demand for organs is so high. They’ve already tried injecting human stem cells into pig and sheep cells to see if they could be viable “donor” animals, at no success, they said.
But, with the monkey combination, they gained hope when 132 of the embryos began growing human cells.
As noted by NPR, the National Institutes of Health has been considering lifting a ban on funding this type of research, but is still waiting on new guidelines.
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