Across the world, thousands of people are on the waitlist fororgans that could save their lives. While some are lucky enough to find a match at the right time,many suffer while waiting and succumb to their illness.
To deal with this crisis, scientists have come up with controversialnew research that may pave the way to solve the crisis. The solution, albeit acruel one, is to produce animal hybrids and grow human organs?inthem.
More recently, a Chinese lab created the worlds first everpig-monkey hybrid for the same purpose. Chimera piglets contain DNA from bothpigs and cynomolgus monkeys.
For those unaware, chimera is essentially a single organismthat's made up of cells from two or more individuals, which essentially means itcontains two sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms.
According to reports, the Pig Monkey hybrid in this Chineselab died within a week of being born. Ten piglets were born but only two ofwhich were hybrids - with tissues in the heart, liver, spleen, lung and skin,partly consisting of monkey cells.
‘This is the firstreport of full-term monkey-pig chimeras', Tang Hai at the State Key Laboratoryof Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology in Beijing told New Scientist.
The experiment follows Spanish scientist Juan Carlos IzpisuaBelmonte's controversial attempt to create pig-human hybrids two years ago.Scientists say that the failure was to do with the IVF process but not thechimerism.
The fertilisation process doesn't work as well in pigs as itdoes in humans and other animals. All said and done the process of creating an animal hybrid is cruel and unnecessary. To make an organism that will onlysuffer an agonising death is pretty pointless and is not really a constructivesolution to the organ donation crisis.