The program I'm describing was funded to work with stem cells derived from embryos. https://www.cirm.ca.gov/about-cirm/cirm-faq#embryos "All the embryos used in CIRM-funded research were donated from IVF clinics. They had either been rejected for implantation and were going to be destroyed, or the couple had decided to stop storing the embryos for future use. The embryos used to create embryonic stem cell lines were…
It depends on what kind of anti-abortion one is. Catholics are anti IVF. Mysogynist patriarchists are pro-IVF.
> ignoring your morals If those morals say people should die instead of getting the organ transplants they need, maybe we are better off ignoring such morals.
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I think most of us recognize a moral difference between murdering animals and murdering people. Especially those of us who eat meat.
I understand (and agree with) all these moral related questions and why so many downvotes in this topic. What is interesting, when one nation develops this tech and their people will live, say, 150 years, will these morals survive in other countries?
Like iPhone manufacturing, the West will buy the finished product before it allows the experimentation under its roof.
Presumably, the eventual goal is to grow full-sized organs inside some larger animal. Then the organ can be harvested and transplanted to a human who needs it. Per my understanding, medicine does a lot of work with rats because they're cheap and easy to work with, so any new technology of this type would be tried on rats first. By the way, my neutral explanation above doesn't mean that I approve of doing such things.…
I don't know about Japan, but in the US rats are also often used because they're basically the biggest mammal that has almost no regulation on what you do to them. Experimenting on, for example, a monkey might be closer to something human, but they're not legally classified as pests, so doing things with them requires a lot more paperwork and might not be approved. Definitely not saying it shouldn't be that way; I'm…
You're missing one of the other huge factors in why mice and rats are used for experiments: lifetime. These animals (esp. mice) have very, very short lifetimes by human standards, so you don't have to wait around for decades to see how something affects the animal over its whole lifespan. This is especially useful for aging research: it doesn't take very long for mice to become "elderly", so you can test out anti-aging experiments on them. Doing this on humans, even if it were totally legal, would be very slow because it'll take you 70+ years to grow a human in a lab to old age. Mice can only live a few years at most.
Perhaps even further than that! It may make humanity realize that, just as oil is too valuable to burn, pigs are too valuable to use for bacon instead of life saving medical treatments.
Well, if you have to slaughter the pig to remove its human pancreas for transplant anyway , the ethical thing to do is extract as much value as you can by also using its delicious, delicious meat. (Which hopefully does not contain too many migrated human cells.)
This, but honestly I think to avoid any chance of something like prions we should just avoid genetically altered pigs for edible consumption altogether and stick to naturally bred pigs.
I worry about allowing Japan, a country that has refused to fully own up to the biomedical atrocities it committed with Unit 731, to lead the way on these kinds of experiments. I would feel much more comfortable if there was international ethical oversight.
1945 was a long time ago and a very different Japan... We don't still force Germany to have caps on its army.
I don't know about Japan, but in the US rats are also often used because they're basically the biggest mammal that has almost no regulation on what you do to them. Experimenting on, for example, a monkey might be closer to something human, but they're not legally classified as pests, so doing things with them requires a lot more paperwork and might not be approved. Definitely not saying it shouldn't be that way; I'm…
You're missing one of the other huge factors in why mice and rats are used for experiments: lifetime. These animals (esp. mice) have very, very short lifetimes by human standards, so you don't have to wait around for decades to see how something affects the animal over its whole lifespan. This is especially useful for aging research: it doesn't take very long for mice to become "elderly", so you can test out anti-agi…
Yeah, and unlike something like a fruit fly, which also has a short lifespan, mice are mammals, so they are still fairly close to us in the animal kingdom, relatively speaking.
When I heard Alex Jones on Joe Rogan saying that there was human-animal experiments being made I thought he was exaggerating. In my opinion this kind of research crosses some ethical lines that shouldn't be crossed. If one considers an embryo as an independent life, what species the embryo belongs to? Wouldn't be the ones in this experiment half humans with human rights? After all, the scientist doesn't know all, and…
> Just my opinion tho, as I know nothing about genetics and biology.
Yeah America has all the moral debates about genetics and experiments with embryos. But the bottom line is other countries are going to move forward no matter what America does.
>Assuming the Japanese don't have debates on bioethics. Nice.
Don't be snarky.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.