To ask if Planet of the Apes should not be inspiration for scientific research

[TheLoneRager]

"Embryo made from monkey and human cells"

I find this really shocking. I am sure when women who have been through IVF and are left with unused eggs choose to donate them to research they do not anticipate that their eggs will be used to create a monkey/human chimera.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7ae6914c-9e21-11eb-8da6-6f8eecc82ac3?shareToken=2dcf09b6793810784abae293d026a34f

[ElizabethinherGermanGarden]

Makes me think of this series from the 90s. It was scary!

[OolieMacdoolie]

Your hyperbole isn’t helping. Planet of the Apes indeed!

There are reasonable moral and ethical questions to be considered with the development of this new technology (as there are for all kinds of experiments). It doesn’t need shut down by exaggerated pearl clutching.

As for women who donate their eggs, it’s up to them to consider that once they do so they have no control over how those eggs are used. It’s absolutely fine if that leads them to decide not to donate, but once that decision has been made they have to accept that the outcome is out of their hands.

[OhHolyJesus]

I thought of planet of the apes as well and also those Kung-fu films from the 80s that had actors in monkey mask type make up.

So some genius Dr thinks this is worth a try as an experiment - for what purpose? Just to see if it works?

Though I disagree with the actions taken and I'm glad he's in jail, at least this Dr can claim he had good intentions when he genetically engineered twins.

"The court ruled that the three defendants had deliberately violated national regulations on biomedical research and medical ethics, and rashly applied gene-editing technology to human reproductive medicine.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/chinese-scientist-who-produced-genetically-altered-babies-sentenced-3-years-jail

You would think that Bio Ethics committee would reign these mad scientists in and prevent this sort of experiments even taking place but apparently not.

[ghostyslovesheets]

hahaha have you seen planet of the apes - it has nothing to do with making human/monkey hybrids for starters!

Look - they aren't implanting these to make actual creatures it's research - actually to look into making organs for donation (if R5 got it right yesterday I was half listening) - it's not what you think it is (but then you wouldn;t be able to get hysterical)

[KrisAkabusi]

The eggs came from monkeys, NOT from donated human eggs.

The research is to make more organs for transplant. Yes, there are ethical issues, but it's nothing like Planet of the Apes!

[JovialNickname]

More like the Island of Dr. Moreau. Yes it's creepy!

[OhHolyJesus]

From the article:

“As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,” said Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, from the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, California.

What types of experiments? Is it essential? It's a bit light on detail to be able to judge. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I have less and less trust in Dr and research stories like this don't help. It could be for cancer treatment (it made no mention of transplants as noted on R5 according to a PP), it could be for heart disease. I wish they had been more specific.

Animal experiments pose some ethical questions as it is, would experiments on a part human/part monkey make it more ethical and socially acceptable or less?

“This breakthrough reinforces an increasingly inescapable fact: biological categories are not fixed — they are fluid. This poses significant ethical and legal challenges. Many of the frameworks we rely on to govern our behaviour are based on false assumptions, for example that there is a biological answer to the question ‘what is a human being?’ ” she said.

So we've had what is a woman, shall we progress to "what is a human?". Yea I don't see that ending well. Hence the Planet of the Apes references ...and actually biology categories of animal (reptiles, mammals etc) have and are fixed and have been since the beginning of time. Yes living beings evolve but they don't cross categories. It is only when humans, or more specifically, Drs/Scientists who have a God complex and want to have their name go down in history, come along that things get messed up.

As I pointed out, the Drs who messed with genetic engineering and breeched international ethical codes ended up in jail.

These embryos were only 4% human at 19 days. Ok, so what's next, make a 50/50 version so we can see if we can harvest organs and use them for transplants? Right .

[MercyBooth]

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/4220830-Scientists-create-a-human-monkey-hybrid-embryo

I started a thread about this too. I thought of Chimera and First Born
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Born_(TV_series)

[VladmirsPoutine]

This should be illegal. It's so morally bankrupt I don't even know where to begin.

[OhHolyJesus]

Oh thanks Mercy I didn't spot your thread - I was also trying to remember the name of that film, First Born so thanks for that too.

[CSIblonde]

Hmm. Whatever the ethical & moral issues are, I was watching something on the BBC a few years back on genetics & science & a US scientist was adamant that a lot of dodgy unethical stuff does go on, and your naive if you think it doesn't . He specifically mentioned Russia, China & the US: & said anything you can imagine genetically has been tried, or is being tried , on the quiet, with the real intent of weaponising hybrid animals for war. I also watched a doc where they sucessfully put spider DNA in sheep to try & make superstrong wool which made me feel queasy & weird: even tho the sheep looked normal . Apparently because spider webs are incredibly strong so superstrong wool would be a good thing .