Nigerian Senator and Wife Charged in Plot to Harvest a Child's Organs in U.K.

SICK

He and his wife will stand trial for conspiracy to arrange the travel of a child into Britain “with a view to exploitation, namely organ harvesting,” authorities said.


Dan Ladden-Hall


Darren Baker/Getty

British authorities say they have rescued a child who was targeted in a disturbing international organ-harvesting plot.

A top Nigerian senator and his wife have been charged with conspiracy over a plan to bring the child to the U.K. in order to harvest their organs, London’s Metropolitan Police announced Thursday. No details were immediately available on the age and gender of the child.

People's Democratic Party politician Ike Ekweremadu, 60, and wife Beatrice Nwanneka Ekweremadu, 55, will stand trial for conspiracy to arrange or facilitate travel of another person “with a view to exploitation, namely organ harvesting,” police said in a statement. Both defendants are set to appear in court in west London on Thursday.

Ekweremadu—who has been a senator since 2003 and served three terms as Nigeria's deputy speaker of the senate from 2007 to 2019—was a lawyer before entering politics. Both he and his wife are high-profile figures in their African homeland.

A spokesperson for Ekweremadu confirmed his arrest to the BBC.

The horrific allegations come after an investigation by the Specialist Crime team at Scotland Yard, which deals with serious offenses in the English capital. Cops launched their inquiry last month, leading to the duo’s arrest after police were alerted to possible crimes being committed under modern slavery legislation.

The child, who has not been identified, has been “safeguarded,” the Met said, adding that the force was “working closely with partners on continued support.” British court rules mean the police are unable to divulge any further details while criminal proceedings are underway.

Forced organ harvesting—in which organs are surgically removed from a victim against their will—has been addressed by recent legislation in the U.K. A law passed in April partly aims to disrupt the black market organ trade by making it illegal for Brits to travel overseas to purchase an organ, a practice known as “organ tourism.” Although the sale and trafficking of organs in the U.K. was already outlawed, the new rules came amid worrying reports of a booming organ trade around the world in recent years.

In London’s Chinatown, a years-long protest has been staged against alleged forced organ harvesting from political prisoners in China. The practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners is legal in China, but an article published in the American Journal of Transplantation in April claimed to have found 71 cases in which prisoners were operated on while they were still alive.

And sadly, because human organs are a valuable commodity, some people even consider voluntarily selling their own organs when conditions are desperate enough. Just this week, a hospital in Kenya had to issue a public declaration telling people to stop asking staff how much they could get for their kidneys. And in Afghanistan—where a devastating combination of widespread famine and international sanctions have pushed millions of people to the edge of starvation—dreadful reports emerged in early 2022 that people were selling kidneys for as little as $1,500 to feed their families.

SEE

BODY SNATCHERS

 LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Gothic Capitalism Redux 

Why the case against abortion is weak, ethically speaking
Nathan Nobis SALON 4/11/2021

© Provided by Salon Pro-life activists
Pro-life activists demonstrate in front of the the US Supreme Court during the 47th annual March for Life on January 24, 2020 in Washington, DC. OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images CATHOLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS BUSSED TO DEMO

Abortion rights are under attack. But ethics education can help — and defenders of abortion rights should recognize this, before it's too late.

In recent years, over 250 abortion-restrictive laws have been proposed across 45 states. Arkansas and South Carolina are the most recent states to pass laws to ban abortion after 6 weeks into pregnancy, when a "heartbeat" can be detected in the fetus and before many women even know they are pregnant.

The Supreme Court now has a majority of justices who identify as "pro-life," and will surely be more receptive to these attacks on abortion rights than previous courts have been. If the issue comes before them, it is unclear how they might rule: they have already restricted a medication used to induce abortions and might welcome further restrictions.

While legal attacks demand immediate legal responses, these responses aren't a long-term, comprehensive strategy to protect legal rights and access to abortion.

Representatives of pro-choice organizations sometimes claim they are "doing all they can" to protect abortion rights, but this is not true: Mary Ziegler recently reported in The Atlantic that, since the 1990s, pro-choice advocates have deliberately avoided engaging moral or ethical questions about abortion; they have focused solely on the legal freedom to choose abortion.

Meanwhile, over that same time period and up to the present, pro-life advocates have seen engaging the ethics of abortion as essential to their cause and have invested heavily into training sessions, educational institutes, and materials to help move their message. Surely they view this "ethics education" as a wise and effective investment, since it has helped bring abortion rights to the legally precarious place they are now.

Given the stakes here, it's time for pro-choice advocates and organizations to rethink the wisdom of avoiding talk of ethics.

Think about what motivates people who want to make abortion illegal. Their primary motivations are, from their perspective, ethical or moral. If asked why abortion should be illegal, they will often reply with an argument like this:

Fetuses are innocent human beings with the right to life, and—since it's always wrong to kill innocent human beings—abortion is murder and should be illegal, with few exceptions.

Advocates of this type of argument include the Catholic Church, evangelical Christians, and organizations like the National Right to Life and Americans United for Life. Pro-life "ethics education" involves training people to advocate for this type of argument.

To defend abortion rights requires refuting such arguments. But the most common pro-choice responses to the pro-life argument don't do this. Observing that making abortion illegal won't reduce abortions, and claiming that abortion opponents have bad motives or are hypocritical, or that opposition to abortion is inherently religious, that abortion is "normal," and offering slogans, such as that abortion is "not up for debate," simply do not engage the core issue: these types of responses do not explain why abortion is not murder or show what's wrong with the argument against abortion.

Even more sophisticated bodily autonomy defenses of abortion—that women's rights to choose what happens to and with their bodies and lives justify abortion—are often at least presented in ways that do not challenge the assumption that abortion is murder, along the lines of, "Say whatever you want about the ethics of abortion: we've got the legal right to it."

But abortion generally is not murder and the ethical arguments given to try to establish this are demonstrably weak. The more people who know and understand why this so and are able to effectively communicate this knowledge, the better, since that would do some good towards helping undercut the primary motivation for making abortion illegal.

⸻

To better recognize the flaws in the core ethical argument against abortion, it is useful to consider two far less controversial medical procedures that also end the lives of human beings. These cases provide insights into some of the core content of pro-choice ethics education.

First, in every U.S. state and most countries, if a person elects to be an organ donor, their organs can be removed for transplant when that person suffers complete brain death—even if their body is still alive. Organ harvesting involves cutting living human beings open and their organs being removed one-by-one until, at last, the heart is detached and the human being dies, having been directly killed by the procedure.

But almost no one believes that such organ donation procedures are immoral. Pro-life organizations have not mobilized against them or even signaled disapproval. And hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to be organ donors with full knowledge that their bodies might be killed in this way if their brains permanently cease functioning.

