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Making Supermouse Research Paper

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Making Supermouse: Animals and Experimental Technology
The debate surrounding the creation of human-animal chimeras is one that has risen to elevated prominence following the Goldman experiment (2014) in which human glia were injected into the brains of mice, creating one such chimera.

A chimera is a ‘patchwork’ of cells from different organisms however, the genetic material remains distinct and is not in any way crossed. In Goldman’s experiment the neuronal cells of the brain were still mouse cells, it was only the connective glia cells which were human. Yet these foreign cells began to take hold in the mouse brain multiplying until they replaced almost all of the mouse’s own glia cells. Due to the larger size of the human cells, they proved more efficient in coordinating neuronal impulses, leading to mice with improved cognition and memory. These mice were able to learn much more rapidly and could even be taught emotions such as fear.

However, not everyone agrees with this sort of research. Even though this particular experiment may have medical implications in the treatment of MS and others like …show more content…

It is an automatic reaction to find these concepts weird due to social conditioning, yet arguably, this alone is not reason enough to avoid such experimentation.

Another argument is that these practises are unnatural and should therefore be not be performed. Religious beliefs often come into this, stating that it is unethical to ‘play God’ in deciding to create new forms of life. Yet, this is based entirely on the oversimplified assumption that everything natural is good and everything engineered by humans is bad; a notion with no real basis. Medical and technological advances in all areas of industry are by definition unnatural, yet most come without ethical concern, so why should this

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