A strange Alien like sea monster washed up in Ocean County, NJ. Scientists are baffled by the creature. "At first, the scientific community thought it was a Montauk Monster, then I considered it might be an alien or even a giant sea lamprey" said Robert Chatillion, PhD from Carnagie Hewitt. "This creature could be the most significant find in quite some time. We are not sure what it is, but suspect it is a new species. It could be an oceanic chupacabra". May, 2013. Dr. James Tidwell PhD, from Allen Iverson University noted "It might be a dead sturgeon".
Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.
The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.
The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is currently considering whether donors can be paid for their services
Last night a campaigner against the excesses of medical research said he was disgusted that scientists were ‘dabbling in the grotesque’.
Figures seen by the Daily Mail show that 155 ‘admixed’ embryos,containing both human and animal genetic material, have been created since the introduction of the 2008 Human Fertilisation Embryology Act.
This legalised the creation of a variety of hybrids, including an animal egg fertilised by a human sperm; ‘cybrids’, in which a human nucleus is implanted into an animal cell; and ‘chimeras’, in which human cells are mixed with animal embryos.
Scientists say the techniques can be used to develop embryonic stem cells which can be used to treat a range of incurable illnesses.
Three labs in the UK – at King’s College London, Newcastle University and Warwick University – were granted licences to carry out the research after the Act came into force.
All have now stopped creating hybrid embryos due to a lack of funding, but scientists believe that there will be more such work in the future.
The figure was revealed to crossbench peer Lord Alton following a Parliamentary question.
Research centre: Warwick University has been growing animal human hybrids over the last three years
Last night he said: ‘I argued in Parliament against the creation of human- animal hybrids as a matter of principle. None of the scientists who appeared before us could give us any justification in terms of treatment.
‘Ethically it can never be justifiable – it discredits us as a country. It is dabbling in the grotesque.
‘At every stage the justification from scientists has been: if only you allow us to do this, we will find cures for every illness known to mankind. This is emotional blackmail.
‘Of the 80 treatments and cures which have come about from stem cells, all have come from adult stem cells – not embryonic ones. ‘On moral and ethical grounds this fails; and on scientific and medical ones too.’
Josephine Quintavalle, of pro-life group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: ‘I am aghast that this is going on and we didn’t know anything about it.
‘Why have they kept this a secret? If they are proud of what they are doing, why do we need to ask Parliamentary questions for this to come to light?
‘The problem with many scientists is that they want to do things because they want to experiment. That is not a good enough rationale.’
Test centre: Newcastle University was another site where human animal hybrid testing was being undertaken
Earlier this week, a group of leading scientists warned about ‘Planet of the Apes’ experiments. They called for new rules to prevent lab animals being given human attributes, for example by injecting human stem cells into the brains of primates.
But the lead author of their report, Professor Robin Lovell-Badge, from the Medical Research Council’ s National Institute for Medical Research, said the scientists were not concerned about human-animal hybrid embryos because by law these have to be destroyed within 14 days.
He said: ‘The reason for doing these experiments is to understand more about early human development and come up with ways of curing serious diseases, and as a scientist I feel there is a moral imperative to pursue this research.
‘As long as we have sufficient controls – as we do in this country – we should be proud of the research.’
However, he called for stricter controls on another type of embryo research, in which animal embryos are implanted with a small amount of human genetic material.
Human-animal hybrids are also created in other countries, many of which have little or no regulation.
The first signs that life can exist in the deepest seas were nets full of mangled goo. The Challenger Expedition, an around-the-world oceanographic study led by Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson in the 1870s, trawled as deep as 26,000 feet and pulled up more than 4,000 unknown species. The strange creatures, many of which were gelatinous and didn't survive the trip to the surface, overturned the scientific wisdom of the time, which held—reasonably enough—that nothing could survive in a world without light, at temperatures just above freezing and at crushing pressures. It's still hard to believe.
Since then, people have explored the deep ocean—the region below about 650 feet—from inside tethered metal balls called bathyspheres and modern mobile submersibles, and they've sent down remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) equipped with cameras. The deep sea is the largest ecosystem on earth, plunging to more than 37,000 feet below sea level at the Marianas Trench in the Pacific. It accounts for 85 percent of the space where life can exist and holds an estimated ten million or more species. "But we're still trying to figure out what's out there," says marine scientist Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
A new book, The Deep (The University of Chicago Press), by French documentary film producer Claire Nouvian, may be the most comprehensive look at this mysterious world that we surface dwellers will get for a long time. The more than 200 photographs—most taken by scientists from submersibles and ROVs, some shot for the book—show just how head-shakingly bizarre life can be. The scientists who discovered the creatures were apparently as amused as we are, giving them names such as gulper eel, droopy sea pen, squarenose helmetfish, ping-pong tree sponge, Gorgon's head and googly-eyed glass squid.
Nouvian herself made two dives in a submersible, to 3,200 feet. The first thing she noticed, she says, was that "it's very slow. You can tell that all their laws are different." Given the cold, the dark and the scarcity of food, animals tend to be "sit-and-wait predators," floating around and taking what comes their way rather than burning energy to pursue and attack.
The main source of food in the deep is "marine snow," flakes of dead things and fecal matter that drift down from the bright ocean. Sometimes entire feasts fall to the seafloor: a few years ago, oceanographers discovered several species of snails and worms that dine on dead whales. Other deep-sea food webs are fueled by hydrothermal vents, cracks in the ocean floor where seawater mixes with magma and erupts in hot, sulfur-rich plumes. Microbes have evolved the ability to convert chemicals from these vents into energy—a way of life that was unknown before 1977.
There's little or no sunlight in the deep, but most animals "bioluminesce," flashing like fireflies. They turn on headlights to see food or attract mates; anglerfish dangle wormlike glowing appendages to lure prey. Some deep-sea squid shoot a cloud of bioluminescence to distract predators, much as upper-ocean squid squirt black ink. Jellyfish, often transparent in the oceans above, tend to be dark, which shields them from attention while their swallowed prey bioluminesces in its death throes. Down below, says Nouvian, the bioluminescence—some in short flashes, some in shimmering curtains, some hopping about like grasshoppers—"is more dramatic than the most dramatic sky with shooting stars."
The drama of discovery shows no sign of ending. In some surveys, 50 percent to 90 percent of the animals hauled up from the deep are unknown. We'll have to keep expanding our conception of what it means to be an Earthling.
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