What this shows is that most people recognize that it's not always wrong to kill human beings. This is true even when those human beings are considered "innocent," as human beings used for organ donation are often categorized. This is a first step in undercutting the pro-life argument.

A second relevant set of cases involves anencephalic infants, or babies born with severely undeveloped brains. These babies usually do not live long, and the widely accepted medical practice is to let these infants die, providing palliative care only, even though they could be kept alive by a machine. This ends their lives, but it is not wrong.

The ethical insight gained from these two common medical practices is that not all human beings have a right to life that trumps all other considerations: it is not always wrong to end the lives of even innocent human beings, if they lack what would make ending their lives wrong.

And these cases share a core feature with the vast majority of U.S. abortions, 88 percent of which take place during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy: the human beings in question do not have brains capable of supporting consciousness, awareness, or feelings. Since these common medical practices concerning organ donation and anencephaly are morally permissible, so are most abortions.

* * *

Abortion opponents will respond that this conclusion about abortion does not follow, given differences among the cases.

Pro-life intellectuals argue that organ donors are not really "human beings." But surely they are human beings—they are living human organisms, with heartbeats. The pro-life premise that it's always wrong to kill human beings implies that organ donation practices are wrong, so this is a good reason to reject the assumption and its application to abortion.

About anencephalic infants, pro-life advocates recognize these babies as human beings and argue that it would be wrong to harvest their organs to use for other children. But either both brain-dead humans and brain-less infants are human beings or neither are, and organ donation is either acceptable from both or neither: the difference in age is immaterial.

Some would respond that organ donation and anencephalic newborns cases involve human beings who, tragically, have lost even the potential for valuable futures. Yet fetuses, they argue, have lives, or potential lives, before them, and so have rights to those lives. And they are "innocent" too.

But calling fetuses "innocent" assumes that they are persons: "innocence" implies the potential for guilt, and that's only true of persons. Nobody would refer to human eggs or tissue as "innocent," because nobody thinks these things are persons. And for someone to have a potential future seems to require that "someone" be a person: for any future to be someone's future, there must be a person whose future that belongs to. So are fetuses persons?

"Personhood" is a controversial concept, but the organ donation and anencephaly cases can help us understand it. First, we should all agree that it's usually wrong to end the lives of persons: persons have the right to life. But since organ donation practices and how anencephalic newborns are treated is not wrong, we can conclude that these human beings are not persons: if they were persons, ending their lives would be wrong. And these humans are not persons because, again, they lack brains capable of supporting any type of consciousness: they were persons in cases of organ donation and cannot be persons in cases of anencephaly. And this suggests that beginning fetuses are not persons either, since they too lack consciousness-enabling brains. So the pro-life claim that all embryos and fetuses are persons is not true.

So, in sum, the "abortion is murder" charge doesn't stick: it's not always wrong to kill human beings; at least early-term fetuses are not persons with the right to life; and "innocence" is a concept that just doesn't apply to fetuses. Ethical arguments—and ethics education—can support the pro-choice side after all, and the more people making these types of critiques, in different ways and for different audiences, the better.

* * *

Why, though, should we think that abortion is generally morally acceptable? Why think attempts to ban abortion are unjust attempts to criminalize morally acceptable behavior? The simple failure to show that abortion is wrong might be enough for that, but we can offer positive arguments as well.

The ethical framework most medical ethicists use to determine whether a human being has moral rights, such as the right to life, involves the question of whether the individual has "interests." Interests are what make someone's life go well or poorly for them: respecting and promoting someone's interests typically promotes their well-being; ignoring or denigrating their interests typically harms them. Interests are the basis for concerns about "equality," which are about equal consideration of interests.

Rights protect interests, and interests are not possible without a sufficiently developed brain. What determines how an individual should be treated is not the simple fact of whether they are biologically human organisms; rather, it's factors that depend on their having a brain that allows for any form of consciousness: minds matter, not heartbeats or human DNA. The basis of human rights is not human biology, as statements of human rights might misleadingly suggest, but having interests, and most fetuses—at the stages of pregnancy when most are aborted—do not have interests, given their undeveloped brains and nervous systems.

Pregnant women, of course, have interests and the resulting rights to life, liberty, and control of their bodies. Fetuses would have the right to women's bodies, labor, and time only if they are explicitly granted that right, and, of course, women who seek abortions have not given the fetus that right. While women's rights to autonomy may be sufficient to justify abortion, that argument is surely easier to make if fetuses are not persons, do not have basic moral rights, and so abortion is not murder.

To be sure, fetuses in the third trimester (after 27 weeks) likely have interests, as research on fetal pain suggests. And even most pro-choice ethicists agree that third-trimester abortions raise pressing moral concerns, although these concerns are complicated when such abortions are sought due to newly discovered fatal anomalies or threats to the health of the prospective mother. But pro-life advocacy is not focused on the unique ethical issues concerning later abortions, which account for less than 1 percent of all abortions; their goal is prohibiting nearly all abortions, the overwhelming majority of which affect fetuses without interests.

* * *

So, is abortion murder? Does it violate human rights? Not unless other widely-accepted medical procedures that end human life are also wrong. But they aren't, and neither is abortion. Ethics education—of many types, at many levels, for many different audiences—helps people better understand why this is so.

Enabling more people to more productively engage the many ethical arguments about abortion won't, by itself, solve any social or political problems: no single strategy would. But ethics education is an essential part of any successful comprehensive strategy to ensure abortion rights and access, and so pro-choice advocates should engage in it. More generally, our political culture needs genuinely fair and balanced, honest and respectful engagement of arguments and truth-seeking: more people practicing this with the complex topic of abortion would help set a better intellectual and moral tone that would enable us all to better engage the many other polarizing issues that confront our society.

If the legal right to abortion is lost, however, pro-choice advocates will be forced to engage with the study of ethics in trying to rebuild their case for abortion rights. So they might as well start that now, while they still have the law on their side. That's not just smart strategy: ethics demands it.

ORGAN TRAFFICKING

CAPITALISM; THE MODERN BODY SNATCHER

CAPITALISM AND REPRODUCTION
Mariarosa Dalla Costa

The most recent and monstrous twist to this campaign of extinction comes from the extreme example of resistance offered by those who sell parts of their body, useless container for a labour-power that is no longer saleable. (In Italy, where the sale of organs is banned, press and TV reports in 1993-94 mentioned instances in which people said explicitly that they were willing to break the ban in exchange for money or a job.) For those impoverished and expropriated by capitalist expansion in the Third World, however, this is already a common way for obtaining money. Press reports mention criminal organisations which traffic in organs and supply perfectly legal terminals such as clinics. This trade flourishes thanks to kidnapping, often of women and children, and false adoption. An enquiry was recently opened at the European Parliament on the issue (La Repubblica, September 16 1993), and various women's networks are trying to throw light on and block these crimes. But this is where capitalist development, founded on the negation of the individual's value, celebrates its triumph; the individual owner of redundant or, in any case, superfluous labour-power is literally cut to pieces in order to re-build the bodies of those who can pay for the right to live to the criminal or non-criminal sectors of capital which profit from it.

