The search for Nephilim DNA

[Mark]

Lion-Human Hybrids: What Is Going On Around The World?

As if the human race didn’t have enough problems to deal with without adding lion-human hybrids to the list. That’s right, I’ll say it again, lion-human hybrids… and they have been sighted all over the world, and that’s not even the disturbing part. I’ll get back to the disturbing part in a few minutes.

What’s really mind blowing is that reports like these are becoming more and more common. Check out this very brief list of stories about mixing human and animal DNA.

    2003: China Creates Human Rabbit Hybrid
http://realtruth.org/news/030903-005.html
    2007: Now Scientists Create A Sheep That’s 15% Human
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-444436/Now-scientists-create-sheep-thats-15-human.html
    2009: Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.1435:



And Now For The Disturbing Part

It’s crazy how far human technology has come in the last couple of decades. The truly disturbing part is that hybrids like those mentioned above are only found in two places in history:

    The very distant past.
    Our current time.

Oh and those lion-human hybrids sightings I was telling you about earlier, those aren’t recent reports. They’re thousands of years old. Do you still think that you can tell the difference between “mythology” and modern science? There was a very good reason that I created the illusion of a modern report. It’s because way too many people automatically ignore any “strange” historical accounts and dismiss them as “mythology” as soon as they hear where the stories came from.

However, when I told the same story and backed it up with a few science articles and a news report from a reputable source, it didn’t sound like “mythology” at all. If this is your first time encountering this subject, I’m going to get you caught up very quickly.
Lion-Human Hybrids Around The World

History is full of strange creatures that modern man tries to conveniently explain away so that we don’t have to acknowledge anything potentially supernatural at all. The worst offenders are probably Christians in the mainstream church. One myth that we find scattered all over the world, and even in modern times, is the strange obsession with lion men.

    “And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada, the son of a valiant man, of Kabzeel, who had done many acts, he slew two lionlike men of Moab: he went down also and slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow:” 2 Samuel 23:20

I add the above only as a brief reference for those that don’t believe any other cultures actually experienced history outside of the Bible. You can read the in depth breakdown of the Biblical lion like men of Moab in a previous article I wrote in 2010, Lion-Human Hybrids – You Can’t Handle The Truth.
Lion Men In Nubia

Lion Human HybridsApedemak was worshiped in Nubia, but not much is known about him. He does have a couple of ways he is depicted though.

    A Single Head of A Lion
    Three Lion Heads and Four Arms.

If multi-headed hybrid beings sound farfetched to you,  then consider the following verse in the Bible which describes creatures with four faces.

    “And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face [was] the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.” – Ezekiel 10:14

Also make a mental note that one of those four faces is the face of a lion. Let’s hop on over to Egypt.
Lion Men In Egypt

Lion Human HybridsEgypt is probably best known for its animal headed gods and other strange stories. One such god was Maahes. According to Wikipedia, he was associated with war, weather, knives, lotuses, and devouring his captives. Maahes, Bast, and all of the other cat-human hybrids had a cult in what was then known as Leontopolis (City of Lions), known today as Tell al Muqdam.

The first recorded reference to Maahes is between 16th – 11th century B.C.  in Egypt. He had several titles which are pretty interesting as well.

    Lord of The Slaughter
    Wielder of The Knife
    The Scarlet Lord

I think it’s important to point out that Maahes is described as the son of a god (Ra) and a goddess (Bast or Sekhmet). I personally link the gods to the fallen angels, but where do the goddesses of mythology come from? Zechariah 5:9 may be able to shed some light on the possibility that there are indeed female angels.

    “Then lifted I up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came out two women, and the wind [was] in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork: and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heaven.” – Zechariah 5:9

Again, the verse doesn’t definitively say angels, but we don’t have any other examples in the Bible of any other being besides angels and birds that have wings. For a more in depth study on the goddesses of mythology, see my article, Goddesses: Female Angels, Female Nephilim, or Demonic Spirits?
Lion Men In India

Lion Human HybridNarasimha was worshipped in India and is believed to be an avatar of Shri Vishnu. Don’t be confused by the movie or online jargon when it comes to avatars. The word is of Indian (India) origin and it refers to the manifestation or appearance of a god.

Every depiction and story surrounding Narasima shows a creature that is blood thirsty and requires a human sacrifice. As we continue into our study on hybrids, we’ll see that this is a recurring theme throughout the entire world. Let’s move on to Germany for one of the oldest archaeological finds that depicts a lion-human hybrid.
Lion Men In Germany

German Lionman - Löwenmensch

The oldest known sculpture in existence is believed to be about 32,000 years old. Lowenmensch (Lion Human), but there is no consensus as to whether it is male or female. It was carved from a mammoth tusk using a stone knife. Was Lowenmensch the result of an over active imagination or the result of a real life encounter with a lion man? We may never know.

I will also take this opportunity to point out that I don’t necessarily agree with the way archaeological finds are currently dated. There are lots of problems with the current system because it relies too heavily on too many assumptions. Now lets see if we can find a way in which all of these stories may be connected.
The Ties That Bind

These legends cover parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia. They come from the Egyptians, Nubians, Indians, Hebrews, and Russians, but how or why do they all have similar stories? There is one strange but intriguing piece of evidence that links them all together.

    Hebrews  - Ariel (Name means, Lion of God or Lion of The Gods)
    Egyptian – Maahes (Born to a god and goddess)
    Nubia – Apedemak (Considered to be a god.)
    India – Narasimha (Believed to be the manifestation of a god.)
    Germany – Lowenmensch (Most scientists believe it represented a god).

All of these lion-men or lion-gods are associated with the gods of mythology, which I personally believe to be fallen angels. That is either the biggest coincidence ever or there is an organized conspiracy to get every culture on earth to talk about the same exact beings continuously throughout history.

When it comes down to it, we face a very real enemy that steps ahead of us when it comes to fighting the war on both celestial and terrestrial ground. Satan and his angels are not stupid when it comes to deception, and the deception going on today is that it is OK to blur the lines between what it means to be animal and human.
Honorable Mentions

Here are three more lion-human hybrid’s from around the world. They didn’t quite make the above list, but they are worth mentioning.

    Were-jaguar: Just like the werewolf, except the person shapeshifts into a jaguar (Olmec – South America).
    Sekhmet – The lioness headed goddess, known as the fiercest hunter in Egypt (Egypt – Africa).
    Sphinx – The head of a woman and body of a lion, probably best known for handing out riddles to heroes on their quests.

I want to end this with a very odd warning from Christ concerning the end times. I want you to really think about it and consider the possible full implications of the verse before you go on about your day.

    “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” – Matthew 24:22


http://ministerfortson.com/?p=3991

[Psalm 51:17]

Genetically modified monkeys created with cut-and-paste DNA
Breakthrough could help battle diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's but ethical concerns remain over animal testing

Uhm, it's been poisons in our food/water supply like Aspertame, MSG, etc that has lead to these diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

The work was carried out in a lab in China, where scientists said they had used a genome editing procedure, called Crispr/Cas9, to manipulate two genes in fertilised monkey eggs before transferring them to surrogate mothers.

Not trying to pick on China, but here we go again with China playing a big role in something - pretty much they've taken over America(little by little) b/c America is having trouble paying up its massive debts.

[Psalm 51:17]

Oh and those lion-human hybrids sightings I was telling you about earlier, those aren’t recent reports. They’re thousands of years old. Do you still think that you can tell the difference between “mythology” and modern science? There was a very good reason that I created the illusion of a modern report. It’s because way too many people automatically ignore any “strange” historical accounts and dismiss them as “mythology” as soon as they hear where the stories came from.

Yes, there's a reason why the public school system has indoctrinated children with mythology in their English classes.

[Mark]

FDA Appears Set to Approve Creating Human Embryos With Three Parents

An experimental technique for creating embryos with three biological parents appears to be moving toward an okay from the FDA. Ostensibly to prevent mitochondrial disease, the experiment would use one genetically modified egg (with the nucleus from another egg), and sperm to create a new human life via IVF.

Now, an FDA committee is holding hearings (on Feb 25-26) to determine whether to allow the technique to be used to bring babies to birth. From the Science story:

    In the United States, FDA has said it has the power to regulate any transfer of mitochondrial DNA in embryos, because it is a form of gene therapy.

    At least one researcher, Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University in Beaverton, has asked the agency for guidance on what a clinical trial would require. (Mitalipov’s lab has produced seven monkeys born after mtDNA replacement.) Kahn, the ethicist, puts the key issue facing the panel this way. By mixing new DNA into the germ line, “we’re not treating humans. We’re creating humans. There’s not a model for that.”

    Then there is the thornny issue of whether the technique should be used to treat infertility. Some reproductive biologists think that faulty mitochondria—or perhaps other factors in the egg cytoplasm that are exchanged in mtDNA replacement techniques—might be one of the key reasons fertility falls in women in their late 30s. They say that the procedure could help such women conceive, but critics say there is little animal data to support the idea.

