From research on the consumption of processed meat to calls for more pediatric research on a leading Malaria vaccine, this week’s Research Ethics Roundup looks at new findings from international health experts.

Should Human Stem Cells Be Used To Make Partly Human Chimeras? The NIH recently held a workshop to assess the ethical implications of using human stem cells in early embryos of certain kinds of animals. There is currently a NIH moratorium on using federal funding for such research but researchers believe they might be able to grow human organs in animals for transplant patients.

DA Approves Amgen Drug That Uses Herpes as a Trojan horse to Destroy Melanoma Cells The FDA approved Amgen’s Imlygic only for patients whose tumors cannot be surgically removed. Amgen’s studies showed Imlygic shrunk tumors but did not extend a patient’s life.

Meat Is Linked to Higher Cancer Risk, WHO Report Finds Recently, experts assembled by the WHO concluded that consumption of processed meat (including bacon and ham) increases the risk of colon cancer. The experts made their decision based on 800 studies of cancer.

Leading Malaria Vaccine Gets Mixed Reviews Researchers are calling for additional pediatric testing on the vaccine, Mosquirix, which has been studied for close to 30 years. Currently, clinical trials show the drug is less than 40 percent effective but the drug is the only leading candidate against malaria, a disease that kills over 400,000 children each year.