Medical Cadaver Scandal at UCLA

California university proposes better tracking of donated bodies

By MICHELLE LOCKE

Associated Press

Saturday, February 5, 2005 - Page A14

BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Shaken by scandals involving the black-market sale of body parts, University of California officials are considering inserting supermarket-style bar codes or radio frequency devices in cadavers to keep track of them.

Every year, thousands of bodies are donated to U.S. tissue banks and medical schools. Skin, bone and other tissue are often used in transplants. New medical treatments and safety equipment such as bicycle helmets are tested on various body parts. And cadavers are used to teach medical students surgical skills and anatomy.

But there is also a lucrative underground trade in corpses and body parts, despite federal laws against the sale of organs and tissue.

"There's more regulations that cover a shipment of oranges coming into California than there is [for] a shipment of human knees that are going from a body-parts broker in one state to Las Vegas," said Dr. Todd Olson, director of anatomical donations at Albert Einstein Medical School of New York.

At UCLA, the willed-body program was suspended by court order last spring after the director and another person were arrested in an investigation into the selling of body parts for profit. The case is still under investigation and no charges have been filed.

In 1996, donors' families sued the university, charging that the program had illegally disposed of thousands of bodies by cremating them along with dead lab animals and fetuses and dumping the ashes in the trash.

In 1999, the director of the UCLA Irvine program was fired after being accused of selling spines to a Phoenix hospital. The university was also unable to account for hundreds of willed bodies. The director denied any wrongdoing and was never prosecuted.

After the latest scandal, some people who had agreed to leave their bodies to science withdrew their offers.

In response, UCLA has proposed a series of changes, some of which are already in place. They include a better records system, electronic locks and surveillance cameras.

Officials are also considering putting bar codes or radio frequency devices in cadavers that could be read by someone walking past the body with a handheld device. Radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags already are used by cars passing through automated toll plazas.

The university's Board of Regents is expected to review the plan this spring. Also, UCLA officials will decide in March whether to ask a judge overseeing lawsuits filed by donors' relatives for permission to reopen UCLA's 55-year-old willed-body program, which was getting about 175 donated bodies a year before it was suspended.

Mike Arias, a lawyer for family members who have sued UCLA, greeted the proposed measures with "somewhat guarded optimism."

Still, Mr. Arias said he hopes the changes succeed and the UCLA program resumes because it "serves too big of a public service [to be scrapped]."

THE PROBLEM OF ORGAN TRAFFICKING

By Eugen Tomiuc

The Albanian and Italian press have published articles from time to time regarding trafficking in teenage Albanian boys to Italy and beyond for use as prostitutes or possibly for the sale of their organs. Typically, the boys and their families appear to be tricked by a trusted person who offers to take the youths to Italy or elsewhere in the EU with the promise of a good education or reunion with relatives already working abroad.

The Council of Europe is calling for a common European strategy in fighting against trafficking in human organs. Its report on the issue, presented on 25 June in the Council's Parliamentary Assembly, says kidney trafficking has become a hugely profitable business for organized crime. People in impoverished Eastern European countries such as Moldova and Ukraine are the most common victims of the illicit trade, which the council calls an attack against human dignity. The report says combating poverty in Eastern Europe is the best way to curb organ trafficking, and urges improved cooperation between rich Western countries and their Eastern neighbors.

International group reiterates stance against human organ trafficking

Some years ago the US Congress passed the National Transplantation Act, which allows for penalties of up to $50 000 (£32 000; €51 000) in fines or five years in prison, or both, for the purchase of human organs. Many other countries and the World Health Organization have banned or condemned the sale of organs.

Dr Abdallah Daar of the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, a member of the society’s ethics committee, said, "No one seems to know the extent of indirect and unpublicised forms of compensation, which undoubtedly also take place within family donations." He added that payment for kidneys from living, unrelated donors not only occurred on the Indian subcontinent and in the Middle East but "was becoming quite common, even in the United States."

Among the controversial developments discussed at the meeting were possible payments to living donors for time off work, lost income, pain, and suffering and a move by prisoners to become donors in a bid to reduce their sentences.

"It’s not all black and white," Dr Daar said, noting an opinion piece which came down in favour of a less dogmatic approach in The Lancet by the Israeli doctor Michael Friedlaender (2002;359:971-3), some of whose patients had received kidneys from overseas donors who were paid.

Return of The Body Snatchers

A vast majority among the medical fraternity frowns
upon harvesting organs, but it is in demand and
the supply is fuelled by an unending flood of green bucks.

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Turkey, it was discovered that a fair number of cadavers had been harvested of their kidneys, liver and heart. Apparently, out of the deluge of medical teams that poured into Turkey to help, many were commercial organ trading mafia. When asked to recollect, many local Turkish doctors reported that they never saw these teams actually help anyone. It was more like they were waiting for some-thing. They dressed as medical staff and had very sophisticated equipment which included organ fridge boxes.

The disparity between the poor and the mega-rich is a gap so wide, that to perpetuate their own life even at the cost of another is now quite possible if one has the means. Wealthy patients with terminal illnesses would part with most of their wealth if they could find the fountain of life, but what it translates into in real terms is that someone has to give up an organ for another to get one. It is in this twilight zone that the question of ethical practices raises its ugly head. Most donors of organs are from the Third World - faceless, nameless people who have had their organs harvested for the lure of filthy lucre. Tragic but true.

India Kidney Trade

For years, India has been known as a "warehouse for kidneys" or a "great organ bazaar" and has become one of the largest centers for kidney transplants in the world, offering low costs and almost immediate availability. In a country where one person out of every three lives in poverty, a huge transplant industry arose after drugs were developed in the 1970's to control the body's rejection of foreign objects. Renal transplants became common in India about thirteen years ago when the anti-rejection drug cyclosporine became available locally. The use of powerful immuno-suppressant drugs and new surgical techniques has indirectly boosted the kidney transplant activities. The dramatic success rates of operations, India's lack of medical regulations and an atmosphere of "loose medical ethics" has also fueled the kidney transplant growth. The result has been that "supply and demand created a marriage of unequals , wedding wealthy but desperate people dependent on dialysis machines to those in India grounded down by the hopelessness of poverty"(Max). The pace of demand for kidneys hasn't kept up with the demand. Consequently, the poor and destitute, victims of poverty, have either willingly sold their kidneys to pay for a daughter's dowry, build a small house or to feed their families or have been duped or conned into giving up their kidneys unknowingly or for very little sums of money. Ironically, medical technology meant to advance and save human lives has been abused to such lengths, that in some cases, it has resulted in the death of innocent individuals.

