A plan to mix human stem cells with animal embryos to create chimeras – those creatures that have part animal and part human elements – soon will be getting taxpayer funding, under a new proposal from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The federal agency said Thursday that it is requesting public comment on its plans to open the door to public funding of the concept that could result in “animal models with human tissues or organs for studying human development, disease pathology, and eventually organ transplantation.”
The National Institutes of Health had announced a moratorium on the funding last year, but the change now is being proposed due to the interest in mixing human and non-human cells, and seeing the results.
National Public Radio said there have been concerns over the potential work.
“One issue is that scientists might inadvertently create animals that have partly human brains, endowing them with some semblance of human consciousness or human thinking abilities. Another is that they could develop into animals with human sperm and eggs and breed, producing human embryos or fetuses inside animals or hybrid creatures,” the report said.
But NPR said scientists argue they could prevent those outcomes.
WND has previously reported on such “transhuman” goals. In one case, a U.S. biotech company was given permission to recruit 20 brain-dead patients to test if parts of their central nervous systems can be regenerated.
The company, Bioquark Inc., plans to use a soup of stem cells and peptides on the brains of the patients over a six-week period to see if it can jump-start their functions.
Philadelphia-based Bioquark asks on its website: “What if your body came with a restart button?”