How Soon Before The First Manimals?

At this point, it is legal to culture admixed embryos up to 14 days, but illegal to transfer them to a human or animal womb. But many scientists around the globe want permission to keep embryos alive longer, perhaps even to full term through implantation. Cornell scientists Nikica Zaninovic, who helped create the worlds first genetically modified human embryo says that in order to be sure that a new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally want to keep growing the embryo and carry out further tests. But ethicists worry that by approving human-animal embryos, lawmakers are opening the door to a future of “enhanced” or “mutant” humans that have animal traits. It is even thought possible to so drastically alter human genomes that a type of superhuman species could emerge. In theory, the bio-fusion options are limitless. Any gene that exists in another species could be brought over to a human cell. Imagine some of the incredible traits of the animal kingdom that some humans don’t possess such as night vision, amazing agility, or the ability to breath underwater. The precedence for these types of radical changes is already in place. Experimental mice, for example, were successfully given the human ability to see in color. If animals can be engineered to have human traits, then humans can certainly be mutated to have “desirable” animal traits. The fear with germline engineering is that since it is inheritable, offspring and all succeeding generations would carry the modified traits. This is one reason why this type of engineering is currently banned- it could lead to irreversible alteration of the entire human species!