ECONOMIC DATA

The Voluntary Health Association of India estimates that each year more than 2,000 people sell their organs for money (compared with 500 in 1985 and barely 50 in 1983 (Chandra, p.53). Those receiving a kidney typically pay from $6,000 to $10,000(approximately $1,980-$3,300 U.S. dollars) for the kidney and the transplant operation - of that, the donor gets about $1,000 (U.S. $330). The U.N. Human Rights Commission said in a 1993 report that more kidneys were sold in India than anywhere else to buyers from developed countries (Max). Since the introduction of cyclosporine, at least $7.8 million has changed hands in connection with the estimated 4,000 kidney transplants performed in Bombay (Los Angeles Times, "Kidney..."). At least one lakh(100,000) Indians suffer from renal failure and an average of 80 new cases per million population crop up every year (Friese and Rai, p.89). Prices for kidneys range from Rs.30,000 to Rs. 70,000 (U.S. $9,900-$23,000) with a Rs. 20,000 (about $6,600 U.S.dollars) cut for brokers and middlemen.

Half of kidney transplants are illegal

By Ran Reznick

Haaretz: Fri . Dec 05 2003

About half of all kidney transplants performed on Israelis in recent years were illegal, while most transplant patients received funding from their health maintenance organizations, the Defense Ministry and insurance companies.

According to the Health Ministry and hospital records, about half of all Israelis who had kidney transplants in recent years obtained the organ in illegal trade from donors in Israel, Turkey, South America and eastern Europe.

Most Israelis had the transplants performed in South Africa. Some 450 patients are waiting for kidney transplants in Israel, but only 160 such operations are performed annually, with the majority or organs coming from deceased donors.

The average waiting time for an adult kidney transplant is three to four years, while for children it is seven months.

Some 300 Israelis are estimated to have bought kidneys abroad in illegal organ trade in the last four years. Senior doctors said that in some cases, organ traders and mediators negotiated directly with Israeli insurance companies for the illegal payments. Senior doctors and legal experts said Israel is the only western state whose health institutions finance organ trade.

Most organ transplant cases involve senior Israeli doctors from large hospitals, doctors said. Some of the doctors conduct preparatory examinations for kidney patients and donors in Israel, while some doctors accompany the patients and perform the illegal transplants abroad.

Doctors said there is no supervision of the kidney donors, and in some cases, the sold kidneys are transplanted abroad even though they are unsuitable or contain contagious diseases. The transplants are performed in public and private hospitals overseas, and sometimes even in private homes that lack adequate equipment or means for emergency medical treatment.

The data on kidney transplants was presented by doctors at a conference held last week by the Israeli branch of the American College of Surgery that dealt with the paying of transplant organs.

Doctors at the conference said that illegal organ trade is conducted in many countries, but Israel is the only western state whose medical establishment and Health Ministry do not condemn the doctors involved or take legal steps against them. In most states, the purchase of organs is illegal and morally deplored by the medical establishment, and those involved risk losing their license.

Prof. Amram Ayalon, the director of the transplants and surgery ward at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, said that unions of transplant doctors in Europe, where human organ trade is categorically prohibited, have called for a boycott of Israeli doctors.

One of the main reasons for the shortage of transplant organs in Israel is not the refusal of families to donate dead relatives' organs, but the ongoing failure of medical teams in public hospitals.

Prof. Pierre Singer, director of Beilinson's intensive care ward, presented data on the lack of awareness among medical teams, including surgeons, neurologists and intensive care doctors, regarding organ donation procedures and brain death determination.

VATICAN DENOUNCES 'HEALTH-FIEND MADNESS'
REJECTING SOCIETY'S COSTLY QUEST FOR CURES,
ROME SAYS POPE'S SUFFERING IS TO BE ADMIRED

By Michael Valpy
Friday, February 18, 2005 - Globe and Mail


The Vatican accused affluent societies yesterday of gobbling up too much of the world's health-care resources with their fetish for stay-young-forever medical cures, urging them to look to Pope John Paul II as a model for the inevitability of old age and illness whose stoic suffering should be imitated.

Vatican psychiatrist Manfred Lutz hailed the 85-year-old Pope as "the living alternative to the prevailing health-fiend madness."

Referring to the Pope's advanced Parkinson's disease and other illnesses, Dr. Lutz said: "Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death, one can . . . perceive the truth of life in a clearer way."

It was rather an abrupt turnabout for the Vatican, which has vigorously obscured -- even lied about -- the Pope's state of health in the past.

But in advance of a conference on quality of life and the ethics of health, sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Life, officials adjusted the papal image to fit their argument: that while the world's poor do without basic public-health measures, rich countries luxuriate in utopian expectations of medical cures for all needs and desires.

"The medicine of desires, egged on by the health-care market, increases the request for pharmaceutical and medical-surgical services [and] soaks up public resources beyond all reasonableness," academy theologian Rev. Maurizio Faggioni said.

"Medicine has become impossible to manage, because it can't fulfill the desires" of consumers for perfect health, added Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, a bioethicist who heads the academy, a Vatican advisory body.

The Roman Catholic Church's decision to showcase the Pope as a poster model for the realities of suffering and old age met with significant, although not absolute, approval from academic experts on global population health. They applauded the reality image, but worried about how far it might be taken, and in what direction.

"I mean, good for the Pope," said Dr. Harvey Skinner, head of University of Toronto's Department of Public Health Sciences and an adviser to the World Health Organization.

"I'm now 56, in what I consider good health [and] I'm still very active but, you know, I live with some aches and pains that weren't there when I was younger. So it's relative to your life stage.

"But my concern is that a poor mother on welfare in Toronto [could be told] 'Just tough it out' -- a version of blaming the victim, that's what it sounds like to me. Is that the solution? If we can stiffen up . . . [and be like] the Pope, stoically bearing the burden?" he said.

"It really takes away from the fundamental question of prevention versus cure, and how best we can use the resources that we have in the health-care area."

McGill University's Jennifer Fosket, a specialist in the sociology of health and illness, said: "There's a definite value in recognizing [old age, illness and suffering] as part of human life and not trying only to erase them. At the same time, there certainly is value in trying to improve people's lives as they age."

Nevertheless, both scholars said the Vatican is raising good questions.

Dr. Fosket spoke of a "fundamental conundrum" with trying to determine the definition of health and human well-being.

"The pharmaceutical industries and other large interests that take an interest in health and health care have grabbed a lot of these broader definitions and really commodified them so that we have pharmaceuticals for all sorts of lifestyle problems," she said, "and people increasingly seem to feel they ought to have access to those -- that that's part of what it means to be a healthy person today."