I’ve written about this before–and in fact, was labeled with the “anti-science” pejorative for opposing three-parent embryos on safety and ethical grounds.

These issues are significant. Animals created through this method have had significant health issues. Making babies through this process would, in my opinion, constitute unethical human experimentation.

There are also significant ethical issues. For example, what would it do to family life were children to have three biological parents? Should the process be opened to lesbian couples so that both could be genetically related to a child one bears–which is impossible today?

Then, there are all the children out there begging to be adopted as we move heaven and earth–and spare no expense–to make it so that everyone who wants a biologically related child can have one.

We live in an age in which we believe we are entitled to what we want. So, look for the manufacture of 3-parent IVF embryos to eventually become part of reproductive medicine–the considerable expense for which required by law to be paid for by health insurance.

http://www.lifenews.com/2014/02/21/fda-appears-set-to-approve-creating-human-embryos-with-three-parents/

[Mark]

Dad May Join Two Moms for Disease-Free Designer Babies

A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.

The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans.

Because the process would change only a small, specific part of genetic code, scientists say a baby would largely retain the physical characteristics of the parents. Still, DNA from all three -- mother, father and donor -- would remain with the child throughout a lifetime, opening questions about long-term effects for this generation, and potentially the next. Ethicists worry that allowing pre-birth gene manipulation may one day lead to build-to-order designer babies.

“Once you make this change, if a female arises from the process and goes on to have children, that change is passed on, so it’s forever,” Phil Yeske, chief science officer of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, said by telephone. “That’s uncharted territory; we just don’t know what it means. Permanent change of the human germline has never been done before, and we don’t know what will happen in future generations.”
FDA Hearing

The Food and Drug Administration is scheduled today and tomorrow to explore the issue at a meeting, with doctors and researchers scheduled to talk. The FDA will then decide whether to allow scientists at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who engineered the approach, to move their testing program from macaque monkeys to woman.

Potentially, the procedure may cut off mitochondrial diseases that are passed down through females and occur in about 1 in 4,000 people. One example is Melas syndrome, which causes a person to have continuing small strokes that damage their brains, leading to vision loss, problems with movement, dementia and death, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“What the FDA needs to think about is that this isn’t a procedure to repair mitochondrial disease,” said Vamsi Mootha, a professor of systems biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston who studies mitochondrial disorders. “It’s designed to prevent disease. It’s designed to offer a woman who’s a carrier for disease more options.”

Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the researcher heading the Oregon team’s work, declined to comment before the FDA meeting.
Monkey Research

In early research, four macaque monkeys were born from the procedure, according to a 2009 report by the Oregon researchers in the journal Nature. They were reported as healthy at age 3.

In October 2012, Nature published reports that the technique had also been used in human egg cells. The resulting embryos were allowed to develop to the blastocyst stage, which usually occurs about five days after fertilization.

About half of the egg cells displayed normal development, the scientists found. Though the procedure is legal in the laboratory, the embryos that result from it can’t be implanted in women without the FDA’s consent, leading to today’s session.

There are two types of DNA: nuclear, which is handed down by both parents, and mitochondria, which only comes from the mother. The technology replaces a donor’s nuclear DNA, which determines things like hair color and intelligence, with the same material from the prospective mother, leaving the healthy mitochondria from the donor in place.

The new lab-made egg is then fertilized with the father’s sperm in vitro and implanted in the mother’s womb.

This isn’t the first time that scientists have attempted to disrupt the actions of mitochondria DNA to help fight disease, or the first time the FDA has considered the issue.
Earlier Method

From 1997 to 2003, about 30 children worldwide were born using a method that injected donor mitochondria DNA into eggs after they were fertilized. The first baby born with this technique was reported in 1997. In 2003, though, the FDA told fertility clinics that genetically manipulated embryos were considered a biological product, and subject to regulation, essentially halting the technique in humans.

The lives of those children should be thoroughly investigated before the new procedure is cleared for use in a human trial, said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning at Tufts University in Boston.
Ethical Issues

In the 1982 position paper, “Splicing Life,” the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research made a distinction between gene therapy that takes place after someone is born compared with manipulation that occurs before, altering the body’s genome.

There was broad consensus that the latter, called germ-line engineering, shouldn’t be pursued, said Krimsky, who was one of the consultants for the paper. That changed “starting in the late 1990s, when people started whittling away at that distinction,” he said in a telephone interview.

“You’re altering the genome of an unborn child, someone who can’t make a judgment about whether they want to be genetically modified,” Krimsky said by telephone. “What will be next, once you allow this?”

Scientists also are concerned that the procedure may not be safe, according to a paper in September 2013 in the journal Science, whose lead author was evolutionary biologist Klaus Reinhardt at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Reinhardt’s paper noted that male mice bred from this technique sometimes had altered breathing, as well as reduced learning and exploring capabilities, according to earlier research. Female mice weren’t tested.

The research in mice suggests that the replacement technique may destroy some lines of communication between mitochondria and the cell’s transplanted nucleus, Reinhardt’s editorial said. Though the macaque monkeys don’t show the same problems, there may be long-term issues from the DNA replacement, he wrote.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/dad-may-join-two-moms-for-disease-free-designer-babies.html

[Mark]

Could we see the return of ancient extinct species?
As gene technology develops, scientists move ever closer to the possibility of bringing extinct species back to life. The Long New Foundation in California is on the front line of research investigating the resurrection of ancient species, such as the woolly mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger, and aims to achieve the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct species.   
http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/could-we-see-return-ancient-extinct-species-001400


FDA Opening 'The Barn Door' To Human Cloning?
The Federal Drug Administration is considering technology to produce three-parent babies, but an expert who testified before Congress believes it's a bad idea. "Let's back up just a second and look at what they are proposing to do -- They're proposing to try to create disease-free children by a type of genetic engineering," he tells OneNewsNow. "And the proposals aren't actually to treat anybody; they're to create new individuals that they hope won't have a disease." But Dr. Prentice laments that during the hearing, the FDA totally ignored alternatives that might treat people now suffering from the genetic diseases passed from a mother to her child. Further, the technique represents a form of cloning.   
http://www.onenewsnow.com/pro-life/2014/03/03/fda-opening-the-barn-door-to-human-cloning#.UxXDSvldXKc


Coming Soon – Revived Extinct Species
A team of scientists from the Revive & Restore project are working to resurrect the woolly mammoth. Until very recently, resurrecting an extinct species has been the stuff of sci-fi novels and monster movies. But a team of researchers from the The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco, California is on the verge of making this scientific wet dream a reality. The Revive & Restore project has one very specific goal: the rescue of endangered and extinct animals. Right now, the team is focused on resurrecting the Passenger Pigeon, a species that was extinguished by overexploitation in 1914. But Revive & Restore is already working to pull the woolly mammoth out of extinction. In an interview with the New York times, Stewart Brand, co-founder of Revive & Restore, explained...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/132558-Woolly-Mammoth-Clones-Arriving-Soon

[Psalm 51:17]

FDA Opening 'The Barn Door' To Human Cloning?
The Federal Drug Administration is considering technology to produce three-parent babies, but an expert who testified before Congress believes it's a bad idea. "Let's back up just a second and look at what they are proposing to do -- They're proposing to try to create disease-free children by a type of genetic engineering," he tells OneNewsNow. "And the proposals aren't actually to treat anybody; they're to create new individuals that they hope won't have a disease." But Dr. Prentice laments that during the hearing, the FDA totally ignored alternatives that might treat people now suffering from the genetic diseases passed from a mother to her child. Further, the technique represents a form of cloning.   
http://www.onenewsnow.com/pro-life/2014/03/03/fda-opening-the-barn-door-to-human-cloning#.UxXDSvldXKc

Ah...but ultimately they WON'T create these "new" individuals that are sin-less...

Romans 5:12  Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

[Kilika]

It's kind of humorous actually. Think about it, they want to clone some disease free human, yet the big issue they don't seem to admit to is that the starting material, human DNA, for their little experiments is flawed, corrupted. It's like building a building with faulty bricks. It might go together just fine, but that isn't an indication the bricks will not break and fail structurally. You can make the case that a human's DNA is now designed to break, genetically speaking, thanks to Adam and Eve.

[Psalm 51:17]

Dad May Join Two Moms for Disease-Free Designer Babies
2/24/14
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/dad-may-join-two-moms-for-disease-free-designer-babies.html

A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.

The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans.

Because the process would change only a small, specific part of genetic code, scientists say a baby would largely retain the physical characteristics of the parents. Still, DNA from all three -- mother, father and donor -- would remain with the child throughout a lifetime, opening questions about long-term effects for this generation, and potentially the next. Ethicists worry that allowing pre-birth gene manipulation may one day lead to build-to-order designer babies.

“Once you make this change, if a female arises from the process and goes on to have children, that change is passed on, so it’s forever,” Phil Yeske, chief science officer of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, said by telephone. “That’s uncharted territory; we just don’t know what it means. Permanent change of the human germline has never been done before, and we don’t know what will happen in future generations.”

