March 26, 2007
85% Is Still Sheep!
Similar to the tagline Albert Pyun’s movie, Nemisis (~86.5% is still human~), apparently we’re now saying similar things about sheep. But at least we’re not talking sheep cyborgs here. Instead, as reported in The Mail, we’re witnessing the first human-sheep chimeras.
Scientists have created the world’s first human-sheep chimera - which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs.
The sheep have 15 per cent human cells and 85 per cent animal cells - and their evolution brings the prospect of animal organs being transplanted into humans one step closer.
Professor Esmail Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has spent seven years and £5million perfecting the technique, which involves injecting adult human cells into a sheep’s fetus.
He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.
The idea for increasing the number of available transplants is an interesting one. It does give yet another dimension to our upcoming post-human future. One wonders what the market dynamics will do with this. Perhaps the hospital systems will use this as a nice money generator - “Well, a full human liver costs an extra 15K, but I have this genetically modified sheep liver for a song!” Truly, at first glance, this sounds like something out of Transmetropolitan. Apparently others have similar thoughts, given their worries:
But the development is likely to revive criticisms about scientists playing God, with the possibility of silent viruses, which are harmless in animals, being introduced into the human race.
Dr Patrick Dixon, an international lecturer on biological trends, warned: “Many silent viruses could create a biological nightmare in humans. Mutant animal viruses are a real threat, as we have seen with HIV.”
Animal rights activists fear that if the cells get mixed together, they could end up with cellular fusion, creating a hybrid which would have the features and characteristics of both man and sheep. But Prof Zanjani said: “Transplanting the cells into foetal sheep at this early stage does not result in fusion at all.”
Hmm, sheep fusion, ey? Gives a whole new slant to the whole sex with farm animals thing!
Comments
March 27, 2007
Com Wedge said:
Actually makes that film “Black Sheep” seem more believable which is a shame cause it looks like shite.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/blacksheep/
Anonymous said:
I doubt anything important will come of it. Here in America, anyways, politics seems to be very….-how do I put this delicately?- “anti-science.”
Heck, at one time our esteemed administration tried to pass a bill banning “human chimeras” but the bill’s definition of human chimera was abit broad. It begs the question of why anyone would make a human chimera? “Crab people! Look like people, taste like crab!”
…to mangle a quote.
Site describing the bill provided in website field for anyone who doesn’t know.
Anonymous said:
That’d be the day when they develop a taste for human.
*strolls off singing the Weird Science tune*
Mr. Roboto said:
So…
It sounds like all those human-sheep breeding programs I’ve heard about were real.
You know, they give some local yahoo Velcro gloves and …
Never mind.
March 29, 2007
Kalafan said:
[I doubt anything important will come of it. Here in America, anyways, politics seems to be very….-how do I put this delicately?- “anti-science.”]
Hehe, science itself has become so powerful over the past five hundred years that its practical limits are now visible. Like the feudal, dogmatic, superstitious world before it, it has gained so much power that it has proved itself incapable of handling that power, thus leaving us with a system that can tell us how to do all sorts of amazing and occasionally catastrophic things, but it can’t tell us whether or not we SHOULD do them.
Forgive me for getting all grand-scale here, but Western Civilization is not too far off from reentering the Dark Ages, and when nightfall comes, and we find that we can no longer afford to fund the Electronosphere that has more or less become a kind of life-support system for our societies, where will we be left? Our “unenlightened” ancestors didn’t need so much as a lightbulb in order to get by, but I guarantee you that huge portions of future Western populations will revert to frightened child-like behavior once the power goes out and fails to come back on. The idiotic morality wars over crap like pigs with dog genetalia will suddenly evaporate.
Anonymous said:
To Kalafan:
That all sounds very “conspiracy theory.” The only way that you could completely eliminate technology, as far as I know, would be some grand scale EMP of some sort. Maybe something else that has slipped my mind.
Still, interesting read!
March 30, 2007
Anonymous said:
To Anonymous:
“The only way that you could completely eliminate technology, as far as I know, would be some grand scale EMP of some sort.”
I was thinking of aliens from outer space taking over the world.
Anonymous said:
To… the other Anonymous:
Do they have wirey frames and bulbous black eyes, by any chance?
April 1, 2007
Vesper said:
Heh, “scientists playing God”… I love this argument
So, I assume the first man to take some tools and build a house out of wood and stone was NOT playing God? Ah, right, God didn’t give us any houses to begin with. Well, back to the caves you go, eh? Unless you want to play some kind of ueberGod and do things beyond His scope of skill?
I also can’t recall and God giving us electricity we can control, cars, sanitation systems, etc. etc.
No, I’m not bitter. It’s just that people trying to stop things that could save MANY lives and revolutionise the way we look at our own health and well-being bring up the most convincing arguments. Oh well, the masses are like… 100% sheep?