Dr. Skinner said medical and health-care procedures are being demanded in high-income countries that have a limited impact on population health status but take away resources that could be spent on improving the health of the whole community and on ending social disparities.

In Canada, he said, 95 per cent of the $130-billion spent annually on health care goes toward medical care. Less than 5 per cent is spent on prevention.

"Is that the right balance? We don't need more genomics . . . [when] 50 per cent of premature mortality in North America [results from] smoking, inactivity, poor nutrition, body weight and excessive drinking and, in the U.S., you throw in firearms," he said.

"There's no absolute criterion on health and quality of life. It's socially constructed. So it's useful to have these debates. We expect more from medical care than it can deliver and less from prevention. We're not realistic. We can't sustain our medical-care system. We're just spending a lot of money in ways that are not very efficient."

He said money is being spent on medical technologies that merely create a desire for additional tests and procedures, while one of the greatest determinants of population health -- education -- is being starved.

And the newly presented image of the Pope?

"We all age," Dr. Skinner said. "So what's normal aging -- the body changes that happen, some reduction in function, all in a sense normal -- and when does it become abnormal, for which we have available some sort of effective and efficient interventions? Those are public policy debates."

Also See:

Human Organ Trafficking Resources.

Bonded Labor/Debt Bondage || Exploitation of Immigrants by Traffickers/Employers

Human Trafficking

Analysis: Organ trafficking in E. Europe

BRAZIL: Poor Sell Organs to Trans-Atlantic Trafficking Ring

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. - book review

Bitter harvest: the organ-snatching urban legends - Urban Legends

Come For the Satanic Eclipse, Stay For the Commie Earthquake, Illegal Invaders and Bootlegged Baby Parts


A Swiss student in faux spacesuit flies a paper rocket during a Mission to Mars project
(Photo by STEFAN WERMUTH/AFP via Getty Images)

ABBY ZIMET
Apr 09, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Lordy. Our apocalyptic circus of bigots, morons, loudmouths and clowns has stayed in town too long. To wit: a ceaseless GOP House "shit show," racists freaking out at too-tanned NCAA players "invading," pastors cancelling autism awareness as "demonic," Klan Mom decrying black market harvesting of baby organs - thanks Dr. Fauci! - and now, from God or the Gazpacho police, an earthquake and end-of-the-world eclipse telling us to "repent." First, maybe repent for an electoral college that gave us this lunacy.

The seedy grandstand for the mayhem is the (barely) GOP-controlled House, which for a while has been "imploding in plain sight." After skipping town for Easter, they left behind yet more flops earning yet more declarations of "Republicans in disarray." Amidst a "Great Resignation" that's seen the highest number of lawmakers quitting in 40 years, two more Reps - Gallagher and Buck - are bowing out, leaving the GOP a paltry one-seat majority. The showboats of what Raskin calls the "chaos-and- cannibalism caucus" still don't like their Speaker for (five months late) keeping the government open with a $1.2 trillion spending bill, Comer's Biden impeachment effort has crashed and burned like his other "investigations," the sole accomplishments of the shortest and least productive House session since the Great Depression are re-naming some Veterans Affairs clinics and authorizing a coin to mark the Marine Corps' 250th anniversary, and even George Santos says he's (inexplicably) running again as an Independent 'cause the GOP is too "embarrassing."

For once, he has a point. Self-righteous blowhards venting ignorance and hate, they seem to do nothing but voice imaginary grievances when grownups do things they don't like. When the effort to remove Fani Willis from Trump's election interference case failed, they shrieked, "It's all rigged!" and "There is no justice in America today." When Kamala Harris touted an effort to keep guns away from dangerous people, yahoos who send out Christmas cards of their kids cradling AR-15's bayed, "What the hell is this evil?" When a Transgender Day of Visibility coincidentally fell on Easter, they ranted it was part of a "years-long assault on the Christian faith" and the Catholic Biden - to Trump, one of "MANY PEOPLE THAT I COMPLETELY & TOTALLY DESPISE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA," would now "commandeer" Christmas with a Trans-Siberian Orchestra playing and say what? When a Florida school planned Autism Awareness Week, the pastor cancelled it as "demonic" (like "Santa Clause") because "anything that exalts itself above the name of Christ should be brought down."

And when racist moron and Michigan state rep Matt Maddock - who boasts he's America's "Most Conservative" pol, tried to imprison "war criminal" Gretchen Whitmer for requiring masks during COVID, got kicked out of the House GOP Caucus as too conspiracy-y even for them, posts things like "the left hates farmers," "government controls your air conditioning," "bail reform kills people," "communists are lonely, bitter, angry cowards with sad kids," and whose wife is under indictment as one of Michigan's fake electors - saw three buses at Detroit Airport and some scary dark guys alight, squawked they were "illegal invaders" and "everyone knows" Whitmer is "bussing in illegals and asking (us) to shack them up in their homes for $6,000 a year." Except they were the Gonzaga Bulldogs basketball team there to play in the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 March Madness against Purdue. Confronted with his "spectacular stupidity" and the facts, even by supporters, he snarled back - “Sure kommie. Good talking point" - and doubled down with replacement theory: "How long till the #HostileMedia calls the invaders homesteaders?" He seems nice.

The implausible queen of this GOP rabble is grandstanding, hate-mongering, self-promoting "purveyor of political pageantry" Marjorie Taylor Greene, a useless, performative troll most recently appointed to chair the "useless, performative impeachment" of Homeland Security's Alejandro Mayorkas by Mike Johnson in hopes of shutting her up as she tries to oust him for keeping the government running, or something. Among other memorable ventures since her Jewish Space Laser and school-shooting-survivor-harassing days: Inventing an Antifa plan for a "Trans Day of Vengeance," arguing 8-to-10-year-old Uvalde victims should've been armed with JR-15 rifles, spreading a replacement theory video about "the Democrat (sic) open border plan to entrench single party rule," and after Mexico's president proposed several U.S. actions to ease border crossings, refuting them with a "Declaration of War" against Mexican cartels for fentanyl trafficking, even though it's mostly produced in China and smuggled into this country not by migrants but U.S. citizens or other legal visitors.

Last month she also hosted, with live stream, a "Hearing Investigating the Black Market of Baby Organ Harvesting" to explore "the "aborrent (sic) truth of the industrial abortion complex (to) profit off the murder of unborn babies." She'd announced the event, based on repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories that Planned Parenthood sells fetal tissue for profit - including grafting "the scalps of unborn babies onto the backs of rodents in a study funded by Anthony Fauci under the NIH" - with a beaming photo of herself that, noted one observer, "looked oddly bubbly for a hearing on dead babies." Her two speakers were David Daleiden, who in 2015 released heavily edited videos of himself as a fake biomedical researcher trying to buy fetal tissue, after which Planned Parenthood successfully sued him for $2 million; and Terrisa Bukovinac, who in 2022 was convicted with another anti-abortion activist of blocking access to a health clinic, stealing 115 aborted fetuses from a medical waste truck, burying most of them, and keeping five they claimed without evidence were "born alive and then murdered."

