The biotech sector faces many tricky ethical concerns, including research using genetic information from multiple sources. Canada has already banned chimeras, but there are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues. A few days ago someone from my cybernetics class was telling me about the ban on chimeras in Canada. I just stumbled upon this story about chimeras via National Geographic.

Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo.

… creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion’s head, goat’s body, and serpent’s tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?