What the heck is going on? I don't know how many of you have seen the movie, "The Island of Doctor Moreau" or read the story by H. G. Wells that was written in 1896, but when I did, it seemed so far fetched that I remember thinking that this could never happen in real life. In case you don't know what I am talking about, here is a short synopsis of the story. A scientist on a remote island has combined human and animal cells to create animals that are almost human. Could you imagine this in real life, it certainly wouldn't be fair to the animals or to humans to create such a freakish race of things.

Having said that, any of you that have read my recent short takes page must have seen a small notation that indicates that human brain cells have been inserted into mouse embryos. Oh it is claimed that only .01 percent have been used, but even at this low percentage, are we doing the right thing. How will this effect us in the future? Will we all be susceptible to some sort of mouse human disease? I am not a fan of human animal experimentation. The national Academies of Science states that human animal hybrid development is permitted. In all fairness there is a stipulation to these experiments by the Academies of Science and that is strong scientific justification for the experiment and that there is no other way to ascertain the needed information.

I guess the question here is when does an animal get too human? Scientists would love to learn how to grown human organs in animals for harvesting. Can you imagine having a heard of sheep who's sole purpose is to grow human livers. Well a researcher at the University of Nevada at Reno has been able to do almost that already.They has grown mostly human livers in sheep, but not only livers, there are also partially human brains, hearts and other organs. They did it by injecting sheep fetuses with either adult stem cells from marrow or embryonic stem cells. The cells spread out into a wide range of organs. Can these organs be used by humans? I am not completely sure if they would work in a transplant but we are certainly on the way to growing human organs in animals. After the organs were removed what would happen to the rest of the animal? What I mean is that I wouldn't want to eat it if it contained human cells, it would feel almost like cannibalism.

The ideal way to create human organs for transplant would be to just grow the organs in a laboratory and not involve any animals at all. This also might be more useful in guarding against diseases that could be spread from animals to people when animals grow organs and they are transplanted to people. There is talk that one of the big universities has stated that it's ethics committee said that it would be ok to grow mice with 100% human brain cells. I can't be sure that this is true, but I would hate to think it was. Can you imagine a mouse that was about to be dissected, understanding what was going to happen to it? Another movie comes to mind with all of this and it is The Fly. This was were human and insect dna got mixed up in an experiment gone wrong and the result was a human body with the head of a fly and a fly with the head of a human. Can you imagine seeing a mouse with a little tiny human head. Ugh!

One of the main problems I have with all this is that some where, some scientists will probably want to create a human head on an animal or a human body with the head of an animal. It sounds sooo crazy right now, but it seems that there are always people wanting to do weird things. If we are talking morals here, that would have to be completely immoral from any point of view. There is also the military. Don't you think that they would love to create soldiers with the strength of a Gorilla but the brain of a man? They might even be working on something like this as I write this article. OK you terrorists, we are going to release our Gorilla squadron on you!

Let us not forget that you can not only mix humans and animals but you can mix one type of animal with another. What does this mean to our future? Well maybe we will have goats in the future that will give as much cow's milk as a large cow, yet they are much smaller and cheaper to house and feed. We might have ostriches that lay huge chicken eggs or even snakes that taste like chicken. Oh I forgot, everything tastes like chicken now. It seems that this type of gene and cell mixing might give us some benefits, but even this is dangerous to pursue. One has to be so careful, almost to the point of perfection. As we create these new variations on life, we might also create new diseases. You have to remember that there is not only the animal, but there is the microscopic life that is dependent on that animal. Could this change in some way that is completely unexpected? I think that this is also a possibility.

There are pigs being raised in the U.S. who actually have human blood in their veins.

I guess the thing that disturbs me the most is the idea of some animal walking around with a human brain. I hate to think that a sheep was completely aware. If this were the case, would it be a sheep anymore even though it looked like a sheep? Another thing, what good is using a heard of sheep to grow replacement brains. If you replace someone's brain, if you ever could, you would be creating a new individual. So what is the purpose of growing human brains? I guess scientists would state that they want to study them. But isn't the core of a human his brain, so wouldn't this be like creating human life and using it for experiments?

No thanks folks, I don't care what any scientist says, I believe we are going in the wrong direction here.