This is the second time chimeras have been the subject of concern at the highest levels of the US government. In 2005, then-Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) introduced The Human Chimera Prohibition Act, which never made it out of the House of Representatives. Violations of the Act would have meant fines of up to $1 million or ten years in prison, or both. Confusing hybrids with chimeras, President George W. Bush famously asked Congress in his 2006 State of the Union address to prohibit “the most egregious abuses of medical research” including “the creation of human animal hybrids” (Nat. Biotechnol. 24, 487–490, 2006).
What became clear after the day's presentations was that the field is far from creating a chimera with any significant amount of human-derived cells, calling into question whether politics or process was behind the agency's action. NIH's deputy director for science, outreach and policy, Kathy Hudson, standing in for NIH director Francis Collins at the conference, as well as Carrie Wolinetz, associate director of science policy at the NIH, did nothing in their public remarks to shed light on the reason for the moratorium, the likely outcome of the meeting or the next steps. This has left chimera researchers, both those who were called to Washington and those who were not, uncertain about the future of their research—research that they feel has contributed to fundamental knowledge of human development and has the potential to provide therapeutic interventions in various conditions from neurodegenerative diseases to xenotransplants for organ failure.
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