Recently, British newspapers began reporting on a stem cell breakthrough in which human organs could be grown in pigs for transplantation into humans. While xenotransplantation (interspecies transplantation) will require more research and human testing, Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have already created pigs that can “generate human blood by injecting blood cells from humans into pig fetuses.” Although this sounds like something out of a South Park episode in which scientists graft on a you-know-what to the back of a lab mouse so Mrs. Garrison can be a man again, or perhaps reminiscent of H. G. Wells’ Island of Doctor Moreau, this science fiction is fast becoming science.
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