Greene said she wanted the hearing, attended by five people though she invited every member of Congress, to be a graphic, gory, in-your-face rebuttal to genteel talk of "women's health care." And so it was, with her use of pointedly incendiary language and images: "abortionists," not doctors, "babies sucked out while still alive" by an instrument "more powerful than a household vacuum," "tiny brains and hearts," "over 63 million people murdered in the womb" - misinformation so prevalent House Dems created a website to refute it - and no mention of vital medical advances facilitated by fetal tissue research. Still, wise-acres weren't buying it: "Baby Organ Harvesting is my Norwegian Death Metal cover band," "Marge hungry," "Do you know how many fetus livers it would take to make a single kabob?", "Curious how she'll tie it into Hunter's dick pics," "She should do her genealogy - she would have led lots of witch trials if she was alive back then," and, "This is absolutely ridiculous. No one harvests baby organs. Infants are only run through hydraulic presses to make baby oil, and THAT'S IT!"

But not even abortion, or terrorists collapsing Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, or earthquakes in what Rudy Giuliani called "the communist states" of New York and New Jersey - with its epicenter at Trump's Bedminster golf course deemed "Ivana's revenge" -come close to the "Super Bowl for Conspiracists" that is an eclipse. Marge was on it: "God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent." So was her squinty-eyed, right-wing boyfriend Brian Glenn - Wonkette calls him "the dude she has been having what we assume is very sweaty, pale, Godly white-person sex with" - who very scientifically "explains astronomy" and eclipses with, “I think we're going to see where the largest kind of a spiritual awakening in this country that people are realizing how much evil has creeped (sic) into (our) lives." He also warned of its fallout, "combined with earthquakes, and this infestation of locusts that have been dormant for years that all of a sudden will attack mankind, and oh then throw in Joe Biden trying to get into a war with eye-ran." He seems nice too, also smart.

There are about three, mathematically predictable solar eclipses a year, and many unpredictable earthquakes caused by shifting tectonic plates, not God being mad about gay marriage; both have occurred since creation, and you can read about them here and here. Regardless, news of these events made the right wing lose whatever's left of their minds. Alex Jones - not much left there - called the eclipse "a dress rehearsal" for declaring martial law if Trump wins the election. He cited “Major Events" like "Masonic rituals (to) usher in a New World Order," noting the eclipse trajectory in the U.S. forms an “Aleph” and “Tav,” the first and last Hebrew letters, signaling end times. Another genius saw a "perfect cover story if our terrorist government wanted to take down the power grid and cause mass chaos while blocking citizen communications (to) unleash a dictatorship" before Trump can win. And to ensure "no Satanic forces come through" during the eclipse, Steve Bannon hosted a live Mass with newly fired, financially sketchy, MAGA Bishop Joseph Strickland "in prayer and penance for our country."

It didn't help that a nerdy NASA project in Virginia measuring changes in electric and magnetic fields - Project APEP, short for Atmospheric Perturbations Around the Eclipse Path, referencing the snake god of darkness - planned to shoot rockets at the moon during the eclipse. To one wise wingnut, that meant there would be "rituals performed by Masonic, Satanic, Esoteric, Gnostic, Brotherhood of the Snake and other occult-like groups." And because if it's Monday, it must be the frog-raining end of days, several red states, Oklahoma and Texas among them, issued various disaster warnings and executive orders because when in doubt or fear just go totalitarian. In Arkansas, "out of an abundance of caution," lying Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency over a possible "backlog of deliveries by commercial vehicles transporting essential items of commerce" during maybe four minutes of darkness. In truth, noted one of her constituents, "The real emergency is that "the governor of an entire state is a fucking moron."

In honor of the fraught occasion, Fox News took its usual, balanced, erudite approach and went with racist paranoia on the subject of the dangers of an eclipse at the border even though it was so cloudy it wouldn't have much effect. Host Dana Perino: "A rare celestial event collides with a policy failure on the ground." Host Bill Hemmer: Officials bracing for higher traffic under cover of darkness "means a real opportunity for smugglers and cartels and migrants to come right in..." Vile correspondent Bill Melugin: "While everybody is gonna be looking up, if you're looking down here at the border, here's some of what you're gonna see." He offers video of "a surge of illegal alien evaders" (two poor guys scrambling through brush) with, "You'll see illegal immigrants dressed in dark clothing, sometimes camouflage...And you'll see outnumbered border agents trying to respond as these guys flood in" (one sad guy gets caught) "as they're trying to sneak into the United States." Cruelty, as usual, is the point here, and the eclipse gives us one more ugly, feckless chance to flaunt it.

Four years ago, amidst a pandemic needlessly killing hundreds of thousands, the "leader" of all these loathsome, inept people was showing them how it's done, sputtering nobody's thanking him for the great job he's doing, yet more tests bring more cases: "So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'" Somehow, now it's worse. For the eclipse, he released a deeply weird, insanely narcissistic ad declaring, to the soaring music of 2001, "The Most Important Moment In Human History." As awe-struck crowds watch, we see the sun slowly eclipsed by....his wattled, blubbery, grotesque silhouette. Comments: "The most accidentally honest ad Trump's team ever put out," "this fucking moron won't even let himself be upstaged by the solar system," "what a freak," "not a cult," "how can I make this about me?," "going all in with the anti-Christ thing," "Stephen Miller is no Leni Riefenstahl," "fat boy ate the sun," "total eclipse of the brain," "dark side of the buffoon," "totalitarian eclipse." For a laugh, someone added light passing ear to ear. Not a laugh: "So, Trump will bring darkness to us. Got it."


Common Dreams is powered by optimists who believe in the power of informed and engaged citizens to ignite and enact change to make the world a better place.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


ABBY ZIMET has written CD's Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women's, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. Email: azimet18@gmail.com
Full Bio >

UPDATED

The bioethics of the first human-monkey hybrid embryo

The creation of a human–long-tailed macaque hybrid embryo roiled the internet. We asked experts what this means

By MATTHEW ROZSA

SALON
APRIL 16, 2021 

Long-Tailed Macaques family (Getty Images)


Depending on your point of view, the creation of an embryo that is part-human and part-monkey is either a great opportunity for medical experts to create organs and tissues for human transplantation; or, the starting point of a horror movie.

Either way, that premise is now a reality.

Per a new study published in the scientific journal "Cell," a team of scientists led by Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte of California's Salk Institute for Biological Studies created the first embryo to contain both human cells and those of a non-human primate — in this case, those of long-tailed macaques. This type of creation is known as a "chimera," or an organism that contains genetic material from two or more individuals.

