Stem cell research with monkeys sparks debate

By Robert Roy Britt

LiveScience Senior Writer

updated 5:24 p.m. ET July 14, 2005

The insertion of human stem cells into monkey brains runs a "real risk" of altering the animals' abilities in ways that might make them more like us, scientists said today.

A panel of 22 experts — including primatologists, stem cell researchers, lawyers and philosophers — debated the possible consequences of the technique for more than a year.

While the group agrees it is "unlikely that grafting human stem cells into the brains of non-human primates would alter the animals' abilities in morally relevant ways," the members "also felt strongly that the risk of doing so is real and too ethically important to ignore."

In the case of Alzheimer's research, for example, grafting human stem cells into a monkey brain would be designed to reinstate lost memory function, but "we cannot be certain that this will be the only functional result," the report concludes.

There was "considerable controversy" within the group, which disagreed on whether such experiements, some already underway, should proceed.

Uncharted territory
The conclusions, reported in the July 15 issue of the journal Science, reveal that scienists don't know how their monkeying around might alter the intelligence and emotions of animals.

The scientists admit they don't even know what really separates humans from our closest relatives, morally speaking, or how to measure any cognitive changes they might induce in an ape, monkey or other non-human primate.

"Many of us expected that, once we'd pooled our expertise, we'd be able to say why human cells would not produce significant changes in non-human brains," said the report's lead author Mark Greene, formerly of Johns Hopkins University and now a professor at the University of Delaware. "But the cell biologists and neurologists couldn't specify limits on what implanted human cells might do, and the primatologists explained that gaps in our knowledge of normal non-human primate abilities make it difficult to detect changes.

"And there's no philosophical consensus on the moral significance of changes in abilities if we could detect them," Greene said.

The panel's report cites Kant, Mills and the Bible: "Humans are set apart by God as morally speical and are given stewardship over other forms of life" (Genesis I: 26-28).

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