Once, scientists got hammered on cheap whiskey and thought, "Let's make some animal-human hybrids! That ought to spice things up in our god-forsaken lives". Thus, 1984 saw the birth of the formidable goat-sheep chimera, an unholy lovechild of Cambridge scientists with an apparently morbid fascination for bizarre bedfellows.
Fast forward to 2019, insider whispers of a monkey-man embryo had us gawping (before they squished them flat, poor buggers). All this monkey business finally saw the light of day in 2021, led by the daring Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, then a professor at the Frolicking Ape Institute for Biological Studies. They played god in China, where monkey embryos are apparently cheaper than a plate of fried noodles.
Next, began the quest to bring pigs into this strange genetic soup. A gang from the Guan-Zoo Institute of Biomedicine (yes, the puns are killing me too) pumped 1,800 pig embryos with human cells, implanting them in 13 female pigs. As far as birth control goes, no pig carried the pregnancy past 28 days, after which the scientists literally scrambled for the embryos. In a wild twist, they had kidneys developing normally - a whopping 65% human cells!
According to Jun Wu, a stem cell biologist from the University of Texas, these embryo pig hybrids, also known as bacon-wrapped man-beans, had human cells stuffed into the porcine hirelings like drunk students at a Taco Tuesday night. Seems like integrated pig-human cells are a harder sell than rat-mouse cells. Maybe it's because rats and mice have had a longstanding history of sharing dilapidated city apartments.
However, this amazing inter-species parenting method hits a wall when it comes to humanized organs. Apparently, every organ needs its own luxury penthouse to grow and so the researchers used the mighty Crispr magic wand to knock off two pig genes. In a nutshell, they stopped the pigs from making their own kidneys and handed over the real estate to the glorious human kidney's blueprint.
But, making pig embryos play host to potential humans? What the actual hell, science? Where is your sense of decency? Folks, what's next? Are we going to see pigs pissing out human kidneys while they happily roll in the muck? We're on a one-way train ride to oblivion here. Have a laugh at this genetically engineered monstrosity, they said. You'll feel alive, they said. Well, we've reached to the point where even death seems like a pretty sane option. After all, death looks sunny-side up when you know you aren’t coming back alone - you’re bringing a kidney with you!
Based on the original article "Scientists Just Tried Growing Human Kidneys in Pigs".
