The Meaning of Life
"[With brain organoids], the closer the proxy gets to a functioning human brain, the more ethically problematic it becomes."
"Given these constraints, the possibility of organoids becoming conscious to some degree, or of acquiring other higher-order properties, such as the ability to feel distress, seems highly remote."
"But organoids are becoming increasingly complex."
Report, journal Nature
"Health Canada should issue public guidance regarding how the AHRA [Assisted Human Reproduction Act] applies to SHEEFs [synthetic human entities with embryo-like features] to avoid an unnecessary chill on promising avenues of research while ensuring scientists are not risking criminal liability for work in currently ambiguous areas."
Panel of ethical, scientific policy and legal experts paper
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| A donated human embryo is seen through a microscope at the La Jolla IVF Clinic February 28, 2007 in La Jolla, California. |
"We actually have to think substantively about exactly what it is about these different anatomical features — or the different stages of development that we’re worried about."It could be a nightmare scenario in the near future. One that morality, ethics and scientific care must heed. Scientists at California's Salk Institute, as an example, announced they succeeded in transplanting human brain organoids into the brains of lab rodents. What this means is that laboratory-produced organoids -- balls of stem cells forming an organized cohesion -- have now been exposed to a blood supply, crucial to their further development.
"And how do we draw really clear and distinct lines so that we can unlock the scientific potential of this research, while also respecting moral limits on what we should do."
Jonathan Kimmelman, bioethicist, McGill University
Without a blood supply organoids are capable of dividing and developing only in a limited manner. Grafted into mice brains the human brain tissue has been enabled to develop further, with new neurons firing in synchronized patterns. Imagine the complications and consequences of a human brain trapped within a rodent brain housed in a rodent head and body and this is a nightmare scenario of potentially untold proportions.
Scientists are inordinately curious about what can be accomplished in a laboratory. Producing miniaturized human brains in a petri dish considered to be lab-grown "synthetic" embryos represent another potential combination whose consequences wreak havoc with the imagination. A potent human brain within a hybrid, synthetic body that acts and reacts for all intents and purposes just like a human body designed by nature -- and what is the final result?
Scientists in laboratories precipitate balls of stem cells to gather themselves into organized groups to become structures accurately mimicking the natural process whereby eyes, livers, brains develop in mice. Now that it's been done with mice curiosity wants to bell the cat further by achieving similar results with human stem cells to produce embryos. The goal ostensibly is a noble enough one, to produce proto-organs for the study of diseases, to screen new drugs, to eventually produce new tissues and organs for transplant purposes.
The concern for many ethicists, scientists and philosophers in this issue is what happens when the first human embryo created from stem cells develops? To this point in the experimental process brain organoids are minuscule in size, the largest about four millimetres in diameter, containing two to three million cells in contrast to an adult brain measuring about 1,350 cubic centimetres, comprised of 86 billion neurons alone.
The future of these experiments may not be too far ahead as organoids do become increasingly complex. Neural activity, in fact, was seen in an organoid when a light was shone on the region where retina cells had formed along with cells of the brain, demonstrating that "an external stimulus can result in an organoid response". Now SHEEFs are also being experimented with as more complex and organized assembljes. Rather than producing one organ, SHEEFs combine several.
These synthetic human entities with embryo-like features produce unnatural combinations such as a human-like form and a beating heart, absent a brain. Though early in development, the question arises whether they fall into the category of experiments requiring protection around their use. A panel of ethical, scientific, policy and legal experts urging reforms to Canada's Assisted Human Reproduction Act feel current prohibitions banning embryo creation for research should not extend to synthetic forms "and likely incapable of developing into a human being".
The panel recommended that SHEEFs be "explicitly excluded" from prohibitions under the Act, that an oversight committee be struck to determine limits on their creation or their use. Published in the journal Healthcare Policy, the paper is one among a series to come out of a workshop funded by the Stem Cell Network. "The law clearly when it was made in 2004 did not contemplate anything like this", health law professor Ubaka Ogbogu at the University of Alberta and the paper's senior author stated.
Scientists argued in a paper published in eLife last year that SHEEPs not be tied to the 14-day rule where research is limited by prohibition to the period before the appearance of the "primitive streak" (a band of cells that mark the beginnings of a central nervous system), scientists should list a catalogue of features aligning with "moral status", yet it remains unclear which features could qualify and how to test for their presence.
Labels: Bioscience, Controversy, Embryo, Ethics, Research
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 01, 2018
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