Luke 17:26

Pope Francis Said to Bless Human-Animal Chimeras
A scientist sought the Vatican’s approval for mixing human cells in animal embryos. And the Pope said yes.
By Antonio Regalado on January 27, 2016



A Spanish scientist working at the Salk Institute in California told Scientific American that Pope Francis personally blessed his cutting edge research to mix human cells into animal bodies.

Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a prominent stem cell biologist, is engaged in efforts to grow human tissue inside of farm animals such as pigs, sheep, and cows. This type of research is sensitive because scientists have to inject human stem cells into early-stage animal embryos, then try to grow the mixtures inside surrogate animals.

Much of Belmonte’s work occurs in collaboration with a team in the province of Murcia in his native Spain, a sausage and ham loving country which is about 77% Catholic.

“Spain is a very Catholic country, so we had to go through the Pope. He very nicely said yes.” Belmonte told Scientific American. “Yes. The current Pope. So the Vatican is behind this research and has no problem based on the idea is to help humankind [sic]. And in theory all that we will be doing is killing pigs.”

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Vatican’s scientific body, did not respond to an email seeking to confirm Pope Francis’ position.

After placing human cells into animal embryos, researchers are watching to see what they do. The likely result is that a small percentage of human cells spread throughout the animal’s body. Belmonte’s eventual hope is to channel the human contribution so that it forms a complete human heart or other organ inside a pig or cow. Such an organ could be used to transplant into a needy patient.

While the Catholic Church has opposed research on human embryos it endorses evolution and generally takes a liberal view on scientific matters. In fact, the Vatican’s position on “human-animal chimeras,” as the mixtures are known, may be more liberal than that of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which in September instituted a ban on funding chimera research until it can weigh ethical questions associated with it.

Attempts to make this sort of human-animal chimera began only recently. Previously, any added human cells would simply die or the embryo would not live. That changed when Belmonte’s lab and that of Israeli scientist Jacob Hanna each developed new ways of cultivating human stem cells to take on a more “naïve,” primitive state that is able to contribute to the animal embryo.

In 2013, Hanna’s lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot showed these naïve cells could contribute to the bodies of fetal mice, resulting in animals with as much as 15% human tissue. Scientists predict a slew of other reports discussing human-animal chimeras soon.

In an interview in December, I asked Hanna what Jewish law had to say about human-animal mixtures.

“I’m not sure. I am a Palestinian Christian,” he said.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/546246/pope-francis-said-to-bless-human-animal-chimeras/

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He's not sure...because he thinks the Law of God is Jewish.

Luke 17:26
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.

Leviticus 19:19
Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Book of Jasher, Chapter 4
18 And their judges and rulers went to the daughters of men and took their wives by force from their husbands according to their choice, and the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals.