I note that this question of animal-human chimeras arouses disbelief when it is talked about so much that what would become authorized would sound like a science fiction or “mad scientist” approach. The chimeras were not part of the debates of the States General of bioethics and did not appear in the initial government project. They were included in the text during the second reading in the Assembly, last July. Few people know what it is in practice.
We already know how to make animal chimeras: the tigron, for example. This would involve making animal-human chimeras so that they develop human organs that could be transplanted. We know that it is possible to manufacture such chimeras.
This would involve injecting human pluripotent stem cells into a pig or monkey embryo before it is implanted in the uterus. This embryo would have been previously genetically engineered to inhibit the development of its kidneys, liver or heart. We can then imagine being able to take from this chimeric embryo the human organs that it would have developed in place of its own and use them to compensate for the lack of human kidney, liver or heart transplants. But for the moment, all this remains in the state of utopia.
Serious consequences
This could lead to the rejection of the possible transplant which could be attempted, but also the transmission to humans of animal diseases. More serious, one can imagine the risk that would consist of the passage of human pluripotent cells in the brain of the animal or in the lines of reproductive cells, ova and spermatozoa. All this without talking about the instrumentalisation of the animal in these manipulations. In view of the magnitude of the risks, we should exercise the greatest caution. To take the risk of a certain humanization of the animal and of the breaking of the border between the species is really an approach of mad scientists which, I fear, signals the true intention of the promoters of the whole of the bill. .
Ladies and gentlemen parliamentarians, it is really time to react.
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