From the fever-swamps of the right wing conspiracy theory industrial complex, we have the assertion by possible Trump 'advisor' Alex Jones that there are human-animal chimeras enslaved in labs throughout the country. For those of you have have the fortitude to watch the blithering idiot raving on, it's a bad bit of science-fiction.
Back on Planet Earth, there are immunocompromised mice which, due to their inhibited immune systems, won't reject grafts from other organisms, so they are used in tumor research or things which look to the uninformed like transgenic human-animal hybrids, such as those another Texas dumbass warned us about. The idea that the people in the white coats are creating gorilla-human or pig-human chimerae for the hell of it, or to engineer a breed of super-soldiers is ridiculous- funding for biological research is too damn low as it is... plus, there are plenty of humans on this planet that are exploited cheaply, why would 'the global elite' fritter away resources to produce expensive, inferior thralls?
The real kicker here is that Jones has ranted about 'life extension technology' that 'the elites' are withholding from him... if he thinks that his lifestyle-ravaged viscera can be replaced without techniques developed through studies like that involved in the creation of the Vacanti mouse, he's even stupider than I originally thought.
Hey, I watched part of the clip and I think the half-pig half-gorilla hybrid is the guy doing the show.
ReplyDeleteBesides, with tools like CRISPR we don't need to try to do it this way, creating hybrids and hoping to get the characteristics we want. Just build the genome you want, grow it in vitro, and voila - a million super soldiers in a petri dish...
ReplyDeleteI am contractually required to remind everyone that Vacanti's mouse-ear was a pointless exercise in showmanship (which is why no-one has bothered to extend that work or do it properly), and Vacanti was sacked on account of scientific fraud.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/18/haruko-obokata-stap-cells-controversy-scientists-lie