Crossing human genes with other animals, is no longer a thing of science fiction. It is science fact. The idea is to use other animals, like pigs, in order to grow human organs for transplants. Many countries have been messing around with this, creating embryos, but not coming to term, or even close to term. Japan has just been green lighted to allow the embryos to come to term. Which is huge news, but I don't expect to see a human pig happen overnight.
There's a lot of misinformation on this topic, with crazy pictures that aren't the real thing. But I get the backlash, are we as human ready to start playing god? The way they are trying to do it in Japan is to keep the animal a rat, pig ect. with only the organs being human. They are still a long way from making that happen, and so far there is no plan to bring an embryo to term. They are starting small and only trying to get government approval to grow an embryo for 70 days. The focus right now is to try to grow a human pancreas, in a rat, but they are long ways from getting there.
There are hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists, for transplants right now. The hope of scientist that are doing this research is to save human lives, and not something nefarious. The main concern is the fear that the human DNA might transfer to the brain of the animal.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I do believe in research, and trying to improve human life through cures and experimentation, but I think we need to tread very carefully on this.
