FRANKENSTEIN MONKEY!
Scientist creates first human-ape embryo!
THE H.G. Wells horror classic The Island of Dr. Moreau — where a mad scientist creates smart, half-man, half-animal beasts that eventually go ape — is on the verge of coming true, stunned scientists reveal.
In a chilling breakthrough, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and his Salk Institute team created and grew a part-human, part-ape embryo by injecting human stem cells into macaque monkey embryos, according to a report in the April 15 issue of the scientific journal Cell.
The scientists at the California facility call the embryos “human-nonhuman chimeras” — after the mythological, fire-breathing monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body and serpent’s tail.
They hope the experiment will lead to growing organs for transplants as well as helping researchers learn about human development and disease progression.
“These chimeric approaches could be really very useful for advancing biomedical research,” says Belmonte.
The researchers insist they followed ethical rules and destroyed the embryo in its petri dish after 20 days — and didn’t wait to see what kind of monster it might grow into.
But others fear that like in horror movies, some scientists may go all the way and develop half-man, half-beast creatures.
Stem cell expert Alejandro De Los Angeles at Yale University School of Medicine warns allowing the embryos to grow too far by implanting them into a uterus could result in a creature that possesses a level of human intelligence and behavior like the simians from the hit movie Planet of the Apes.
“One of the main concerns with human-animal chimeras is whether ‘humanization’ of the chimeras will occur,” he says. “For example, whether such chimeras acquire human-like cognition.”
He notes that in the future, “it will be important to discuss how long experiments should be allowed to go for.”
Adds Ethics Prof. Julian Savulescu at England’s University of Oxford: “These embryos were destroyed at 20 days of development, but it is only a matter of time before human-nonhuman chimeras are successfully developed.”