FDA Hearing

The Food and Drug Administration is scheduled today and tomorrow to explore the issue at a meeting, with doctors and researchers scheduled to talk. The FDA will then decide whether to allow scientists at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who engineered the approach, to move their testing program from macaque monkeys to woman.

Potentially, the procedure may cut off mitochondrial diseases that are passed down through females and occur in about 1 in 4,000 people. One example is Melas syndrome, which causes a person to have continuing small strokes that damage their brains, leading to vision loss, problems with movement, dementia and death, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“What the FDA needs to think about is that this isn’t a procedure to repair mitochondrial disease,” said Vamsi Mootha, a professor of systems biology and medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston who studies mitochondrial disorders. “It’s designed to prevent disease. It’s designed to offer a woman who’s a carrier for disease more options.”

Shoukhrat Mitalipov, the researcher heading the Oregon team’s work, declined to comment before the FDA meeting.

Monkey Research

In early research, four macaque monkeys were born from the procedure, according to a 2009 report by the Oregon researchers in the journal Nature. They were reported as healthy at age 3.

In October 2012, Nature published reports that the technique had also been used in human egg cells. The resulting embryos were allowed to develop to the blastocyst stage, which usually occurs about five days after fertilization.

About half of the egg cells displayed normal development, the scientists found. Though the procedure is legal in the laboratory, the embryos that result from it can’t be implanted in women without the FDA’s consent, leading to today’s session.

There are two types of DNA: nuclear, which is handed down by both parents, and mitochondria, which only comes from the mother. The technology replaces a donor’s nuclear DNA, which determines things like hair color and intelligence, with the same material from the prospective mother, leaving the healthy mitochondria from the donor in place.

The new lab-made egg is then fertilized with the father’s sperm in vitro and implanted in the mother’s womb.

This isn’t the first time that scientists have attempted to disrupt the actions of mitochondria DNA to help fight disease, or the first time the FDA has considered the issue.

Earlier Method

From 1997 to 2003, about 30 children worldwide were born using a method that injected donor mitochondria DNA into eggs after they were fertilized. The first baby born with this technique was reported in 1997. In 2003, though, the FDA told fertility clinics that genetically manipulated embryos were considered a biological product, and subject to regulation, essentially halting the technique in humans.

The lives of those children should be thoroughly investigated before the new procedure is cleared for use in a human trial, said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning at Tufts University in Boston.

Ethical Issues

In the 1982 position paper, “Splicing Life,” the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research made a distinction between gene therapy that takes place after someone is born compared with manipulation that occurs before, altering the body’s genome.

There was broad consensus that the latter, called germ-line engineering, shouldn’t be pursued, said Krimsky, who was one of the consultants for the paper. That changed “starting in the late 1990s, when people started whittling away at that distinction,” he said in a telephone interview.

“You’re altering the genome of an unborn child, someone who can’t make a judgment about whether they want to be genetically modified,” Krimsky said by telephone. “What will be next, once you allow this?”

Scientists also are concerned that the procedure may not be safe, according to a paper in September 2013 in the journal Science, whose lead author was evolutionary biologist Klaus Reinhardt at the University of Tuebingen in Germany.

Reinhardt’s paper noted that male mice bred from this technique sometimes had altered breathing, as well as reduced learning and exploring capabilities, according to earlier research. Female mice weren’t tested.

The research in mice suggests that the replacement technique may destroy some lines of communication between mitochondria and the cell’s transplanted nucleus, Reinhardt’s editorial said. Though the macaque monkeys don’t show the same problems, there may be long-term issues from the DNA replacement, he wrote.

[Mark]

Researchers Create First-Ever 'Designer Chromosome' in Yeast [Video]

Researchers have created the world's first synthetic functional chromosome in yeast. The study could pave the way for designer bugs that act as tiny factories producing biofuels and even drug components.

The work on the synthesis of the eukaryotic (cells with membrane-bound nucleus) chromosome was carried out by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center's Institute for Systems Genetics and colleagues.

The new chromosome is called as SynIII and has 273,871 base pairs of DNA compared to 316,667 base pairs present in biological yeast. Certain parts of the chromosome that were considered unnecessary such as repeating segments of the DNA, junk DNA and jumping genes were all removed during the synthesis of the chromosome, researchers said.

rest: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6462/20140328/researchers-create-first-designer-chromosome-yeast-video.htm

[Psalm 51:17]

http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/sheep-born-with-human-face-in-saudi-owner-2014-04-08-1.544754
Sheep born with human face in Saudi: owner

It died just a few hours after its birth

By Staff
Published Tuesday, April 08, 2014

An ewe sheep in Saudi Arabia gave birth to a sheep with a human face but it died just a few hours after its birth, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

 The ewe had given birth to the bizarre baby sheep at a farm in the southern town of Samita after a nine-month pregnancy although such animals normally have average pregnancy period of five months, the Arabic language daily Sabq said.

“I was very surprised when this sheep remained pregnant for nine months as humans,” its owner Abu Abdullah said.

“I was shocked when I learned about its delivery. I was out of town when my workers contacted me and said the baby goat has a human face. I came back and saw its face but it was already dead.”

[Kilika]

  Nothing human about it. It's just deformed. And the yellow fur tells me it also had delivery issues, because the yellow means it went to the bathroom while still in the placenta before birth. Happens to human babies too.

[Psalm 51:17]

It's happened before though...

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sheep-gives-birth-to-human-faced-lamb/story-e6freuy9-1225819071357

Sheep gives birth to human-faced lamb 
 AFP  •
January 14, 2010 8:32AM

A SHEEP gave birth to a dead lamb with a human-like face. The lamb was born in a village not far from the city of Izmir, Turkey. 
 
Erhan Elibol, a vet, performed  a caesarean on the animal to take the lamb out, but was horrified to see that the features of the lamb's snout bore a striking resemblance to a human face.

“I’ve seen mutations with cows and sheep before. I’ve seen a one-eyed calf, a two-headed calf, a five-legged calf. But when I saw this youngster I could not believe my eyes. His mother could not deliver him so I had to help the animal,” the 29-year-old veterinary said.

The lamb’s head had human features on – the eyes, the nose and the mouth – only the ears were those of a sheep.

Vets said that the rare mutation most likely occurred as a result of improper mutation since the fodder for the lamb’s mother was abundant with vitamin A, CNNTurk.com reports.
 
A goat from Zimbabwe gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

"This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really embarrassing," he reportedly said. "The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control. We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an act to produce a product with human features," he added.

The mutant creature was hairless. Local residents said that even dogs were afraid to approach the bizarre animal.

The locals burnt the body of the little goat, and biologists had no chance to study the rare mutation.

[Mark]

Researchers Clone Cells From Two Adult Men

After years of failed attempts, researchers have successfully generated stem cells from adults. The process could provide a new way for scientists to generate healthy replacements for diseased or damaged cells in patients

A previous claim that Korean investigators had succeeded in the feat turned out to be fraudulent. Then last year, a group at Oregon Health & Science University generated stem cells using the Dolly technique, but with cells from fetuses and infants.

In this case, cells from a 35-year-old man and a 75-year-old man were used to generate two separate lines of stem cells. The process, known as nuclear transfer, involves taking the DNA from a donor and inserting it into an egg that has been stripped of its DNA. The resulting hybrid is stimulated to fuse and start dividing; after a few days the “embryo” creates a lining of stem cells that are destined to develop into all of the cells and tissues in the human body. Researchers extract these cells and grow them in the lab, where they are treated with the appropriate growth factors and other agents to develop into specific types of cells, like neurons, muscle, or insulin-producing cells.

Reporting in the journal Cell Stem Cell, Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology, and his colleagues found that tweaking the Oregon team’s process was the key to success with reprogramming the older cells. Like the earlier team, Lanza’s group used caffeine to prevent the fused egg from dividing prematurely. Rather than leaving the egg with its newly introduced DNA for 30 minutes before activating the dividing stage, they let the eggs rest for about two hours. This gave the DNA enough time to acclimate to its new environment and interact with the egg’s development factors, which erased each of the donor cell’s existing history and reprogrammed it to act like a brand new cell in an embryo.

The team, which included an international group of stem cell scientists, used 77 eggs from four different donors. They tested their new method by waiting for 30 minutes before activating 38 of the resulting embryos, and waiting two hours before triggering 39 of them. None of the 38 developed into the next stage, while two of the embryos getting extended time did. “There is a massive molecular change occurring. You are taking a fully differentiated cell, and you need to have the egg do its magic,” says Lanza. “You need to extend the reprogramming time before you can force the cell to divide.”

While a 5% efficiency may not seem laudable, Lanza says that it’s not so bad given that the stem cells appear to have had their genetic history completely erased and returned to that of a blank slate. “This procedure works well, and works with adult cells,” says Lanza.

