A Brave New Singapore: Cloning Humans in Animals

Is the recent attempt of creating cybrids a leap of progress or a technological trespass?

By now we already know that human cybrids are embryos fabricated with enucleated animal eggs and the nucleus of a human body cell. These embryos will be terminated when their harvest of embryonic stem cells are removed for the sole purpose of research on the said cells. We also know that Singapore scientists want to make human cybrids and that the Bioethics Advisory Commission (BAC) is seeking a response from the Singaporean public to know what is their opinion on this issue.

Two things strike me about this matter,

Cybrids, Unethical Experimentation on Quasi-human Subjects (8)

There is an obvious difference between experimenting with animals and experimenting on human subjects. For human subjects, we need their informed consent for this experimentation to be licit. There is, however, a debate as to how to go about experimenting on humans when they are incapacitated to give consent. The obvious solution is that the informed consent should be provided by their proxies. But what about those we are not yet born? Can we ethically experiment on human embryos?

Cybrids versus Organ Transplant (7)

Cybrids have something in common with organ transplants. Organ transplant consists in the transferring of the body part of one individual (or cadaver) into another individual. Thus, be it skin graft or heart transplant, it all falls under organ transplant.

This also includes a peculiar case known a xeno-transplants, in which the donor is a member of a different species. In 1986, Baby Fae who was 2-weeks old, received the heart of a baboon that extended her life for 20 days.

While rejection problems continue to be the main obstacle in heart transplants, today pig’s heart valves are routinely transplanted into human hearts without raising any special ethical concern. No one spoke of Fae as someone who was 99.9 % human and 0.1 % baboon. Are we going to say that people living with pigs valves are part-human, part- porcine? That would be the same as saying that people with titanium heart valves would be part-humans, part-machine.

Are cybrids good for Singapore? (5)

It seems that the creation of cybrids is a good economic investment. The question is: is it worth it? From what we know about this procedure, it looks extremely similar to the procedure that was used to create Dolly, the famous first cloned sheep. In other words, a human cybrid is a human clone in an animal egg. Does the fact that a human is cloned in an animal egg make it more or less ethical than cloning humans in human eggs?

On one hand, it seems that a created human-animal can be more easily disposed than an artificially created human. On the other hand, we cannot avoid thinking that there is something aberrant about the creation of what appears to be a half human, half animal creature. So, what are we doing? Are we advancing research or playing God?

Cloning humans in Singapore and calling them cybrids!(4)

The last ethical frontier in Singapore is considering whether cloning humans in animal eggs is to be pursued.

As we should all know by now, the government wants a feedback response from the public regarding the creation of human “cybrids”, short form for “cytoplasmic hybrids”. In a nutshell, it means that they want to insert the human nucleus of a cell into an animal egg for it to develop into an animal-human embryo as a source of embryonic stem cells for the purpose of research.

Why they want to do that? Two reasons. Doing research with human embryonic stem cells presents two difficulties. Firstly, human eggs are not easily available. Secondly, creating fertilized human eggs with the nucleus of another human cell presents an ethical problem of cloning humans, which has been frowned upon by the UN. To kill two birds with one stone, scientists now want to use animals eggs. This will both solve the problem of scarcity of eggs while bypassing the ethical difficulties.

Since the purpose of creating these “cybrids” is not reproduction but experimentation, the human-animal embryo would be destroyed before the 14th day of development, avoiding thus even more ethical issues in case the embryos were viable.

So the question is, is the creation of “cybrids”, for the purpose of research, ethical?

Chimeras in Singapore (2)

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In an effort to know more about the vastly unknown world of human genetics, Singapore intends to become the next international hub of biotechnology. How? By creating chimeras, or more concretely, “cybrids”. Mythological chimeras are creatures half something, half another thing. The Merlion was a mythological chimera. Now these creatures are a biotechnological reality.

For the first time in human history, human creatures can create artificially real chimeras. Using similar technology that helped to create Dolly, the famous cloned sheep, it is now possible to fertilize an animal egg with human genetic material. The result will virtually be a human clone from an animal egg and a human somatic cell’s nucleus.

When Aldous Huxley wrote his famous “A Brave New World”, he was warning against the danger of humanity becoming a de-humanized world, where humans would be artificially bred with the “noble” purpose of becoming a more efficient society.

It is not the building of a new world that Singapore appears to have in mind, but certainly the creation of animal species with human genetic material to advance the research on human genetics. Of course, Singapore does not intend to do this without the public’s informed consent, so the Bioethics Advisory Commitee (BAC) has already issued a paper entitled “Ethical Considerations in Research with Human-Animal Combinations” where it informs the public not only about the particulars of these new technologies but also about the possible ethical implications. The BAC expects to receive the feedback from the public before March 10, 2008.

So, what is it going to be? Do Singaporeans want Singapore to be the breakthrough ground of new biotechnologies? Without any doubt, we will soon be listening about the advantages of research and the dangers of ethical slippery slopes and stepping into the delicate zone of “playing God”. So, what do Singaporeans say?

Chimeras in Singapore?

The Merlion, a creature that is believed to be half-fish, half- lion, is the symbol of Singapore. This imaginary creature can be the fruit of fertile imagination, but Singapore is about to go one step further in the field of scientific research and start creating mixed creatures. Do we want to see human organs growing in animals? Mice with human brain cells? We might start to spot these new species in the very unique habitat of Singapore pro-technological society. We call them “chimeras”.

Homer described the mythological creature for the first time. A chimera was a creature that “breathed raging fire, a creature fearful, great, swift-footed and strong, who had three heads, one of a grim-eyed lion; in his hinderpart, a dragon; and in his middle, a goat, breathing forth a fearful blast of blazing fire.” What was mythology yesterday, can possibly be a scientific reality today.

In the field of scientific research, a chimera is an animal that is created by mixing genetic material of two different species, one of which could be human. Chimeras are believed to be important for scientific research with a hope to find practical remedies for human diseases. After the scandal of Korea in this field, and the religious and ethical obstacles from the public that USA is encountering, Singapore feels that she should be one of the first countries to create human chimeras. Singapore has now the technology and the will to do so. Will Singapore do it?

On Jan 19, the BAC (Bioethics Advisory Committee of Singapore) intends to present this kind of research to the public to foster debate. Now, what will Singaporeans do? Will they panic before this “New Brave World” that threatens to play God? Will they approach it with “Asian pragmatism“? Will they start asking themselves fundamental questions like, “what is man?” and “where do we draw the line between improving the human condition and reinventing it”? Next time you look at the Merlion, think. It may be truly the symbol of Singapore in a totally new way.