Human/monkey chimeric embryos: context and questions
Appeared in BioNews 1094 What is the moral status of these novel creatures? Scientists raise ethical concerns after lab creates a human-monkey HYBRID for cancer research – Headline from the Daily Mail
On 15 April 2021, the journal Cell published a paper reporting the creation of part monkey, part human embryos (see BioNews 1091). The international team of researchers had injected human stem cells into blastocysts (embryos about six days after fertilisation) of cynomolgus monkeys (aka crab-eating macaques ). Each blastocyst received 25 human cells, produced from a human donor s skin cells. Monkey blastocysts, like human blastocysts, normally must be transferred into a uterus by the sixth or seventh day to survive. These instead were treated with new methods allowing them to live in the lab for about 20 days. By the fourth day after the injection (tenth after fertilisation), about 100 embryos were still developing; that pl