The results also teach stem cell scientists some important lessons. First, that the nuclear transfer method that the Oregon team used is valid, and that with some changes it can be replicated using older adult cells. “It looks like the protocols we described are real, they are universal, they work in different hands, in different labs and with different cells,” says Shoukhrat Mitalopov, director of the center for embryonic cell and gene therapy at Oregon Health & Science University, and lead investigator of that study.

Second, the findings confirm that the key factor in making nuclear transfer work with human cells is not the age of the donor cell, as some experts have argued, but the quality of the donor egg. “No matter how much you tweak the protocols or optimize them, it looks like the major player in efficiency is the individual egg quality,” says Mitalipov. He notes that all of his stem cell lines came from the same egg donor. The two cell lines described by Lanza’s group also came from one egg donor.

This latest success should reignite the debate over which reprogramming method generates the most reliable, and potentially useful, stem cells for eventually treating patients. The nuclear transfer method may join two other ways of making stem cells: one, developed by James Thomson in 1998, relied on extracting them from days-old embryos left over from IVF, and another, developed by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka in 2006 (and for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize), bypassed the egg and embryo completely, allowing researchers to make stem cells by modifying an adult’s cells using a mixture of just four genes.

Each method has it advantages and risks, however. IVF embryos are difficult to come by, since they require permission from couples to be used for stem cells research, and they may not be genetically matched to patients who might benefit from cells they generate.

While so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, avoid the need for embryos and could be matched to patients, some studies suggest that the process may not completely reprogram cells, leaving populations of some partially reprogrammed ones in the mix. In addition, iPS cells aren’t useful for treating mitochondrial diseases, which result from mutations in the cell’s energy factories, which have their own DNA outside of the cell’s DNA in the nucleus. If a cell with a mitochondrial mutation is reprogrammed using the iPS technique, any mutations would be reprogrammed as well.

Nuclear transfer, however, could treat these disorders since it involves an egg that provides its own, healthy mitochondria. But the process requires a good supply of eggs, which have to be donated by healthy volunteers. That raises ethical concerns since the technique could produce human clones. That’s why research on nuclear transfer is not funded by the federal government, and scientists know less about these cells and their potential than they do about iPS cells. “They have become kind of like cursed cells,” says Mitalipov of the stem cells generated through nuclear transfer. “But we clearly need to understand more about them.”

For patients who might one day benefit from stem cell-based therapies, that understanding could mean the difference between life and death, which is why the latest findings are potentially significant. “We have another way to skin the cat,” Lanza says. “The hope is that iPS cells work out, but for the future application of stem cell therapies to treating disease, it’s good knowing there is another way to make stem cells should we need to.”

men

[Psalm 51:17]

In the gay marriage/USSC thread in the War on the Family forum of this site, posted an article over how an Indiana sodomite couple has children from "reproductive technology".

http://hosted2.ap.org/CARIE/6b85546689744819aa7a64cd3ca6cee6/Article_2014-04-10-Gay%20Marriage-Indiana/id-92e551b254c142159bcca9460e015178

Quasney and Sandler have been together 13 years and have two daughters, ages 1 and 2, conceived through "reproductive technology" and birthed by Sandler, according to their brief. In their federal complaint, the women argued that Indiana's marriage law "encourages and invites private bias and discrimination, including in medical settings."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_technology

Same-sex procreation[edit]

In recent decades, a new possibility for LGBT parenting, same-sex procreation (where two women could have a daughter with equal genetic contributions from both women, or where two men could have a son or daughter with equal genetic contributions from both men), has become a possibility, through the creation of either female sperm or male eggs from the cells of adult women and men. With female sperm and male eggs, lesbian and gay couples wishing to become parents would not have to rely on a third party donor of sperm or egg.

The first significant development occurred in 1991, in a patent application filed by U.Penn. scientists to fix male sperm by extracting some sperm, correcting a genetic defect in vitro, and injecting the sperm back into the male's testicles.[2] While the vast majority of the patent application dealt with male sperm, one line suggested that the procedure would work with XX cells, i.e., cells from an adult woman to make female sperm.

In the two decades that followed, the idea of female sperm became more of a reality. In 1997, scientists partially confirmed such techniques by creating chicken female sperm in a similar manner.[3] They did so by injecting blood stem cells from an adult female chicken into a male chicken's testicles. Some years later, other Japanese scientists created female offspring by combining the eggs of two adult mice.

In 2008, a flurry of announcements revealed further developments with human same-sex reproduction, with a patent application filed by an American researcher[4] specifically on methods for creating human female sperm using artificial or natural Y chromosomes and testicular transplantation.[5] A UK-based group, in an interview, predicted they would be able to create human female sperm within five years.[6] Another group at the Butantan Institute in Brazil is working on creating male eggs from embryonic stem cells, and if successful, from adult skin cells, though their current experiments are with mice.[7] All of these developments and more are listed in Timeline of Research in Human Same-sex Procreation.

[Mark]

World's first GM babies born


The world's first geneticallymodified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found

to contain genes from three 'parents'.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.

Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults --two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their 'germline' means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.

Altering the human germline - in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species - is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world's scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

Writing in the journal Human Reproduction, the researchers, led by fertility pioneer Professor Jacques Cohen, say that this 'is the first case of human germline genetic modification resulting in normal healthy children'.

Some experts severely criticised the experiments.

Lord Winston, of the Hammersmith Hospital in West London, told the BBC yesterday: 'Regarding the treat-ment of the infertile, there is no evidence that this technique is worth doing . . . I am very surprised that it was even carried out at this stage. It would certainly not be allowed in Britain.'

John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said: 'One has tremendous sympathy for couples who suffer infertility problems. But this seems to be a further illustration of the fact that the whole process of in vitro fertilisation as a means of conceiving babies leads to babies being regarded as objects on a production line.

'It is a further and very worrying step down the wrong road for humanity.'

Professor Cohen and his colleagues diagnosed that the women were infertile because they had defects in tiny structures in their egg cells, called mitochondria.

They took eggs from donors and, using a fine needle, sucked some of the internal material - containing 'healthy' mitochondria - and injected it into eggs from the women wanting to conceive.

Because mitochondria contain genes, the babies resulting from the treatment have inherited DNA from both women. These genes can now be passed down the germline along the maternal line.

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which regulates 'assisted reproduction' technology in Britain, said that it would not license the technique here because it involved altering the germline.

Jacques Cohen is regarded as a brilliant but controversial scientist who has pushed the boundaries of assisted reproduction technologies.

He developed a technique which allows infertile men to have their own children, by injecting sperm DNA straight into the egg in the lab.

Prior to this, only infertile women were able to conceive using IVF.

Last year, Professor Cohen said that his expertise would allow him to clone children --a prospect treated with horror by the mainstream scientific community.

'It would be an afternoon's work for one of my students,' he said, adding that he had been approached by 'at least three' individuals wishing to create a cloned child, but had turned down their requests.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-43767/Worlds-GM-babies-born.html#ixzz2zhzHpMTx

[Psalm 51:17]

How many times have we seen THIS in Hollywood entertainment products?

Luke 23:29  For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck.
Luk 23:30  Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us.
Luk 23:31  For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

[Mark]

Scientists Add Letters to DNA’s Alphabet, Raising Hope and Fear

Scientists reported Wednesday that they had taken a significant step toward altering the fundamental alphabet of life — creating for the first time an organism with DNA containing artificial genetic code.

The accomplishment might eventually lead to organisms that can make medicines or industrial products that cells with only the natural genetic code cannot..

The scientists behind the work at the Scripps Research Institute have already formed a company to try to use the technique to develop new antibiotics, vaccines and other products, though a lot more work needs to be done before this is practical.

The work also gives some support to the concept that life can exist elsewhere in the universe using genetics different from those on Earth.

“This is the first time that you have had a living cell manage an alien genetic alphabet,” said Steven A. Benner, a researcher in the field at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainesville, Fla., who was not involved in the new work.

But the research, published online by the journal Nature, is bound to raise safety concerns and questions about whether humans are playing God. The new paper could intensify calls for greater regulation of the budding field known as synthetic biology, which involves the creation of biological systems intended for specific purposes.

“The arrival of this unprecedented ‘alien’ life form could in time have far-reaching ethical, legal and regulatory implications,” Jim Thomas of the ETC Group, a Canadian advocacy organization, said in an email. “While synthetic biologists invent new ways to monkey with the fundamentals of life, governments haven’t even been able to cobble together the basics of oversight, assessment or regulation for this surging field.”

Despite the great diversity of life on Earth, all species, from simple bacteria to human beings, use the same genetic code. It consists of four chemical units in DNA, sometimes called nucleotides or bases, that are usually represented by the letters A, C, G and T. The sequence of these chemical units determines what proteins the cell makes. Those proteins in turn do most of the work in cells and are required for the structure, function and regulation of the body’s tissues and organs.

