Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model.
I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.
Which shows why guardrails on AI are just dumb. What harm could come from answering your question? None.
Red blood cells can't reproduce and are "mule" cells - bags of hemoglobin. They are not really alive, so maybe not exactly what you were thinking of.