Excellence in Wingnut/Wanker science

It's early in the day, but we've already got a winner! Ed Morrissey links to this article about animal-human chimeras and writes:

Now Britain wants to allow real Frankensteins to create “cybrid” mixes of animals and humans. What happened to all of the European concern over genetic purity?

OK, he's pretty whack, but even I don't believe he meant what's implied by that phrase (think Nazis)...Either way, genetically speaking, these "cybrids" are purely human. There's no cow or pig DNA left.

Make no mistake about it. This is what happens when we start talking about how the ends of curing disease justifies all sorts of means. Scientists used to tell us that they had no use for cloning people, and that cloning technology would only be used to grow specific tissues. They insisted that they could protect the sanctity of human life by creating and destroying embryos.

Let's take a look at the graphic provided by The Telegraph. [In lieu of a news article at Science or Nature, you can read along here for more information]:



The phrase "would only be developed for up to 14 days" is key here: outside of the mind of an extremely twisted wingnut, it'd be difficult to create a Dr. Moreau's Island out of these chimeras. Moreover, no human embryos are destroyed. Unless you count an adult's skin cell DNA as a human embryo. Don't get a cold, you might sneaze some embryos! The Captain concludes:

Now that we have mostly allowed that bright line to be crossed, researchers want to cross an even brighter line for the same reasons. They want to look into embryonic stem cells, and again promise that they will cure Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, cystic fibrosis, and a host of other plagues on modern humanity. All we have to do is let them start creating laboratory cybrids and the cures will flow faster than ever.

Hogwash. We still haven’t seen cures from normal hEsc research after years of it, while adult and cord stem cells have developed dozens of therapies for disease. If hEsc was as promising as the researchers have insisted, they wouldn’t need to create cybrids to get their therapies. We don’t need to create a real Island of Dr. Moreau to know that this road is fraught with peril, and we are already sliding down the slippery slope if Western nations blithely allow for human/animal genetic mixes.

Dozens of therapies? Try two. The rest of this fear-mongering drivvel is too stupid to even comment on, so I'll just let it stand as it is.