The Scripps researchers chemically created two new nucleotides, which they called X and Y. They inserted an X-Y pair into the common bacterium E. coli. The bacteria were able to reproduce normally, though a bit more slowly than usual, replicating the X and Y along with the natural nucleotides.

In effect, the bacteria have a genetic code of six letters rather than four, perhaps allowing them to make novel proteins that could function in a completely different way from those created naturally.

“If you have a language that has a certain number of letters, you want to add letters so you can write more words and tell more stories,” said Floyd E. Romesberg, a chemist at Scripps who led the work.

Dr. Romesberg dismissed concern that novel organisms would run amok and cause harm, saying the technique was safe because the synthetic nucleotides were fed to the bacteria. Should the bacteria escape into the environment or enter someone’s body, they would not be able to obtain the needed synthetic material and would either die or revert to using only natural DNA.
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“This could never infect something,” he said. That is one reason the company he co-founded, Synthorx, is looking at using the technique to grow viruses or bacteria to be used as live vaccines. Once in the bloodstream, they would conceivably induce an immune response but not be able to reproduce.

One possible use of an expanded genetic alphabet is to allow cells to make new types of proteins.

Combinations of three nucleotides in DNA specify particular amino acids, which are strung together to make proteins. The cell, following those instructions, strings amino acids together to form proteins. With rare exceptions, living things use only 20 amino acids.

But there are many amino acids that could possibly be used in proteins, potentially adding new functions. Ambrx, a San Diego company that has filed to go public, is incorporating novel amino acids into certain proteins that are used as drugs in an effort to make the drugs more potent in killing tumors or make treatments last longer in the bloodstream.

Proteins with novel amino acids might also be better tracked to research how cells work, or isolated for use in diagnostic testing.

Work on artificial DNA has been underway for more than 20 years. Man-made nucleotides have functioned in test tubes and are even used in some diagnostic tests.

But until now it has not been possible to get them to function in a living cell. Dr. Romesberg said he and his colleagues created 300 variants before coming up with nucleotides that would be stable enough and would be replicated as easily as the natural ones when the cells divide. The X nucleotide pairs with Y, just as A pairs with T and C pairs with G, allowing the DNA to be accurately replicated.

The bacteria described in the Nature article each contained only a single X-Y pair. It is not yet known whether a cell would function if it contained many such pairs. It is also not clear how long the bacteria would survive and retain the foreign code. The article mentions growing them for only about 24 replications over 15 hours.

Most important, the researchers have not yet demonstrated that the artificial nucleotides can actually be used by the cell to make proteins. That will require more genetic engineering of the bacteria, though work by others has suggested how it might be done.

Dr. Benner in Florida is trying to engineer cells genetically so they can make their own nonnatural nucleotides. That would allow the cells to survive on their own and be more useful, he said.

But Dr. Romesberg and colleagues took a shortcut of sorts. Chloroplasts in plants have the ability to import nucleotides from the surrounding tissue, and other researchers have figured out what genes are responsible for this. The Scripps researchers spliced an algae gene into E. coli, giving the bacteria the ability to take up the X and Y nucleotides from the medium in which they grew.

“It took some clever problem-solving to get where they got,” said Eric T. Kool, a professor of chemistry at Stanford who is also doing research in the area. “It is clear that the day is coming that we’ll have stably replicating unnatural genetic structures.”

Besides any possible practical applications, the research into the field, which is sometimes called xenobiology, could shed light on why living things evolved to have four nucleotides. It could be that four is the most efficient number, in which case organisms with expanded genetic codes might not function very well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/business/researchers-report-breakthrough-in-creating-artificial-genetic-code.html?hp&_r=2

[Mark]

Scientists Create Animals That Are Part-Human

On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.

“It’s mice on a large scale,” Chamberlain says with a shrug.

As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research.

In fact, the Academies’ report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people.

Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.

Biological mixing of species

But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species, evoking the Greek myth of the monstrous chimera, which was part lion, part goat and part serpent.

In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.

Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep’s head?

The “idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered,” the academies report warned.

Mice with human brains

In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson’s progress.

Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case, Greely said, the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice’s behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.

The Academies’ report recommends that each institution involved in stem cell research create a formal, standing committee to specifically oversee the work, including experiments that mix human and animal cells.

Weissman, who has already created mice with 1 percent human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also need to authorize the experiment.

Harvesting human organs from sheep

Few human-animal hybrids are as advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.

Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in his experiment contain about 10 percent human liver cells, though a few have as much as 40 percent, Zanjani said.

Because the human liver regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting partial organs into people whose livers are failing.

Zanjani must first ensure no animal diseases would be passed on to patients. He also must find an efficient way to completely separate the human and sheep cells, a tough task because the human cells aren’t clumped together but are rather spread throughout the sheep’s liver.

Zanjani and other stem cell scientists defend their research and insist they aren’t creating monsters — or anything remotely human.
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“We haven’t seen them act as anything but sheep,” Zanjani said.

Zanjani’s goals are many years from being realized.

He’s also had trouble raising funds, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is investigating the university over allegations made by another researcher that the school mishandled its research sheep. Zanjani declined to comment on that matter, and university officials have stood by their practices.

Allegations about the proper treatment of lab animals may take on strange new meanings as scientists work their way up the evolutionary chart. First, human stem cells were injected into bacteria, then mice and now sheep. Such research blurs biological divisions between species that couldn’t until now be breached.

Combining monkeys and people

Drawing ethical boundaries that no research appears to have crossed yet, the Academies recommend a prohibition on mixing human stem cells with embryos from monkeys and other primates. But even that policy recommendation isn’t tough enough for some researchers.

“The boundary is going to push further into larger animals,” New York Medical College professor Stuart Newman said. “That’s just asking for trouble.”

Newman and anti-biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin have been tracking this issue for the last decade and were behind a rather creative assault on both interspecies mixing and the government’s policy of patenting individual human genes and other living matter.

Years ago, the two applied for a patent for what they called a “humanzee,” a hypothetical — but very possible — creation that was half human and chimp.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevents the patenting of people.

Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning people into commodities.

And that’s a point, Newman warns, that stem scientists are edging closer to every day: “Once you are on the slope, you tend to move down it.”

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7681252/ns/health-cloning_and_stem_cells/t/scientists-create-animals-are-part-human/#.U3s0XyihFyL 

[Mark]

The Era Of Chimeras: Scientists Fearlessly Create Bizarre Human/Animal Hybrids

Did you know that scientists are creating cow/human hybrids, pig/human hybrids and even mouse/human hybrids?  This is happening every single day in labs all over the western world, but most people have never even heard about it.  So would you drink milk from a cow/human hybrid that produces milk that is almost identical to human breast milk?  And how would you interact with a mouse that has a brain that is almost entirely human?  These are the kinds of questions that we will have to start to address as a society as scientists create increasingly bizarre human/animal hybrids.  Thanks to dramatic advances in genetic technology, we have gotten to the point where it is literally possible for college students to create new hybrid lifeforms in their basements.   Of course our laws have not kept pace with these advances, and now that Pandora’s Box has been opened, it is going to be nearly impossible to shut it.

Scientists try to justify the creation of human/animal hybrids by telling us that it will help “cure disease” and help “end world hunger”, but what if scientists discover that combining human DNA with animal DNA can give us incredible new abilities or greatly extended lifespans?  Will humanity really have the restraint to keep from going down that road?

In my previous article entitled “Transhumanists: Superhuman Powers And Life Extension Technologies Will Allow Us To Become Like God“, I explored the obsession that transhumanists have with human enhancement.  The temptation to “take control of our own evolution” will surely be too great for many scientists to resist.  And even if some nations outlaw the complete merging of humans and animals, that does not mean that everyone else in the world will.

And once animal DNA gets into our breeding pool, how will we ever put the genie back into the bottle?  As the DNA of the human race becomes corrupted, it is easy to imagine a future where there are very few “pure humans” remaining.

Sadly, most of the scientists working in this field express very little concern for these types of considerations.  In fact, one very prominent U.S. geneticist says that we should not even worry about hybridization because he believes that humans were originally pig/chimpanzee hybrids anyway…

    The human species began as the hybrid offspring of a male pig and a female chimpanzee, an American geneticist has suggested.

    The startling claim has been made by Eugene McCarthy, who is also one of the world’s leading authorities on hybridisation in animals.

    He points out that while humans have many features in common with chimps, we also have a large number of distinguishing characteristics not found in any other primates.

So if we are just hybrid creatures ourselves, why should we be scared of making more hybrids?

From their point of view, it all makes perfect sense.

And right now, extremely weird human/animal hybrids are being grown all over the United States.

For example, just check out the following excerpt from an NBC News article about what is going on in Nevada…

    On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs.

    The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can’t wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus’ brain about two months ago.

    “It’s mice on a large scale,” Chamberlain says with a shrug.

When this article came across my desk recently, I noted that it was almost ten years old.

Over the past decade, things have gotten much, much stranger.

