Human-monkey hybrids

For the first time, researchers have produced monkey embryos that contain human stem cells—a major scientific breakthrough that also raises significant ethical questions. Scientists have been creating partly human “chimeras” in labs for years by injecting human stem cells into rats, mice, pigs, and cows. The resulting combinations, they hope, could be used to grow human organs for transplant, to examine illnesses and aging, and to develop new drugs. The human-macaque chimeras, a collaboration between the Salk Institute in California and scientists in China, were kept alive and studied for only 19 days, reports The Wall Street Journal. But the use of humanity’s closest animal relatives in such experiments has bioethicists worried about unintended outcomes. When researchers in 2014 transplanted human fetal brain cells into mice, the human cells took over the mouse brains within a year—and cognitive tests showed that the altered mice were smarter than their peers. Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist involved in the oversight of such research, says the big concern is that stem-cell chimeras have “the potential to radically humanize the biology of laboratory animals.”

“long haul” health problems—they also have a markedly higher risk of dying prematurely. That’s the finding of a new study that examined Department of Veterans Affairs health records on some 87,000 people up to six months after they tested positive for the disease. Compared with some 5 million people in the VA database who didn’t contract the coronavirus, both hospitalized and non-hospitalized Covid survivors were more likely to develop a litany of health problems, including new-onset heart disease, diabetes, mental health issues, and kidney disease. Overall, the coronavirus patients had a 59 percent increased risk of dying prematurely within six months of contracting the disease, reports Bloomberg.com. That amounts to about eight additional deaths per 1,000 patients and suggests the pandemic’s overall fatality numbers are even higher than previously thought. “When we are looking at the acute phase [of Covid], we’re only pretty much looking at the tip of the iceberg,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, head of the research and development service at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System. “We’re starting to see a little bit beneath that iceberg, and it’s really alarming.”