“Human
pluripotent cells are introduced into non-human vertebrate animal
pre-gastrulation stage embryos”
NIH position on the use
of Human-pig hybrids and CRISPR-Cas9 in animal testing
There
is now a global shortage of Human Organs for human transplant surgeries. So
what if you could grow them from scratch instead of getting them?
Researchers
from the University of California are now attempting to grow human organs in
pigs as reported in the article “Growing Human
Organs Inside Pigs”, published June 6, 2016 By Dyllan Furness, Digitaltrends.
The
idea is very simple; inject human stem cells into the embryos of pigs which
then grow into organs tissue. Humans and pigs have similar physiologies, so
growing human organs in pigs is a logically sound idea....to scientists, at
least!
It
also sounds a lot like the potential outcome of the research into cloning
livestock that a company in China named BoyaLife may achieve, as they too can
do the same thing as predicted in my blog article
entitled “Why
BoyaLife plan to clone farm animals will lead to cloning Humans”.
So
how did the researchers from the University of California achieve this
technical marvel?
University of
California grow human organs in Pigs - CRISPR-Cas9 to make human babies in
animals
The
researchers use the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to remove a part of the
freshly fertilized pig embryo’s DNA that instructs it to grow a certain organ.
In my example, I'll use kidneys, being as they are high in demand on transplant
and have one of the longest donor waiting lists.
Then
human stem cells, which are cells that are undifferentiated i.e. not developed
into functional cells with a specific purpose, are injected into the pig
embryo. The mechanism that causes the cells to divide, upon spotting the gene
sequence for the kidney removed, would then take the human stem cell DNA for
the human kidney and use it to fill the gap in the pig embryo’s DNA.
In
so doing, a pig/human chimera develops. But instead of growing into a fully
formed pig, it hi-jacks the entire process and causes the pig embryo to grow
into a human organ inside the pig. In essence, the pig give birth to a human
kidney, not a pig, a concept in itself that's so frightening, I had difficulty
writing.
Still
the potential is huge; potentially, any human organ or tissue can be grown this
way. During their research, the scientist terminates the pregnancy in 28 days
after conception in order to study the embryonic tissue and stay within legal
limit imposed on stem cell research.
However,
this opens the possibility that a fully formed baby can be grown outside of a
woman’s womb in a pig body as I’d predicted in my blog article
entitled “Why
Dr. Kathy Niakan of Francis Crick Institute Gene Editing means Automated Human
Birth”.
Hence the reason why the NIH (National
Institute of Health) and other US Government agencies are not funding their
research; there is a genuine fear that before 2020, designed babies born in-vitro
outside of a female human womb may be possible. Pigs, being as their
physiologies are similar to ours, make the perfect host for such human/pig
chimeras babies.
With
the NIH not supporting the research of the University of California, it remains
to be seen how far their research will progress.
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