Izpisua Belmonte's team injected 25 human cells known as induced pluripotent stem cells (or iPS cells generally, and hiPS cells when they come from humans) into the embryos of long-tailed macaque monkeys. Human cells were able to grow inside 132 of the embryos and the scientists were able to study the results for up to 19 days. Many sources report this as the first half-human half monkey embryo, although The Guardian claims that the same team actually developed one in 2019. Salon reached out to Izpisua Belmonte to clarify and will update the story if or when he responds.

This chimera experiment wasn't the product of mad scientists testing ethical limits: it had real scientific purpose and value. Indeed, with more research and a bit of luck, scientists could use the knowledge from these experiments to grow human organs in other animals.

"This knowledge will allow us to go back now and try to re-engineer these pathways that are successful for allowing appropriate development of human cells in these other animals," Izpisua Belmonte told NPR.

The embryo in question is not the first chimera to be created by scientists: For instance, Izpisua Belmonte and the Salk Institute were marginally effective in creating human-pig chimeras in 2017, the same year that researchers in Portugal created a chimera virus (in their case, a mouse virus with a human viral gene). There are also chimeras that occur naturally, such as twins who absorb some of their sibling's DNA. American singer Taylor Muhl says that a large section of skin on her torso is darker because it comes from her fraternal twin's genetic material.

The potential advantage of creating human-monkey chimeras is significant. It is often difficult for doctors to have enough organs to provide transplants to patients who desperately need them, and creating successful chimeras could allow scientists to manufacture organs rather than depending on donors. As Izpisua Belmonte told NPR, "This is one of the major problems in medicine — organ transplantation. The demand for that is much higher than the supply."

Julian Koplin, a research fellow with the Biomedical Ethics Research Group, Murdoch Children's Research Institute and Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne, pointed out in an email to Salon that the bigger concern about chimeras is when they lead to live-born creatures. These were just in the early embryonic stage, but if scientists are eventually able to develop human-pig chimeric animals for organ transplants, things could become ethically questionable.

"Most people think that humans have much greater moral status than (say) a pig," Koplin explained. "However, a human-pig chimera would straddle these categories; it is neither fully a pig nor fully human. How, then, should we treat this creature?"




Indeed, the chimeric embryo experiment already entered some ethical gray areas. As Koplin noted, "in many jurisdictions, human embryo research is subject to the '14-day rule' (which limits research to the first 14 days of embryo development.) These chimeric embryos were cultured until some reached 19 days post-fertilization. Should the study have stopped at 14 days? Arguably not, since only a small proportion of their cells were human. But how many human cells are too many? At what stage should a chimeric embryo be treated like a human embryo?"

Dr. Daniel Garry, a professor at the University of Minnesota who has written extensively about the science and ethics of chimeras, broke down the issues with Salon by email. He noted that ethical concerns against the technology include fears of human cells contributing to "off-target" organs such as the brain, although he added that he and his colleagues "recently showed that this contribution does not occur." Likewise, he feared the possibility that a human embryo could wind up being inadvertently developed in a large animal.

Moreover, Garry said that with chimera research in general, ethics issues abound regarding the humans who contribute cells to such research. In the case of the monkey-human chimera embryo experiment, humans who contributed cells that were reprogrammed were aware and gave consent to have that happen.
Advertisement:

Garry added that there are also questions about "whether some organs might be appropriate but others not — for example, generating a pancreas or heart is OK, but having a monkey or a pig with human skin or human hair may not be OK for some." He also noted that there are usually ethical arguments that arise whenever there is a "paradigm shifting discovery" from people who are that "leery of scientific advances."

At the same time, Garry said that there are a number of strong ethical arguments in favor of chimeras. He pointed to how there are many terminal chronic diseases which do not have curative therapies and whose patients would benefit from the biotechnology created by chimera research. It could reduce healthcare costs, increase the supply of transplant organs and potentially reduce or eliminate the need for drugs to prevent an adverse immune system response.

THE SAME OLD EXCUSE SAME OLD JUSTIFICATION 

FOR SPECIES SUPREMACY

Koplin said such chimera studies could advance medical science.

"As I understand it, the aim of this study was to help improve techniques for creating human-animal chimeras," Koplin explained. "Chimeric animals could be used for disease modelling or to generate transplantable human organs. These advances could save lives — which is an important moral reason to pursue them."

Henry T. Greely, a professor for the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University who wrote about the ethical questions pertaining to chimeras in "Cell," told Salon that defining what counts as a chimera is "tricky."

"Every time a person gets an organ transplant, the result is an intra-species chimera: an organism made up of cells from two members of the same species," Greely noted. "Another example is the way that some pregnant women end up permanently carrying cells from their fetus. When a human gets a pig heart valve, she becomes an inter-species chimera. When a mouse gets human cells, for example to test to see how committed they are to a development path (whether or not they are "pluripotent"), that's a chimera." He also noted that scientists might put human brain tissue into a rat's brain to study the human cells in a way that would not be ethical to do in other people, since they eventually need to kill the test subject and study its brain slices.

  

Human cells grown in monkey embryos triggers 'Pandora's box' ethical concerns

Researchers say the work could help tackle transplant shortages, but experts warn such hybrid organisms pose major challenges.


Friday 16 April 2021 

Image:Human stem cells were inserted into macaque embryos. Pic: Salk Institute/Cell.com

Human cells have been grown in monkey embryos by scientists in the US, sparking ethical concerns and warnings that it "opens a Pandora's box".

Those behind the research say their work could help tackle the severe shortage of transplant organs as well as enable better overall understanding of human health, from the development of disease to ageing.

But some experts in the UK have highlighted the significant ethical and legal challenges posed by the creation of such hybrid organisms and called for a public debate.

Image:The chimeric embryos were monitored in the lab for 19 days before being destroyed. Pic: Weizhi Ji, Kunming University of Science and Technology

Concerns have been raised after researchers from the Salk Institute in California produced what is known as monkey-human chimeras.

This involved human stem cells - special cells that have the ability to develop into many different cell types - being inserted in macaque embryos in petri dishes in the lab.

The aim is to understand more about how cells develop and communicate with each other.

Chimeras are organisms whose cells come from two or more individuals.

In humans, chimerism can naturally occur following organ transplants, where cells from the organ start growing in other parts of the body.

Professor Izpisua Belmonte said the work was conducted with 'utmost attention to ethical considerations'

Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who is leading the research, said: "These chimeric approaches could be really very useful for advancing biomedical research not just at the very earliest stage of life, but also the latest stage of life."

In 2017, he and his team created the first human-pig hybrid, where they introduced human cells into early-stage pig tissue but found the environment provided poor molecular communication.

As a result, the researchers decided to investigate lab-grown chimeras using a more closely related species.

