NIH considering restarting funding for human-animal chimera research

Federal health officials said Thursday they are reconsidering a moratorium on the funding of research in which human tissues are transplanted into early, nonhuman embryos — creating organisms known as chimeras.

The proposed rule changes, which the National Institutes of Health announced in a blog post, would allow the agency to pay for experiments that incorporate human tissue into early-stage animal embryos, except for those of primates like monkeys and chimps.