Are Human Cell Transplants and Brain Organoids Experiments in Animals Ethical?

Brain organoids were developed in 2008 from human stem cells that organize themselves in a brain-like structure that has neurons and is electrically active. Its size could be as small as a pea which played a significant role in helping scientists in the field of neuroscience.

However, scientists performing experiments on brain organoids have been questioned with ethical concerns over the past years. Critics suggest that experiments on brain organoids and transplanting human cells to an animal violate the ethics of using living humans.

But recently, a scientific panel from the US has weighed in with advice about how to oversee this controversial area of neuroscience to prevent it from becoming unethical.

Current Rules Adequate for Overseeing Brain Organoids

A report from a scientific panel in the US showed little evidence that current rules on overseeing experiments on organoids or animals who were given human stem cells are adequate as of now, Science Magazine reported. They cautioned that this could change, particularly on research involving primates.

Harvard University neuroscientist and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine co-chair Joshua Sanes said that "the rationale for the report is to get out ahead of the curve."

The NIH and Dana Foundation, which funds neuroscience research, requested the report from the committee citing the urgency of whether to lift a moratorium on funding chimera experiments that has been in place for five years since 2015 even after the NIH announced it would be lifted.

The moratorium on the studies that create animals with human tissues and cells are suspended not only on brain studies but as well as on other experiments that aim to grow cells for transplantation in pigs and sheep.

We hope [NIH] will use the report to think through the issues," says co-chair Bernard Lo, an ethicist and emeritus professor at the University of California in San Francisco, USA.

According to the report, entitled "The Emerging Field of Human Neural Organoids, Transplants, and Chimeras," the committee examined three types of experiments. One is those experiments that create brain organoids; then those experiments involving neural transplants; and those that create chimeras.

Those are the three top research being done in the field of neuroscience that has raised concerns that animals or organoids may have primitive forms of consciousness or feelings, according to Nature.

They were originally aimed at studying the human brain and identifying disease treatments that the report says is one of the strong moral arguments in favor of this research.

ALSO READ: Could This Lab-Grown Miniature Brain Organoid Mirror Brain Development?

Public Concerns About Brain Organoids

The committee said that organoids do have consciousness because they lack many cell types and structures of the brain and therefore have no moral standing than other cultured tissue experiments and do not require new oversight.

The current oversight for transplant studies in animals is said to be adequate for now, according to TeknoDate. But animal care committees may need to have more expertise later on if these animals would gain "enhanced capabilities" after the experiment.

Furthermore, the report discusses that current policies do not require people to donate cells or tissue for specific studies as some may not want their cells used in neural experiments. Ethics experts are thinking about whether researchers should contact cell donors or obtain new tissues.

Also, the panel noted that institutions should be careful in wording their experiments. Words like "mini-brains" exaggerate the capabilities of their models and could raise public concerns.

Ultimately, the report says that current models of brain organoids do not pose an ethical dilemma but that could change in the future.