I don't know what most people think about the human-animal hybrid issue, though I'm assuming the majority are at least a bit sickened by it. In any case, I have to say it's pretty damn interesting regardless of whether you are for or against.
I found this article on the MSNBC website, Of Mice, Men and In-Between, which is an interesting read, though short. But my attention was most taken by this part of the article.
The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric embryo into an animal's womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a fetus and integrate themselves into every organ.
Such "humanized" animals could have countless uses. They would almost certainly provide better ways to test a new drug's efficacy and toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.
But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say, is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such chimeras - say, mice - were to mate, a human embryo might form, trapped in a mouse.
Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result.
"What would be so dreadful?" asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done.
Now this is an interesting thought. What if the the child didn't die? What if the embryo were to be removed, implanted in a human womb, and carried to term. What would this mean for this child?
Would it be a human child, but just with mice for parents? Can you imagine poor young Billy being told he is adopted and wondering at the uncomfortable silence when he asks who his real parents are? "Your real parents? Ummm... Well, they are your pet mice, Minnie and Mickey. Fancy that, you've known them all along". What would that do someone, to know that their mother and father were lab mice.
But wait, there's more. While the sperm and ova that went into making this child were "human", they still came from mice. So what exactly would this child be? I mean, human children carry a mixture of DNA from both parents, but this is human DNA. So what if the mice have human sperm and ova, they are still mice, so wouldn't their mouse DNA be carried by the child. Would he have fur, a tail, or would he be a few inches tall? It's fascinating, but I suppose we may never know.
Call me crazy, but I kinda want to know.
