Sheep grown organs

[NLN]

Today I read an article saying that scientists have created the world's first human-sheep chimera—which has the body of a sheep and half-human organs. They're working on being able to grow most or all human organs in animals—so they can later be transplanted into humans who need them.

 

Eventually, they hope to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep. The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor's bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep's fetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

 

Although this would be wonderful for humans needing new organs, it does raise some ethical questions. We do grow sheep (and other livestock) for food—but for organ use?

[ecoli]

I, personally, don't see an ethical issue... I bet sheep would do the same to us, if they were able.

[Sisyphus]

I don't really think that's the issue. After all, there's not much difference between harvesting their parts to eat and harvesting them to directly replace our parts. However, there might be something of an issue in the fact that they might not really be "sheep" anymore, since they're technically part human. Are we, then, raising humans for their organs? I don't really think so, but the distinction has suddenly become a lot more arbitrary.

[AzurePhoenix]

i don't see how there could be the slightest ethical question... in fact, i see it as more ethical than just eating them... i mean, organ-donar sheep would be dying to save people rather than just entertain their tastebuds for an evening... but then again i put no moral value into human tissues just because they're "human". If the sheep start contemplating their existence, then i see a problem.