The Ethics of Transplanting Brain Organoids into Neonatal Animals

Transplanting disease-specific human brain organoids into animals may offer new insights into psychiatric disorders from a neural mechanistic perspective. This research however may trigger concerns about humanlike consciousness emerging in the brains of grafted animal hosts. Presently, this worry is not scientifically and philosophically warranted. Instead, the principal ethical issue at stake is animal welfare. Given the state of the science and where research is likely to go in the foreseeable future, brain organoid transplantation should proceed while taking animal welfare concerns seriously.