For example, scientists have now created mice that have artificial human chromosomes “in every cell in their bodies“…

    Scientists have created genetically-engineered mice with artificial human chromosomes in every cell of their bodies, as part of a series of studies showing that it may be possible to treat genetic diseases with a radically new form of gene therapy.

    In one of the unpublished studies, researchers made a human artificial chromosome in the laboratory from chemical building blocks rather than chipping away at an existing human chromosome, indicating the increasingly powerful technology behind the new field of synthetic biology.

And researchers at the University of Wisconsin figured out a way to transfer cells from human embryos into the brains of mice.  When those cells from the human embryos began to grow and develop, they actually made the mice substantially smarter…

    Yet experiments like these are going forward just the same. In just the past few months, scientists at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Rochester have published data on their human-animal neural chimeras. For the Wisconsin study, researchers injected mice with an immunotoxin to destroy a part of their brains–the hippocampus–that’s associated with learning, memory, and spatial reasoning. Then the researchers replaced those damaged cells with cells derived from human embryos. The cells proliferated and the lab chimeras recovered their ability to navigate a water maze.

    For the Rochester study, researchers implanted newborn mice with nascent human glial cells, which help support and nourish neurons in the brain. Six months later, the human parts had elbowed out the mouse equivalents, and the animals had enhanced ability to solve a simple maze and learn conditioned cues. These protocols might run afoul of the anti-hybrid laws, and perhaps they should arouse some questions. These chimeric mice may not be human, or even really human, but they’re certainly one step further down the path to Algernon. It may not be so long before we’re faced with some hairy bioethics: What rights should we assign to mice with human brains?

So what should we call mice that have brains that are mostly human?

And at what point would our relationship with such creatures fundamentally change?

When they learn to talk?

Scientists all over the planet are recklessly creating these chimeras without really thinking through the implications.

In China, scientists have actually inserted human genes into the DNA of dairy cow embryos.

Now there are hundreds of human/cow hybrids that produce milk that is virtually identical to human breast milk.

Would you buy such milk if it showed up in your supermarket?  The scientists that “designed” these cows say that is the goal.

But of course this is just the tip of the iceberg.  A very good Slate article detailed some more of the human/animal hybrid experiments that have been taking place all over the planet…

    Not long ago, Chinese scientists embedded genes for human milk proteins into a mouse’s genome and have since created herds of humanized-milk-producing goats. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Michigan have a method for putting a human anal sphincter into a mouse as a means of finding better treatments for fecal incontinence, and doctors are building animals with humanized immune systems to serve as subjects for new HIV vaccines.

And Discovery News has documented even more bizarre human/animal hybrids that scientists have developed…

-Rabbit Eggs with Human Cells

-Pigs with Human Blood

-Sheep with Human Livers

-Cow Eggs with Human Cells

-Cat-Human Hybrid Proteins

As technology continues to advance, the possibilities are going to be endless.

One professor at Harvard even wants to create a Neanderthal/human hybrid.  He says that he just needs an “adventurous female human” to carry the child…

    Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

    His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

    He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA.

    He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

    ‘It depends on a hell of a lot of things, but I think it can be done.’

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a really, really bad idea to me.

And right now, the U.S. federal government is actually considering a plan which would allow scientists to create babies that come from genetic material drawn from three parents…

    A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.

    The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans.

    Because the process would change only a small, specific part of genetic code, scientists say a baby would largely retain the physical characteristics of the parents. Still, DNA from all three — mother, father and donor — would remain with the child throughout a lifetime, opening questions about long-term effects for this generation, and potentially the next. Ethicists worry that allowing pre-birth gene manipulation may one day lead to build-to-order designer babies.

Many scientists believe that these kinds of technologies will “change the world”.

They might be more right about that than they ever could possibly imagine.

When we start monkeying with human DNA, we could be opening up doorways that we never even knew existed.

If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  Hopefully scientists around the globe will understand the dangers of these types of experiments before it is too late.

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-era-of-chimeras-scientists-fearlessly-create-bizarre-humananimal-hybrids

[Mark]

Could the passenger pigeon be raised from the DEAD? Scientists spend millions to revive extinct bird using centuries-old DNA

    San Francisco geneticists plan to use a process known as ‘de-extinction’
    Technique involves using pigeon DNA taken from museum specimens
    Scientists will then fill in gaps with fragments from a band-tailed pigeon
    This reconstructed genome would be placed into stem cells of a pigeon
    Scientists would then inject these back into live band-tailed pigeons
    As those birds mate, their chicks would have passenger pigeon genes
    Technique could be used to bring back hundreds of other extinct species
    By 1900, wild passenger pigeons were extinct as a result of human activity


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2662662/Could-passenger-pigeon-raised-DEAD-Scientists-spend-millions-revive-extinct-bird-using-centuries-old-DNA.html#ixzz35BrQydGD

[Mark]

Scientists Prepare to Solve Mystery of Sumerian DNA

The ancient Sumerians, builders of the world’s first known civilization, are a mystery to us. Settling in what we would now call southern Iraq from about 5400 BCE on, they produced a written language, a complex system of mythology, impressive architecture, and a lost world that held regional hegemony for thousands of years. We don’t know where their language came from; we don’t even know where their genes came from. We have no idea who their modern descendants would be, and we’ve never been able to test the DNA of Sumerian remains.

Well, not until now. A complete skeleton from the Sumerian capital of Ur, dating back to about 4,500 BCE, was recently rediscovered in the Penn Museum—and its intact teeth may include enough soft tissue to allow DNA testing. Nicknamed “Noah,” the skeleton appears to have survived an ancient flood and everything that followed:

    [British archaeologist Sir Leonard] Woolley’s team found 48 or more graves in a flood-plain, an area which was once subject to regular flooding. The skeletons there were unusually old, dating to an early era known as the Ubaid period (ca. 6500-3800) but only one was intact and fit to be removed. The skeleton and the dirt surrounding him was excavated and coated in wax and shipped to London first. Upon reaching Philadelphia, however, he was lost to time — only one of a multitude.

Until recently, the primary advocates for testing Sumerian DNA have been followers of Zecharia Sitchin, who hold the unusual belief that the ancient Sumerians socialized with extraterrestrials and may have carried alien genes. But there are plenty of more conventional reasons to study Sumerian DNA: it stands to tell us where the first city-builders came from and who their contemporary descendants are. The migration of the Sumerians is one of the great untold stories of human civilization; if we aim to tell it, DNA is the best tool we have.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2014/08/scientists-prepare-to-solve-mystery-of-sumerian-dna/

[Psalm 51:17]

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/cow-born-3-eyes-tamil-nadu-worshipped-shivas-incarnation-video-609226
9/16/14
Cow Born with 3 Eyes in Tamil Nadu Worshipped as Shiva's Incarnation [VIDEO]

[Psalm 51:17]

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/28/the-worlds-first-genetically-modified-babies-will-graduate-high-school-this-year/
9/28/14
The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will Graduate High School This Year

Remember the sci-fi thriller GATTACA? For those who never saw the film and/or eschewed all pop culture in the late 90’s for some reason, it was a popular movie that came out in 1997 about genetically modified human beings. Now some literally genetically modified human babies born that same year are entering their senior year of high school.

The first successful transfer of genetic material for this purpose was published in a U.S. medical journal in 1997 and then later cited in a Human Reproduction publication in 2001. Scientists injected 30 embryos in all with a third person’s genetic material. The children who have been produced by this method actually have extra snippets of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from two mothers – meaning these babies technically have three parents.

It’s still unclear whether all 30 babies turned out healthy.  The Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science (IRMS) at St Barnabas, participants of the experiment, finally began following up with at least 17 of the now teenagers earlier this year, according to the UK’s Independent. We’ve reached out to IRMS to get those follow up results but have not heard back yet.

While we don’t know the identity of these genetically modified teens, or even how they are doing health wise at this point, the ethics of creating designer humans is still very much a hot button issue. Modifying humans genetically to create some superior race of people or simply to chose one preferred visual trait over another has been debated among scientists, politicians and others ad nauseam. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration no longer even allows such genetic modification to embryos, citing them as a “biological product” and thus under its jurisdiction. They put the kibosh on this practice back in 2002. However, these original embryonic modifications were for parents who would potentially pass on severe genetic diseases to their children if it weren’t for scientific intervention.

These teens could potentially pass on their genetically modified material to the next generation. So even if no other humans are legally able to be created this way in the future, we’ve already introduced biologically modified genetic material into the population with the potential to affect large swaths of future generations to come via reproduction. We’ll be sure to update you, should IRMS release any information on the health of these teens.

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Genesis 3:4  And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
Gen 3:5  For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Gen 3:6  And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
Gen 3:7  And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

[Mark]

UK proposes rules for embryos made from 3 people

New rules proposed in Britain would make it the first country to allow embryos to be made from the DNA of three people in order to prevent mothers from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases to their babies.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the department of health said it had taken "extensive advice" on the safety and efficacy of the proposed techniques from the scientific community.

"(This) will give women who carry severe mitochondrial disease the opportunity to have children without passing on devastating genetic disorders," Dr. Sally Davies, the U.K.'s chief medical officer, said in a statement.

Experts say that if approved by parliament, these new methods would likely be used in about a dozen British women every year who are known to have faulty mitochondria — the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. Defects in the mitochondria's genetic code can result in diseases such as muscular dystrophy, heart problems and mental retardation.

The techniques involve removing the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and inserting it into a donor egg, where the nucleus DNA has been removed. That can be done either before or after fertilization.

The resulting embryo would end up with the nucleus DNA from its parents but the mitochondrial DNA from the donor. Scientists say the DNA from the donor egg amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryo's genes. But the change will be passed onto future generations, a major genetic modification that many ethicists have been reluctant to endorse.

Critics say the new techniques are unnecessary and that women who have mitochondrial disorders could use other alternatives, such as egg donation, to have children.

"Medical researchers are crossing the crucial ethical line that will open the door to designer babies," said David King of Human Genetics Alert, a secular group that opposes many genetics and fertilization research.

British law currently forbids any genetic modification of embryos before being transferred into a woman.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Administration held a meeting to discuss the techniques, and scientists warned it could take decades to determine if they're safe.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-proposes-rules-embryos-made-3-people-150947052.html#1sTwfHp

[Mark]

Searching for messages from ET in life’s Genetic Code

When we hear popular media talking about something contained in our “genetic code”, usually it’s from someone who misused the term. They really are talking about one or more genes within our genome, rather than the actual Genetic Code. The code of life as it’s sometimes called is the language that the cellular machinery in all life forms on Earth uses to translate the genes—sequences of DNA and RNA building blocks–into an entirely different class of biological molecules: proteins.

The Genetic Code is contained in our DNA, but, unlike the variations that occur between individuals and between species, the Code is practically the same for every single organism on this planet. But there’s one story involving something contained in our Genetic Code that actually does use the term appropriately. It’s actually been worked out mathematically that the Code could be a message—for us.

Searching for extraterrestrial messages

Run by NASA, the SETI Institute and various other agencies and organizations around the planet search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) based on one major assumption. Namely, we believe it’s possible that some fraction of intelligent species who developed technology on other worlds long before we did on Earth would be trying to “reach out” using some kind of radio or microwave transmission. This doesn’t mean that better ways to communicate over space do not lie ahead as we move forward technologically. In a hundred years, or even tomorrow, we could invent something that makes radio technology as obsolete as the telegraph. But because we learned to send and receive radio signals almost immediately after we harnessed electricity, SETI researchers assume that any civilization that really wants its presence known to emerging civilizations like ours would use the low tech method, the first one that a new civilization would likely master.

Although fictional, Carl Sagan’s brilliant novel, Contact, showed us how an interstellar radio signal would be recognized as being intelligent in origin, and how humans might react to it on Earth. Since Sagan’s novel and the movie that came of it, the real life SETI program has scanned thousands of stars that could have Earth-like planets. This has revealed some candidate signals, though nothing has passed enough tests or persisted long enough for researchers to say that they have something.

“Wow! signal”

The search that uses huge equipment like radio telescopes can go on for decades with investigators identifying possible candidate signals once in a while, and painstakingly trying to rule out natural origins. But while that’s been happening, a smaller research team has been looking for extraterrestrial messages right in our DNA, and believes they have found one–right in the sequences of the Genetic Code itself. Published early last year in the prestigious planetary science journal, Icarus, the report by a Kazakhstani team is extremely mathematical. Basically, the team has identified patterns in the relationships, or coding, between the DNA/RNA building blocks and the building blocks, called amino acids, that cells assemble into proteins.

So profound are the patterns, say the researchers, that “the code mapping itself is uniquely deduced from their algebraic representation.” They titled the paper “The ‘Wow! Signal’ of the terrestrial genetic code”, because “the signal displays readily recognizable hallmarks of artificiality.”

Furthermore, “extraction of the signal involves logically straightforward but abstract operations, making the patterns essentially irreducible to any natural origin.” In the ensuing discussion, the Icarus paper makes the case that they apparent design of the Genetic Code implies that life on Earth was seeded from locations across space.

The idea that Earth’s earliest life forms arrived on this planet more than 3.5 billion years ago through natural seeding events, such as transfer within meteoroids, is gaining popularity among astrobiologists, but the Icarus paper suggests that seeding might be artificial. Even more profound, the researchers explain that the Genetic Code can be used to carry non-biological information, even if the carrying capacity is far less than that of radio transmissions.

Science fiction, religious fiction or reality?

Artificial seeding of Earth life billions of years ago, with a message from the seeders in our DNA to boot, is right out of science fiction. In particular, there was a Star Trek episode in which it was discovered that life on Earth–and on all of the planets with intelligent beings that look suspiciously similar to humans, but for a few facial ridges, pointed ears or other details–had evolved from DNA seedlings, spread throughout out galaxy billions of years ago by ancient beings. The ancient beings had the familiar human bipedal form and seeded the planets knowing that similar beings would evolve.

The human form being ancient takes things a little further into the imagination than the Kazakhstan team does; nothing in their research contradicts current ideas about the emergence of humans, and human form, over the last few million years, from four-legged mammals, and before that from fish and other forms. Still the prospect of intentional seeding by an intelligent civilization, with a DNA message that we might be able to decipher, is tantamount to Star Trek coming to life.

It also has opened the door for people whose thinking and methods are never right for a peer-reviewed journal such as Icarus. I’m referring to the creationists, the pseudoscientist groups that reject evolution, build museums showing dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, and these days call themselves researchers in “intelligent design”. While the proposal in the Icarus paper is perfectly consistent with life evolving on this planet for at least the last 3.5 billion years, beginning with only microorganisms, this has not kept intelligent design pseudoscientists from spinning it to promote their beliefs.

Even if the Kazakhstan team turns out to be correct that life was seeded on this planet by intention, as with the natural seeding idea, all it does is set back to the origin of life to an earlier time and distant location. The hypothetical beings that we can imagine doing the seeding, whether biological or robotic, had to come from something that evolved from lower life at some point in time. Such beings would have logical reasons for putting any message in the Genetic Code part of the genome of the microorganisms they deposited. That reason is that it’s the protected part of the genome, the part that cannot evolve, because it’s the part of the genome that makes life possible in the first place. Change the language that’s used to make genes express themselves, and nothing works.

On the other hand, because the Genetic Code does not evolve in any major way, it allows for the rest of the genome to evolve, and to do so in very dramatic, unpredictable ways. We don’t know where this research will go, but even at this early point, we can be sure that once understood it will not support biblical creation.

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/12/18/searching-for-messages-from-et-in-lifes-genetic-code/

[Psalm 51:17]

I'm not at liberty to set a rapture date - but nonetheless I feel 2014 is our last "normal" year.

[Mark]

Exclusive: Three-parent IVF treatment to be legal within weeks



Controversial regulations effectively legalising so-called “three-parent” IVF babies are expected to be debated and voted on by MPs before the general election, and could even be passed within weeks.

Although no timetable for a parliamentary debate on the mitochondrial donation technique has so far been scheduled, the Department of Health confirmed to The Independent it is likely to take place within the next few weeks and almost certainly ahead of the election in May – despite safety concerns.

Mitochondrial donation uses genetic material from the eggs of two women, combined with the sperm of a man, to produce IVF embryos that are free of serious mitochondrial diseases, which currently affect about one in every 6,500 children. Supporters argue it will help women carrying mutations in their mitochondria – the tiny “power packs” of the cells – from passing on the inherited conditions to their children, as the 37 genes of the mitochondria are inherited maternally.


The Department of Health said the technique is a form of germ-line therapy that will affect future generations but has dismissed suggestions it also amounts to genetic modification of embryos with “three biological parents”. Opponents argue the technique is unsafe and could lead to a “slippery slope” of designer children.

The US Food and Drug Administration has said it would take at least another two years to carry out the necessary safety studies before the first American clinical trials on mitochondrial donation, but scientists in Britain have said they could carry out the procedure as early as this year if legislation is passed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-threeparent-ivf-treatment-to-be-legal-within-weeks-9956951.html

[Mark]

A New Way To Be Human: The Plan Is To Replace Existing Humans With ‘Transhuman’ Hybrids

Transhumanists believe that the time has come for humans to take control of their own evolution.  Many of them are fully convinced that we can use emerging technologies to “fix” the flaws in the human race and ultimately eradicate sickness, disease, poverty and war.  So would you like to have the eyesight of an eagle?  Would you like to download an entire library of information directly into your brain in just minutes?  Would you like to rid your family line of all genetic diseases?  Would you like to extend your lifespan to 500 years or even longer?  Transhumanists promise that all of these things will soon be possible, if we are willing to embrace a new way of doing things.  They foresee a future in which we will all have lots of little nanobots running around inside of us, in which we are all connected directly to the Internet, and in which we have all been genetically modified to at least some degree.  In fact, one prominent transhumanist recently stated that he believes that “eventually every human will be designed on a computer“.  In the end, the goal is to produce a vastly improved version of the human race which will usher in a golden new age for the planet.  But as we merge ourselves with animals, machines and weird new technologies that scientists cook up, at what point do we cease to be human?

