British bioethicist and director of the Anscombe Center for Bioethics in Oxford David Albert Jones condemned the delusion experiments recently published by a team of scientists from the USA and China in the journal Cell. Jones calls for a halt to the production of such human-animal embryos.

The researchers, led by Spanish stem cell researcher Juan Carlos Ispisa Belmonte, who is conducting research in the United States, in a “cell” reported that they had, for the first time, chimeric embryos from fertilized macaque egg cells and human embryos in the state’s Primate Biomedical Research Laboratory in Cumming University of Science and Technology in China stem cells were produced (see DT, April 22). Macaques are among the primates.

Researchers “crossed the moral line”

In a press release from the institute, Jones described the experiences as “extremely unethical.” Researchers “mixed human and non-human elements at a very early stage of development in a way that raises serious questions about the moral status” of humans and animals. With trials “the moral limit has been crossed.”

It is not clear what this delusion was when they were born. Jones also continues, “It is not clear to what extent they tend to develop human characteristics.” According to the director of the Anscombe Center for Bioethics, which deals with ethical questions from clinical practice and biomedical research, and also articulates them against the background of natural law and the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, “It is not always wrong, from a human perspective the mixture of non-human cells.”

Generates a “terrible mystery”

For example, it may be “ethically acceptable” to introduce human cells into test animals so that animal tissues can then be transplanted into humans. However, the prerequisite is that the process be safe. However, it is “always wrong” to “intentionally create an object with an insecure and confusing ethical situation”. It is the proximity of the species and the early stages of evolution that creates the amazing mystery, Jones says.

The Anscombe Center for Bioethics is named after the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001). A student of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a convert to the Catholic faith, made important contributions to work theory, virtue ethics, and the philosophy of the soul. DT / Rhee

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