I’m not anti-science. Not at all. But this bothers me a tad. I guess I don’t trust corporate farming practices to produce organ replacements in humane ways.

He has already created a sheep liver which has a large proportion of human cells and eventually hopes to precisely match a sheep to a transplant patient, using their own stem cells to create their own flock of sheep.

The process would involve extracting stem cells from the donor’s bone marrow and injecting them into the peritoneum of a sheep’s foetus. When the lamb is born, two months later, it would have a liver, heart, lungs and brain that are partly human and available for transplant.

“We would take a couple of ounces of bone marrow cells from the patient,’ said Prof Zanjani, whose work is highlighted in a Channel 4 programme tomorrow.  Read more 

WaPo:

Cloneburgers won’t come with warnings. When the government approves food from cloned animals, expected in the next year, the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t plan special labels. Government scientists have found no difference between clones and conventional cows, pigs or goats.

However, shoppers won’t be completely in the dark. To help them sort through meat and dairy products, one signal is the round, green USDA organic seal, says Caren Wilcox, who heads the Organic Trade Association.

“Organic animal products will not come from cloned animals,” she said.

Understand, please, that this is not an “anti-science” post.  Read more 

How does that make you feel? My mind is open on this one, and I can see the arguments from both sides. I didn’t know we were so sure of our cloning technologies and abilities that we could be 100% sure this is a safe development.  Read more