Man and beast mingle in the mythical creatures of classical literature. The centaur combines man and horse; the mermaid joins girl with fish. Now several research groups in the UK are seeking permission to mix humans and animals in a different way. Rather than creating fantastical beasts, scientists hope to make lenses to peer into real human diseases. By combining human nuclei with unfertilized animal eggs, they are seeking better understanding of and treatments for inherited diseases.
The most recent proposal is to swap the nucleus of an unfertilized animal egg with one from a patient carrying a genetic disease, with the hope of deriving embryonic (ES) stem cell lines. These cells would carry the genetic susceptibilities of the disease and could be used in drug screening to find compounds that prevent changes characteristic of the disease.
These proposals have sparked serious debate and some ludicrous headlines. Its a serious ethical question. Should it be done ?
Making human-animal embryos for scientific experiments should be allowed because of the benefits to science and medicine. Though Such embryos should never, however, be implanted into either a woman or an animal, said the Academy of Medical Sciences.
Details report can be accessed in "Nature reports Stem Cells".
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