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"Is you a man or is you a mouse", he asked the mouse-man...

US Bishops Urge NIH Not to Fund Human Animal ‘Chimera’ Research
September 6, 2016 – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has strongly objected to a federal government proposal to lift a funding moratorium in two areas of research into human-animal “chimeras.”

“The government is ignoring the fact that federally funded research of this kind is prohibited by Federal statute and is also grossly unethical,” the body said in its objection Friday. Last month the Office of Science Policy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) posted an announcement seeking public comment on a plan to provide funding for research:

-- in which “human pluripotent cells are introduced into non-human vertebrate embryos, up through the end of gastrulation stage, with the exception of non-human primates, which would only be considered after the blastocyst stage,” and

-- in which “human cells are introduced into post-gastrulation non-human mammals (excluding rodents), where there could be either a substantial contribution or a substantial functional modification to the animal brain by the human cells.”

Anthony Picarello, USCCB associate general secretary and general counsel, and Michael Moses, associate general counsel, submitted a letter outlining moral and legal objections to the NIH’s proposal. “The bottom line is that the Federal government will begin expending taxpayer dollars on the creation and manipulation of new beings whose very existence blurs the line between humanity and animals such as mice and rats,” they wrote. “In doing so, the government is ignoring the fact that federally funded research of this kind is prohibited by Federal statute and is also grossly unethical.”

The letter argued that the government had already crossed a “significant moral line” by allowing embryonic stem cell research, but added that the latest proposal violated another principle. “The government now proposes running roughshod over another basic moral principle, however, by injecting human embryonic stem cells into the embryos of various animal species to create beings who do not fully belong to either the human race or the host animal species.” The research “raises grave moral as well as legal issues,” they wrote. “With a stroke of the pen, the ‘mouse with a human brain’ that some researchers have proposed – prompting widespread public controversy and the introduction of federal legislation to prohibit such abuses – will be a matter of routine federal policy.”

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