Re: [asa] "Interspecies Cloning"

The nature of such combinations is definitely unclear. On the one
hand, judicious transfer of some human genes, cells, etc. to animals
has great potential for addressing health problems. I don't think
there's significant objection to the idea of putting a human gene for,
e.g., insulin into a bacterium to make it pump out lots of a medically
valuable product. The bacterium clearly doesn't get significantly
human from this process.

Making a pig grow a human organ for transplant raises a few more
questions, both in terms of the greater component of human tissue, the
fact that the pig is much closer to human and could more plausibly
accidentally get some more important human characteristics than its
liver, and probably most realistically, the risk of facilitating
disease transfer from pigs to humans.

Creating an embryo mixing human and animal cells is defintitely
problematic. There's plenty of research and medical potential, but
it's also unknown what contribution each would have to the developing
animal.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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