ReviewStem cell research & therapy2016
Human-animal chimeras: ethical issues about farming chimeric animals bearing human organs.
Review in Stem cell research & therapy, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Ethical arguments concerning human-animal chimera research: a systematic review.BMC medical ethics · 2020Pooled it
- Ethical Challenges and Governance Strategies for Microphysiological Systems Technology.Biology · 2026Review
- Porcine xenotransplantation in the clinical era: converging advances and unresolved barriers on the path to clinical translation - a narrative review.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- The use of transgenic animals for xenotransplantation: An update.Animal models and experimental medicine · 2025Review
- Caspase 9-induced apoptosis enables efficient fetal cell ablation and disease modeling.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Review
- Human brain organoids: an innovative model for neurological disorder research and therapy.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Review
- Skin graft with dermis and appendages generated in vivo by cell competition.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Kidney xenotransplantation: Future clinical reality or science fiction?Nursing & health sciences · 2023Article
- Induced pluripotent stem cells from domesticated ruminants and their potential for enhancing livestock production.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Review
- Towards human organ generation using interspecies blastocyst complementation: Challenges and perspectives for therapy.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Review
- Knowledge graphs of ethical concerns of cerebral organoids.Cell proliferation · 2022Article
- Melatonin attenuates dimethyl sulfoxide- and Zika virus-induced degeneration of porcine induced neural stem cells.In vitro cellular & developmental biology. Animal · 2022Article
- How Artistic Representation Can Inform Current Debates About Chimeras.The Journal of medical humanities · 2021Article
- 'It's not worse than eating them': the limits of analogy in bioethics.Monash bioethics review · 2020Article
- Animal experimentation in transgenesis: evaluating course design in large classrooms.FEBS open bio · 2020Article
- Moral uncertainty and the farming of human-pig chimeras.Journal of medical ethics · 2019Article
- Generation of bioartificial hearts using decellularized scaffolds and mixed cells.Biomedical engineering online · 2019Article
- Concise Review: Human-Animal Neurological Chimeras: Humanized Animals or Human Cells in an Animal?Stem cells (Dayton, Ohio) · 2019Review
- Generating Human Organs via Interspecies Chimera Formation: Advances and Barriers.The Yale journal of biology and medicine · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent advances in stem cells and gene engineering have paved the way for the generation of interspecies chimeras, such as animals bearing an organ from another species. The production of a rat pancreas by a mouse has demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. The next step will be the generation of larger chimeric animals, such as pigs bearing human organs. Because of the dramatic organ shortage for transplantation, the medical needs for such a transgressive practice are indisputable. However, there are serious technical barriers and complex ethical issues that must be discussed and solved before producing human organs in animals. The main ethical issues are the risks of consciousness and of human features in the chimeric animal due to a too high contribution of human cells to the brain, in the first case, or for instance to limbs, in the second. Another critical point concerns the production of human gametes by such chimeric animals. These worst-case scenarios are obviously unacceptable and must be strictly monitored by careful risk assessment, and, if necessary, technically prevented. The public must be associated with this ethical debate. Scientists and physicians have a critical role in explaining the medical needs, the advantages and limits of this potential medical procedure, and the ethical boundaries that must not be trespassed. If these prerequisites are met, acceptance of such a new, borderline medical procedure may prevail, as happened before for in-vitro fertilization or preimplantation genetic diagnosis.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.