Jose Hermosa – June 15, 2021
After a long debate, The Senate approved with 68–32 votes a budget of $250 billion to continue with the controversial creation of hybrid beings by mixing human and animal genetic material.
The bill called the “Endless Frontier Act,” was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, according to Life Site on June 14.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) referred to the ethical incompatibility and the need to establish clear definitions on the matter in an attitude of submission to international competition.
“We shouldn’t need to clarify in law that creating animal-human hybrids or ‘chimeras’ is ethically unthinkable, but sadly the need for that very clear distinction has arrived,” said Lankford, who, along with Sens. Mike Braun R-Ind.), and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) sought to criminalize the creation of such creatures.
He added: “There’s a real difference in taking human cells and injecting them into a mouse for cancer research and for other research. That’s been done, and it’s been done for a very long time, and we’ve had time to be able to process that, but trying to be able to create life is a very different threshold for me.”
Senator Daines noted, “In trying to compete with China, we shouldn’t become like them, It’s critical that we draw a bright line against unethical forms of research that fail to recognize the distinct value of humans over animals.”
Although the 2019 Trump Administration had shut down the procurement of human fetal tissue from elective abortions for research and created an ethics board to review any such research in laboratories and universities, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reversed these provisions in April 2021.
On the other hand, private research at U.S. universities continues its experiments.