Rules for creating synthetic human beings

New forms of cellular engineering raise ethical questions

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

The article Addressing the ethical issues raised by synthetic human entities with embryo-like features, which John D. Aach and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School published in the journal eLife, examines the ethical issues of creating what the authors call "synthetic human beings with embryo-like properties", or, abbreviated from the English definition (synthetic human entities with embryolike features), Sheep.

In recent years, biologists have gone beyond artificial insemination and started conducting experiments in which stem cells self-organize into embryo-like structures. "Soon they will learn how to construct new types of tissues and organs from these cells, and sooner or later this will lead to the creation of a mature human being," unnamed experts predict the New York Times.

By complex forms of cell associations that will appear in the future, we mean, for example, a beating human heart associated with a rudimentary brain, both of which are derived from stem cells for research purposes.

The authors of the article in eLife are sure that such entities grown in laboratories cause universal concern, and therefore, until scientists have gone too far in creating such unpredictable cellular conglomerates, they should create their own rules for them, says Dr. Ah. 

Ethics as applied to laboratory-grown embryos became an object of attention of scientists more than 40 years ago.

In 1970, physiologist Robert Edwards, who became a Nobel Laureate in 2010, together with colleagues at the University of Cambridge, reported on a successful experiment on fertilization of human eggs with sperm in a Petri dish and the viability of such embryos for two days, during which each initial fertilized cell divided up to 16 cells.

Dr. Edwards' subsequent work led to the clinical practice of artificial insemination, simultaneously allowing scientists to study the early stages of human development. Meanwhile, all over the world, the issue of the permissible duration of growing human embryos in a laboratory was being resolved at the government level.

In 1979, a 14-day time limit was introduced almost everywhere. But this turned out to be enough for scientific progress: 20 years later, stem cells were learned from such embryos, giving rise to different tissues, and so cell technologies were born.

Among the mandatory restrictions that current cellular engineers must adhere to, the authors of the article call a ban on the creation of pain-sensitive Sheets. 

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  31.03.2017