And when I say “weird new technologies”, I am not overstating things in the least.  Just consider what one transhumanist says that they have planned for us…

    As with all radical social movements, there is bound to be resistance. After all, transhumanists are interested in some pretty bizarre things: mind uploading, living indefinitely through life extension science, biohacking themselves to install cyborg body parts, and creating artificial general intelligence. Each of these areas of research will radically change the lives of people—and some, such as cyborg body parts, are already doing so.

Once upon a time, the only people that talked about “cyborgs” were science fiction geeks.

But today, many transhumanists speak of us becoming “cyborgs” as if it was some sort of foregone conclusion.  It is almost as if they are the Borg, and they are telling us that there is no choice but to assimilate.

And this assimilation is already happening to a certain degree.  If the idea of humanity “merging with machines” sounds bizarre to you, just check out the following excerpt from a recent Vice article…

    Next up are brain implants, tiny computer chips inserted surgically directly into the brain itself. So far, they’ve been used mainly to help treat patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease and other neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s and epilepsy.

    But some scientists are now tinkering with brain implants that enable more physical pursuits, from controlling people’s prosthetic limbs to ​restoring movement in paralyzed rats. Scientists say that the capabilities of brain implants are only in their infancy, and some of them envision a near-future where brain implants can even be installed in healthy people to connect them directly to the internet and improve memory] a la Black Mirror. The US military agency DARPA is already building such memory chips, and wants to develop implants that could be installed throughout a soldier’s nervous system to provide advanced, on-the-spot healing of conditions from mental illness to arthritis.

Of course most of those developing these new technologies believe that they are doing something wonderful for humanity.

And in many cases they are.

But at what point do we enter a danger zone?

In a previous article , I noted that one recent survey discovered that approximately one-fourth of all professionals in the 18 to 50-year-old age bracket would like to connect their brains directly to the Internet.

I don’t know about you, but that is something that I will never be doing.

Meanwhile, scientists continue to push the envelope when it comes to merging humans with animals.

Most people don’t realize this, but today we are creating genetically modified cattle with human DNA, we are growing human kidneys in rats, and we are experimenting on human-mouse hybrids with freakishly large brains.

Once again, those involved in this kind of research believe that they are finding “cures for diseases” or that they are working to make life better for all of us somehow.

But when we combine animals and humans, what exactly are we creating?

Are they animals?

Are they humans?

And where do we draw the line?  Will we someday have creatures that are 50 percent human and 50 percent animal walking around our cities?

For much, much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “The Era Of Chimeras: Scientists Fearlessly Create Bizarre Human/Animal Hybrids“.

Another area that transhumanists are extremely excited about is the ability to use technology to genetically edit our children.

At Harvard, researchers now believe that it will soon be possible to completely remove genetic diseases from our family lines…

    As I listened to Yang, I waited for a chance to ask my real questions: Can any of this be done to human beings? Can we improve the human gene pool? The position of much of mainstream science has been that such meddling would be unsafe, irresponsible, and even impossible. But Yang didn’t hesitate. Yes, of course, she said. In fact, the Harvard laboratory had a project to determine how it could be achieved. She flipped open her laptop to a PowerPoint slide titled “Germline Editing Meeting.”

    Here it was: a technical proposal to alter human heredity.

    “Germ line” is biologists’ jargon for the egg and sperm, which combine to form an embryo. By editing the DNA of these cells or the embryo itself, it could be possible to correct disease genes and to pass those genetic fixes on to future generations. Such a technology could be used to rid families of scourges like cystic fibrosis. It might also be possible to install genes that offer lifelong protection against infection, Alzheimer’s, and, Yang told me, maybe the effects of aging.

And “maybe the effects of aging”?

Life extension technologies are something that many transhumanists are particularly obsessed with.

For example, Bloomberg recently did an interview with one technology executive that believes that it will eventually be possible for all of us to live to the ripe old age of 500…

    “If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old college kid at midterm. He’s wearing sneakers and a gray denim shirt over a T-shirt; it looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days.

Maris is using his position to pour millions upon millions of dollars into companies that are developing radical life extension technologies that they hope will enable people to live for hundreds of years.  Maris just hopes that he can stay alive long enough to take advantage of them…

    “We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision,” he says. “I just hope to live long enough not to die.”

And of course Maris is far from alone.  The most famous transhumanist on the entire planet, Ray Kurzweil, is absolutely obsessed with immortality.  He takes 150 vitamin supplements a day in a desperate attempt to extend his life until more advanced life extension technologies can be developed.  In chapter 7 of “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology“, he expressed his thoughts on where the future is taking all of us…

    “Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.”

But what about those of us that do not want to be a part of this future?

Is there any room for people that do not want to be genetically modified and that do not want to merge with animals and technology?

Some transhumanists believe that those that do not adapt will eventually be wiped out because they simply will not be able to survive in the new world that is emerging.

Other transhumanists believe that in order to truly have a world where there is no sickness, disease, poverty and war, all of the “inferior” humans will ultimately have to be “removed”.

But what almost all of them agree on is the fact that the future belongs to them and not to us.

So what do you think?  Is humanity on the verge of a great leap forward, or are these new technologies actually opening up a door for great darkness?  Feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/a-new-way-to-be-human-the-plan-is-to-replace-existing-humans-with-transhuman-hybrids

[Mark]

American scientists are trying to genetically modify human eggs



American scientists have attempted to modify the DNA of human egg cells using a new gene-editing technique that could eliminate inherited diseases from subsequent generations of affected families, The Independent can reveal.

The research was carried out on ovary cells taken from a woman with inherited ovarian cancer to investigate the possibility of eventually using gene-editing to produce IVF embryos free of the familial disease. The results are yet to be published.

Editing the chromosomes of human eggs or sperm to create genetically modified IVF embryos is illegal in Britain and many other countries because of concerns about  safety and the possibility of the technique being used to create genetically enhanced “designer babies”.

However, the development of a simple gene-editing technique which can alter human DNA with extreme precision has raised the prospect of it being used in the future to help couples affected by inherited diseases who would like children free of the family mutations.

Several teams of researchers around the world are believed to be working on ways of modifying the chromosomes of human egg cells with a view to moving towards “germ-line” gene therapy, as the process is called. Germ-line refers to the “germ” cells – sperm and eggs – that pass on genes to future generations.

However, other scientists have called for a moratorium on editing the human germ-line, arguing that it is ethically unacceptable because it is too unpredictable and too risky.

Nevertheless, researchers at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have attempted to use the Crispr  (pronounced “Crisper”) gene-editing technique on human ovarian tissue cultured in the lab to see if it might be possible to correct the defective BRAC1 gene involved in inherited breast and ovarian cancer. As ovarian cells develop into egg cells, the research is likely to have involved the altering of some immature egg cells, known as oocytes.

The work was carried out last year by Luhan Yang, a researcher working in the lab of the veteran Harvard geneticist George Church. But the study has not been published in a scientific journal and Dr Yang was unavailable for comment.

Professor Church emphasised that the work was purely experimental. He said that it was carried out on human ovarian cells cultured in a laboratory dish and there was no intention of fertilising any eggs or transplanting them into a woman.

“Almost all post-docs in a cutting-edge lab like mine like to explore what is possible. The experiments were not in human beings. They were in cells in culture,” Professor Church told The Independent.

“Our lab works on human cells of all sorts, and it is quite likely that at some point she [Dr Yang] has worked on human cells that could be the lineage of oocytes. I’m not sure they were proven to be functional oocytes,” he said.

“This is very basic science and there is a very big difference between doing experiments on human cells in culture, which we’ve been doing for many years, and putting them into a human being.”

Since its development only a few years ago, the Crispr technique has been used to correct inherited diseases in laboratory animals as well as mending human genetic defects in non-reproductive human cells grown in the laboratory.

Its precision and apparent safety have astonished researchers, which is why it is now being considered for human germ-line therapy to correct inherited human diseases by genetically modifying eggs, sperm or IVF embryos.

Although the work in his laboratory is pioneering, Professor Church is one of several experts who believe that there should be stricter controls on scientists who may be tempted to use Crispr for human germ-line therapy on IVF embryos.

A comment article in Nature this week by leading academics, including US-based geneticist Fyodor Urnov, a pioneer of gene editing, warns of the danger of moving too fast.

“Genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations. This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable,” they write.

“Many oppose germ-line modification on the grounds that permitting even unambiguous therapeutic intervention could start us down a path towards non-therapeutic genetic enhancement. We share these concerns.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/american-scientists-are-trying-to-genetically-modify-human-eggs-10107632.html