An empirical study on the ethical issues caused by the experiment of rhesus monkey carrying human brain gene

Abstract

Objective In 2019, A Chinese medical research team constructed a transgenic rhesus monkey model of human MCPH1, which is necessary to understand the cognition and behavior tendency of researchers on this new type of ethical issues. Methods The research group developed a questionnaire containing demographic information and ethical situational questions. The respondents were medical researchers who applied for the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2019. The data obtained are analyzed by descriptive statistics. Results Overall, 70.9% of respondents (n=11 164) believed that there were ethical challenges when use the genetically modified monkeys who carrying human genes for medical research; The most prominent ethical issues were “unacceptable risk-benefit ratio” (49.1%) and “harm to rhesus monkeys” (33.7%); 31.1% of them believed that the study could be carried out when improvement from the ethics committee of their institution was availabl. Conclusions Medical researchers are cautious about such genetically modified monkeys. The 3R principle shouldbe strictly implemented in the medical research of transgenic monkeys, and the study of human-rhesus monkey chimerism should follow ethical norms and be strictly reviewed.

Keywords

• transgenic monkey|ethical issues|risk-benefit ratio|ethical review