# Human-rabbit embryos created



## Brian G Turner (Aug 15, 2003)

Disturbing - a group of Chinese scientists have apparently created Human-rabbit embryos:

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994060



> *Human-rabbit embryos intensify stem cell debate*
> 
> "Human" embryonic stem cells have been harvested from cloned embryos created by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs, claims a soon-to-be published report by Chinese scientists.
> 
> ...


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## scifimoth (Aug 16, 2003)

And the fight rages on as science charges ahead.
Sometimes scientists do things just to prove they can...don't you think?
I often wonder if there are some things that we as the human race should not mess with. We like to play at being gods...way too much! One day nature will smack us soundly!


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## Foxbat (Aug 17, 2003)

This kind of thing disturbs me. 
It reminds me of an article I read a couple of years back. In it they talked of trying to graft a specific piece of fish DNA on to a tomato. The reason? There's a fish gene that acts like an anitfreeze. Giving it to a tomato would allow us to freeze them without them becoming all squishy when we defrost them  :
I'm no expert but I do know that it has been theorised that specific cancers are caused by a switching of genes. Surely 'reprogramming' could cause a genetic timebomb?
 After all, you can have a roadmap that points to London but, until you've been there, you don't know what it's really like. (For roadmap read 'Human Genome'....I was trying to draw up an interesting analogy and just ended up tripping over myself :-[)


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## scifimoth (Aug 19, 2003)

They have found that there seem to be some unexpected effects to some of the hybrid experiements they have been doing with food (mostly veggies) over the last few years. Things that they didn't think would, or could happen....some of it has to do with the way they insert foreign DNA into a particular veggie....by using viral fragments.
There is a lot of scientific debate about the merits and drawbacks of all this stuff.


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## Brian G Turner (Aug 19, 2003)

What astonishes myself is there's already good documented examples of gene transfer. This si the precise concern with genetic modification - that if gene transfer can occur under lab conditions then there's no reason to be complacent and suppose that it's impossible under field conditions.

As for the human-rabbit embryos - this is straight from the darker side of science _fiction_, and something I'm sure we were told ould never happen because of something called "ethics".

However, to be fair, there _is_ a lot of consternation in the scientific community as well - but the trouble is, the scientific community, much as it would like to think itself an independent and rational discipline - is simply a tool for the engine of commerce. And our current brand of capitalism is rarely concerned with ethics.


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## nemesis (Aug 21, 2003)

It is science for science sake. It is bad science as well. It is important that we do not become desensitised to the issue.


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