Wednesday, December 14, 2005

 

Mice Receive Human Brain Transplant – Ethical Questions Abound


Salk Institute researchers have injected 100,000 human embryonic stem cells into each of a number of 14 day old mouse embryos, which were subsequently born with human cells making up part of their brain. The director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics said “The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries”, but he didn’t think they were there yet. The NYT report indicated that researchers were beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the “yuck factor”. It said some experts envision the possibility of a human mind trapped in an animal head.

There is also the question of the treatment of these partly human mice. How many human cells does it take to make enough of a human to where ending its life becomes a homicide? At one time the common law denied this protection to a fetus until it was “quick”, i.e. developed to the point where it moves within the womb. This obviously is not acceptable today to a significant portion of our society, which considers human life present well before 100,000 cells have accumulated. It is also apparent that, given the life span of the mouse, this human element is never going to get beyond the terrible twos. This would explain the surprising finding that the humanized mice seemed dumber than normal mice.

None of the mice would comment for this blog.

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