Thought of as a mythical beast, chimeras are creatures made up of multiple species, but in fact these creatures are a reality. This deeply disturbs some people, while others embrace a science of the future. What would be going too far, though, for society? In december 2007, people were in an uproar in London over the proposed human-pig hybrid over a fear of a sort of sci-fi mutation. An abomination of a man with hooves was feared, but this isnt the case. A egg comes from a pig, and the nucleus comes from a human, but the resulting chimera has only .1 percent pig DNA. These embryos will never be implanted in a human, and are for the scientific study of disease.
Chimeras may seem shocking, but it's nothing new. Places like the U.S. and china do not have to release their projects to the public for approval first, so many creatures have been created. Shnaghai Second University combined rabbits and humans, and pigs with human blood have been created by the Mayo Clinic. Stanford researchers have created mice with a brain that is 1% human, and are aiming towards a fully human brain.
So is it considered degrading to have humans mixed with pigs and mice, or at what animals do you draw the line? What could a mouse with a human brain be capable of? One day there may be super agent mice spies, and cancer may be cured at the same time. Obviously, I'm exaggerating, but is this price acceptable for society or would it completely change all the norms that have been set? With the industrial revolution came filth and pollution, but it has shaped everything we do in our lives, so there may be monstrosities associated with these chimeras for the advancement of science and medicine.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/genetic-science/human-pig-hybrid.htm
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There is nothing that we do in science and technology as humans that doesn’t come with a price. Most people want to yell and scream at doctors when they don’t know what the answers are but how are they supposed to learn on people who had a specific problem before they died. If they are dead you’re not looking at the same thing anymore. I don’t agree with animal testing with many of our products and I hate the thought that labs are injecting them with diseases to figure them out. I do however enjoy the fact that if I am sick I have the option to go to the doctor and get medicine. If I have a lump or bump of some sort a doctor can tell me what it is. More than likely an animal was used to find out the what, how and why. It all comes down to having your cake and eating it too. They can’t go buy a litter of cats, rats, or pigs simply to use for testing, so they have created an embryo that will give them the closest match to us to learn. Will it bite us in the ass later? .... Probably. Is it cruel to that life created? …. Probably. Will we advance in science because of it? .…Probably. Is Mighty Mouse going to come back to haunt us…. We’ll be equally matched mentally; they will have a human brain!
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