U.S. health agency seeks government funding for animal-human hybrids

Tuesday, September 27, 2016 by: Vicki Batts
Tags: chimeras, stem cell research, animal-human hybrids

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(NaturalNews) Will the United States really be paying for the next wave of gruesome genetic experiments? The National Institutes of Health, the premier government health agency in the U.S., has recently announced that they are waiting for funding from the government to conduct a study involving mixing human cells into animal embryos.

The nightmarish study seeks to combine human beings with animals to create what many people would refer to as "abominations." The NIH states that the motives behind this vile and unsettling desire are completely virtuous and altruistic; in their minds, this new age of animal testing and manipulation will the be the apex of modern medicine's advancement. In their statements on this upcoming research, the NIH writes, "Formation of these types of human-animal organism, referred to as 'chimeras', holds tremendous potential for disease modeling, drug testing, and perhaps eventual organ transplant."

However, there are many ethical concerns about such a study. The NIH itself admits that uncertainty surrounding the effects of human cells in the chimeric cells raises ethical and animal welfare concerns. The agency even admits that the potential effects on the nervous system and other off-target organs and tissues is particularly concerning.

If you have ever seen the movie Splice, you may be familiar with the many ways such experimentation could go awry. While scientists may believe that they can predict exactly what will happen when they inject human cells into animal embryos, there is truly no way to know for sure what they are creating.

The most current guidelines from the NIH on stem cell research explicitly prohibit the introduction of pluripotent cells into nonhuman primate blastocysts. They also prohibit the breeding of animals that may have human pluripotent cells in their sperm or eggs.

Pluripotent cells are cells that are capable of creating all the cell types within the body; embryonic stem cells are considered pluripotent cells. Pluripotent cells essentially are capable of creating almost everything that makes us human. While it is currently against the agency's guidelines, the NIH is currently developing ways to circumvent their own rules. From the agency's statements:

First, NIH is establishing an internal NIH steering committee to provide programmatic input to NIH Institute and Center Directors in making funding decisions for two areas of research in which:

1. human pluripotent cells are introduced into non-human vertebrate embryos, up through the end of gastrulation stage, with the exception of non-human primates, which would only be considered after the blastocyst stage, or

2. human cells are introduced into post-gastrulation non-human mammals (excluding rodents), where there could be either a substantial contribution or a substantial functional modification to the animal brain by the human cells.

In other words, the NIH feels that by introducing human genes at a later stage of embryonic development they are somehow not breaking any ethical code. Never mind the fact that the poor animals that would be created out of such nonsense did not ask to be turned into a chimeric mutant. What is particularly confounding is the focus on the blastocystic stage of development, and the eschewing of concern over the introduction of human cells at a later stage. The NIH would also like to have the ability to conduct research on animals where human cells are introduced after post-gastrulation. One thing is for sure: The NIH should not be allowed to conduct experiments involving the creation of chimeras, since the animals themselves would likely suffer, as would our humanity.

There is perhaps only one aspect of all this that is more appalling than the fact that this kind of experimentation is even being considered by our government. That would be the fact that a government agency is actually planning on granting themselves the power to do so.

Sources:

AnonHQ.com

OSP.OD.NIH.gov

StemCell.NY.gov

Science.NaturalNews.com