Return to the apes?

[Guest guest]

Be careful putting human brain cells in animals, panel tells scientists

 

July 15, 2005

Courtesy Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes

and World Science staff

 

Scientists are grappling with a new and troubling moral issue: whether it’s

right to put human brain cells in the brains of animals.

 

Researchers have begun to do this as part of studies into stem cell therapies.

These therapies would treat diseases by implanting people with cells capable of

maturing into various different types, including brain cells.

 

But no one knows whether such experiments might bestow more human-like qualities

on apes or other animals, raising sticky questions. Would such creatures have

human rights? Should they be created at all?

 

Read:

 

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050714_stemfrm.htm