Putting Human Stem Cells in Animal Embryos? The NIH Should Get on Board

April 8, 2016

(Los Angeles Times) – Thirty years ago Paul Simon immortalized one of the first animal-human transplants with the lyrics, “These are the days of miracle and wonder.… Medicine is magical and magical is art. Thinking of the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart.” Today we face the possibility of babies getting organs grown in human/nonhuman chimeras — beasts that are pigs except for a single human organ. To the uninitiated, this may sound more like the dark arts than modern medicine, but pursuing careful research and potential clinical use of these chimeras is both proper and important.