Sick Frankenstein Shit

I have to be honest, human embryo research disturbs me. I'm not a religious nut, it just seems wrong to tinker with human lives in this way. It also has that cold, detached, mechanical eugenics feel to it.

Of course, I understand the potential benefits. I am not fully against research involving genes. I just feel funny about breeding humans specifically for research. I'm not against the use of stem cells in research, it's just about how they get them.

I'm sure I'd feel differently if a member of my family had Parkinson's. I'd feel differently about capital punishment if a member of my family had been murdered. Emotional responses don't make things right any more than they make things wrong. We all have opinions and, well, that's mine.

If human embryo research disturbs me, then THIS CREEPY FUCKING SHIT freaks me out.

In a move so arrogant, twisted and self-deifying that it could only have come out of the medical profession, British scientists are seeking legal sanction to grow human/animal crossbreed embryos.

Yes - you read it correctly. Doctors want to make half human/ half animal mutant embryos and the British government are backing them. Sick fuckers. Well intentioned sick fuckers, but still...

Of course, crossbreed, half human embryos are just step one. If this bill is passed, how long before scientists want their "creations" go to term and become viable life forms?

ew.....Seth Brundle is quivering in his grave(s)

Dr Mephisto's probably chuffed though.

Not Frankenstein at all, that involved re-animating dead human flesh, not creating new types of life.

Analogy=Fail

Typical reactionary attitude, all fear mongering with no regards to the facts at hand.

Hysteria < Facts

So, there's no news here, no facts and plenty of histrionics.

Sounds like attention whoring to me.

Hope you feel more important now.

PS: Glad to know your moral compass spins if a family member is involved.

I think he meant it was Frankensteiny in the sense that they're creating organisms from pieces of others.

The first thing that really leaps out at me is . . .

Is the shortage due to laws restricting the use of human eggs for research ?

If not, why is there such a shortage?

If so, I am fairly astounded that they would find it's going to be easier to pass a bill allowing them to substitute animal eggs rather than find a way to loosen the restrictions on human egg research.

snip

Wow - Shiny - you've surpassed yourself. Much more substance here than your normal, boring simplistic put-downs.

Point 1.
The Frankenstein analogy referred to scientists "playing God". I was not referring to any similarity between the sciences.You can't be a total moron, so I can't believe you didn't understand this. Which makes me wonder why you are wasting time bring it up.

Point 2.
I don't have to be acquainted with all the finer points of biotechnology to find the idea of a human/animal embryos deeply, deeply disturbing.

Point 3.
There IS NEWS HERE. This relates to the article I linked to. The British government is currently using political bullying to force MPs to pass a law sanctioning this creepy shit.

Point 4.
Everyone's moral compass can spin if a family member is involved. Nobody is that detached.

Maybe you'd be best to stick to your simple put-downs. You are out of your depth with actual arguments.

Hook, line and sinker.


When you have something to say other than boring, simplistic trolling, I will respond in kind. You normally see "simplistic put-downs" from me because that it what you deserve, I treat kind with kind. When you have something substantive to say, that is actually intended as a genuine topic for debate, instead of the normal fear-mongering , ego-stroking, baiting, horseshit that spews from your keyboard, I will respond appropriately. Until then, you get treated with the scorn and utter contempt that you have sewn for yourself. Don't like it? Please feel free to log off and never return, so the rest of us can return to actually discussing the issues, instead of having to worry about stepping in the ideological piles of dog shit you keep leaving around.

I don't know if there are laws restricting the use of human eggs.

But notwithstanding that I would guess the shortage is due to the fact that women usually produce a single mature egg per month. I suspect finding enough donors is not that easy.

Why not use an animal egg if the results are similar enough to serve the scientific purpose of creating stem cells for research?

Actually, they can harvest many eggs from one human donor at one time, not just one a month. A woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever have already on-board. There are, however, certain health, moral, legal, ethical, cultural, religious, etc., reasons why human egg donation is not a simple process. Animal eggs are unlimited in supply. This nonsense of creating a "hybrid" is just that, nonsense. We are not talking about making a race of centaurs here. We're talking about using the egg with NO ANIMAL DNA as a host for human DNA. So, even if you count the membrane of the original animal egg, ny the time this multiplies out during development, you still only have 1 animal egg membrane among billions and billions (add Carl Sagan macro here) of %100 human cells. If that's a hybrid, then there are a shit ton of heart patients with animal parts in them that are hybrids. Again, as with the debate between evolution and creationism, we have pitted logic, fact and scientific method against histrionics, misinformation, fear mongering, and fairy tales.

Seth Brundle was in teleportation research, btw.

Thank you for clarifying.

Yay for science!

meh!

not worth it

Ok I have a question, do these human animal hybrids have rights as people? I mean lets say they are taken to term and have the intelligence of a human being but are in some sort of bastardized human animal bodies is it right to experiment on them?

I'm just glad someone got the reference

The difference is that most people apply the way they would feel if a situation were directly affecting their loved ones to the world at large. It's called empathy.

The proposal at the moment is that scientists can make embryos by combining human and animal genes. The half-human would be destroyed before it could grow and be born.

I don't think we should even be making half human / half animal embryos, but how long would it be before scientists started lobbying to grow embryos into viable life forms?

Imagine this:

A hideous creature, not quite human, stalks the dark back alleyways of Los Angeles. So distorted and horrific it daren't show its face in civilised company and has to eek out a survival on the detritus of society.

And that's only Fear the Reaper. Imagine if scientists managed to grow one of these embryos to term.

Well as scientific research goes the next logical step would be to bring one to term.

I think a degree of emotional detachment gives you the vital benefit of objectivity.

I am against the death penalty. I wouldn't be if a member of my family was murdered. That doesn't mean the death penalty is right, it just means I'm fucked up by the death of a family member.

That's my fear.

Growing "not quite humans" for organs etc.

Ideally, you'd put yourself in the position of someone who'd been wrongfully accused as well, hopefully coming to the conclusion that appeasing the families of victims isn't worth sacrificing any amount of innocent lives.

You may still be right, though, even if I don't agree that you need emotional detachment to understand that the death penalty is wrong.

The appropriate mad scientist reference is of course Dr. Moreau.

A summary of the bill the British Government want to force through can be found here

it states:

"I think it's gross" is not my rationale. I worry about where this is heading. I worry about the morality of tinkering with life like this. I use the word "morality" because ethics hardly covers this.

Perhaps morality is trumped by cold, hard necessity, I don't think so. Morality also guides my opinions on vivisection.

I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to one day reach a point where, having found a way to keep people safe in every possible way and delay natural death for a ludicrous number of years, death becomes a necessity, and later a mandate.

But of course, I doubt that'll happen in the near future, if ever.

Define few or no.

I am just wondering what you deem acceptable and what is not acceptable?