The human-monkey chimeric embryos were monitored in the lab for 19 days before being destroyed.

According to the scientists, the results, published in the journal Cell, showed human stem cells "survived and integrated with better relative efficiency than in the previous experiments in pig tissue".

The chimeras were produced by researchers from the Salk Institute in California

The team said understanding more about how cells of different species communicate with each other could provide an "unprecedented glimpse into the earliest stages of human development" as well as offer scientists a "powerful tool" for research on regenerative medicine.

Insisting that their research has met current ethical and legal guidelines, Prof Izpisua Belmonte said: "As important for health and research as we think these results are, the way we conducted this work, with utmost attention to ethical considerations and by coordinating closely with regulatory agencies, is equally important.

"Ultimately, we conduct these studies to understand and improve human health."

Human stem cells being injected into a pig embryo. Pic: Salk Institute

Responding to the research, Dr Anna Smajdor, lecturer and researcher in biomedical ethics at the University of East Anglia's Norwich Medical School, said: "This breakthrough reinforces an increasingly inescapable fact: biological categories are not fixed - they are fluid.

"This poses significant ethical and legal challenges."

She added: "The scientists behind this research state that these chimeric embryos offer new opportunities, because 'we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans'.

"But whether these embryos are human or not is open to question."

Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and co-director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford, said: "This research opens Pandora's box to human-nonhuman chimeras.

"These embryos were destroyed at 20 days of development but it is only a matter of time before human-nonhuman chimeras are successfully developed, perhaps as a source of organs for humans. That is one of the long-term goals of this research.

"The key ethical question is: what is the moral status of these novel creatures? Before any experiments are performed on live-born chimeras, or their organs extracted, it is essential that their mental capacities and lives are properly assessed."

CHINA 2019

Scientists grow first ever HUMAN-MONKEY embryo in ‘promising’ step for organ harvesting — RT World News

Scientists Have Created Human-Monkey Embryos, and That's Ethically OK
The eventual goal is human organ transplantation.

RONALD BAILEY 

| 4.15.2021 

REASON MAGAZINE

AMERICAN LIBERTARIAN MARKET CAPITALISTS

(WEIZHI JI/KUNMING UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY)

An international team of researchers led by the Salk Institute biologist Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte report in Cell that they have created the world's first human-monkey embryos. Their goal is not to generate half-monkey, half-human servants; it is to figure out how human and animals cells interact, with the goal of eventually growing human transplant organs in animals like pigs and sheep.

The researchers injected human pluripotent stem cells into already growing monkey embryos and then traced how human cells developed and migrated as the chimeric embryos grew for 20 days in Petri dishes. In the mixed embryos, 3 to 7 percent of the cells were human.

Cell



The National Institutes of Health human stem research guidelines currently prohibit research in which human pluripotent stem cells are introduced into non-human primate blastocysts. Over the years, a number of state and federal bills have been introduced to ban this type of research. That is among other reasons why the laboratory work for this research was conducted in China.

Some bioethicists have expressed concerns about the research.

"My first question is: Why?" asked Kirstin Matthews, a fellow for science and technology at Rice University's Baker Institute, when interviewed by NPR. "I think the public is going to be concerned, and I am as well, that we're just kind of pushing forward with science without having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do."

One often-mentioned worry is that human neurons could possibly get installed into an animal's brain and somehow make its consciousness more humanlike. Another fear is that human cells that produce sperm and eggs could migrate into the testes and ovaries of monkeys, who might then mate and create a human fetus. Surely such possibilities require further ethical reflection, but the mixed cells in these experiments got nowhere near such possibilities.

As the researchers conclude, "this line of fundamental research will help improve human chimerism in species more evolutionarily distant that for various reasons, including social, economic, and ethical, might be more appropriate for regenerative medicine translational therapies." Translation: This research aims to help scientists figure out how to grow fully human organs in other animals, such as pigs and sheep, that are not as evolutionarily close to us as monkeys. Given the ongoing and persistent transplant organ shortage, let's hope this work succeeds.

Human cells grown in monkey embryos raise ethical concerns

By New Scientist and Press Association

15 April 2021

A human-monkey blastocyst, an early stage of embryo development
Weizhi Ji, Kunming University of Science and Technology

Researchers have grown human cells in monkey embryos with the aim of understanding more about how cells develop and communicate with each other.

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute in California and his colleagues have produced what are known as human-monkey chimeras, with human stem cells – special cells that have the ability to develop into many different cell types – inserted in macaque embryos in petri dishes in the lab.

However, some ethicists have raised concerns, saying this type of work “poses significant ethical and legal challenges”.

Chimeras are organisms whose cells come from two or more individuals. In humans, chimerism can naturally occur following organ transplants, where cells from that organ start growing in other parts of the body.

Izpisua Belmonte says the team’s work could pave the way in addressing the severe shortage in transplantable organs, as well as help us understand more about early human development, disease progression and ageing. “These chimeric approaches could be really very useful for advancing biomedical research not just at the very earliest stage of life, but also the latest stage of life,” he said.

In 2017, Izpisua Belmonte and his colleagues created the first human-pig chimera, where they incorporated human cells into early-stage pig tissue but found that human cells in this environment had poor molecular communication. So the team decided to investigate lab-grown chimeras using a more closely related species: macaques.

Read more: Exclusive: Two pigs engineered to have monkey cells born in China

The human-monkey chimeric embryos were monitored in the lab for 19 days before being destroyed. The team says the human stem cells “survived and integrated with better relative efficiency than in the previous experiments in pig tissue”.

Izpisua Belmonte says the work meets current ethical and legal guidelines. “As important for health and research as we think these results are, the way we conducted this work, with utmost attention to ethical considerations and by coordinating closely with regulatory agencies, is equally important.”

“This breakthrough reinforces an increasingly inescapable fact: biological categories are not fixed – they are fluid,” said Anna Smajdor at the University of East Anglia, UK, in a statement. “This poses significant ethical and legal challenges.”

“The scientists behind this research state that these chimeric embryos offer new opportunities, because ‘we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans’. But whether these embryos are human or not is open to question,” she said.

Julian Savulescu at the University of Oxford said in a statement: “This research opens Pandora’s box to human-nonhuman chimeras. These embryos were destroyed at 20 days of development but it is only a matter of time before human-nonhuman chimeras are successfully developed, perhaps as a source of organs for humans. That is one of the long-term goals of this research.”

“The key ethical question is: what is the moral status of these novel creatures?” he said. “Before any experiments are performed on live-born chimeras, or their organs extracted, it is essential that their mental capacities and lives are properly assessed.”

Journal reference: Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.020

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2274762-human-cells-grown-in-monkey-embryos-raise-ethical-concerns/#ixzz6sL74E5gQ