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Asked by to Naomi on 21 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Naomi Osborne answered on 21 Jun 2014:
What an interesting question and I wouldn’t say a scenario like ‘rise of planet of the apes’ is impossible!
Although experimenting with primates is banned in the UK, other countries are allowed to do it. The use of viruses to deliver human genetic material – like what happened in the film – is usually done in mice to look for clues and cures to diseases like alzheimers. When this is done, it’s not always very successful, and only a few cells change like human cells because mouse cells are so different. What happened in the film was very fast and advanced and would never happen in real life, but we’d never be able to do such experiments with apes anyway, so it’s very unlikely to happen!
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Comments
13myeoman commented on :
Okay, thanks – and, phew!