>I remember a time when stem cell research was an off-limit topic because of the moral issues. IIRC there were two points of contention. The first being the or

>I remember a time when stem cell research was an off-limit topic because of the moral issues. IIRC there were two points of contention. The first being the origins of embryonic stem cell lines require human embryos, which resulted in a similar controversy to abortion. The second is the notion of "playing God" which I think is still a pretty large controversy. Stem cell research really benefited from the introduction of induced pluripotent stem cells to a certain extent. I don't think the ethical debate really resolved so much as petered out because the notion and extent to which stem cell research is playing God is much more abstract than an extension of the abortion debate. >Meanwhile, China is beginning to show breakthroughs with human-animal hybrids. This is a bit extreme wording. It evokes mixed-parentage hybrids but in reality it's just inserting a gene that produces a protein in one organism to the genome of another. It's much more similar to inserting a gene found in one human into the genome of another to resolve some genetic disorder. Nits aside, I'd hazard that the ethics of gene editing are still pretty important to consider, at the very least because of the historical relationship between genetics research and eugenics. Playing God in my opinion is less about the ability to manipulate genomes so much as the discursive determination of what genetic changes ought to be made. That said, I think fears of the Chinese making unusual or unethical advancements in this field are overblown and always have been. Things are probably even more tightly regulated there (hell, TCM is considered a strategic resource), and the idea that the East is unrestricted by the more civilized Western values is also a pretty old trope that doesn't really have much historical basis.