Embryos That Are Part Monkey, Part Human Raise Ethical Concerns

npr.org

32 points·Tomte··12 comments

What a misleading snake of an article.

The study wasn't some mad scientist 'lets splice the species and see what happens' or 'we'll grow hybrids for organ farming'.

It was studying the signalling mechanisms between cells of different species. They used embryos because simply injecting foreign stem cells into a matured animal does not work.

Reminds me of how the future population is structured in the book Brave New World

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_State_in_Brave_New_World...

I seem to recall they also used alcohol to limit fetal development for lower castes, in that book.

I thought they denied oxygen to the fetuses of the lower castes for set amounts of time?

> Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

It was sheer elegance in it's simplicity.

From a detached point of view, we could say that these ethical concerns are for the people of today. What about 50 years from now? 100 years? 200?

Raising an animal for organ harvest seems somehow worse than raising one for food. Gonna have to think on that one, myself.

I don't know, I'm conflicted myself. Food can be substituted with vegetables, organs can not.

If you are your brain then embryos aren’t people.

yes and right now people are dying like flies, eventually ethic will follow

and intelligence declined when the Bible was written

Reply on news.ycombinator.com