Organ transplants are a fairly hairy aspect of the medical practice and are a crapshoot even with the best medical care money can buy. Tissue matching viable organs seems about as difficult as brute-forcing RSA keys due to the fact that, at the proteomic level even the slightest mismatch between donor and recipient (and there will always be some degree of mismatch unless they are identical twins) will provoke an immune response that will eventually destroy the transplanted organ unless it's not kept under control. Additionally, unless the organ is perfectly cared for prior to installation the tissues will begin …

In the year 2007 an HIV-positive American citizen named Timothy Ray Brown, who resides in Berlin, Germany underwent a stem cell transplant after being diagnosed with a particularly nasty form of cancer called acude myeloid leukemia. AML is a sufficiently specific syndrome that there are a couple of good treatment protocols for it, among them a stem cell transplant to replace the malfunctioning cells in the patient's bone marrow which manufacture defective blood cells. Now, here's where it gets interesting: the donor of the stem cells had a very specific genetic mutation which results in cells of the individual's immune …

Geneticists at the University of Nevada have spent the past seven calendar years working on producing viable chimaerae, hybrid organisms of human and nonhuman natures. The project's most remarkable success to date was announced yesterday: A sheep that is 15% human by cell count. That's right - one tenth of its cellular makeup is from an unknown specimen of homo sapiens sapiens. During gestation, cells from an adult human were injected into the peritoneum of a sheep fetus, which allowed the cells to be integrated through the course of foetal development.

The purpose behind these experiments are the eventual development of …