Originally posted by mad scientist
Ahem, It is my understanding that humans have 23 base pairs in our DNA whereas Apes and Chimps have 24. Therefore making it impossible. Out.
Well please check out these links and see if you still feel that you should be using that horrible word.
Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy
"For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a
human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals."
"What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species"
"Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the
new guidelines.
She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.
Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity."
U.S. Denies Patent for a Too-Human Hybrid
"A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure
Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in American intellectual-property law.
"The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the claim, saying the hybrid -- designed for use in medical research but not yet created -- would be
too closely related to a human to be patentable."
Newman's application, filed in 1997, described a technique for combining human embryo cells with cells from the embryo of a monkey, ape or other
animal to create a blend of the two -- what scientists call a chimera. That's the Greek term for the mythological creature that had a lion's head, a
goat's body and a serpent's tail."
Human cloning from human cell and cows egg.
"the world's first human clone of an adult has now been made, by an American biotechnology company in Massachusetts, Advanced Cell Technology. They
took a cell from Dr Jose Cibelli, a research scientist and combined it with a cows egg from which the genes had already been removed. (News November
1998)
The genes activated and the egg began to divide in the normal way up to the 32 cell stage at which it was destroyed. If the clone had been allowed to
continue beyond implantation it would have developed as Dr Cibelli's identical twin. Technically 1% of the human clone genes would have belonged
to the cow - the mitochondria genes. Mitochondria are power generators in the cytoplasm of the cell. They grow and divide inside cells and are
passed on from one generation to another. They are present in sperm and eggs. Judging by the successful growth of the combined human-cow clone
creation it appears that cow mitochondria may well be compatible with human embryonic development."
People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid.
"Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout
between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of
human cells, bacteria, fungi and viruses.
That's the view of scientists at Imperial College London who published a paper in Nature Biotechnology Oct. 6 describing how these microbes interact
with the body. Understanding the workings of the superorganism, they say, is crucial to the development of personalized medicine and health care in
the future because individuals can have very different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial fauna.
The scientists concentrated on bacteria. More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells.
Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in
our bodies are from bacteria, too."
Hybrid Humans?
Analysis of the skeletal remains of a four-year-old child buried some 25,000 years ago in a Portuguese rock-shelter suggests early modern humans and
Neandertals may have interbred.
Well just ask if you want some more links.
Stellar
[edit on 27-12-2005 by StellarX]
So yes impossible. 
