These chimeras pave the way for more accurate models of human biology and disease
The goal, the team says, is to make better models for studying biological development, evolution, disease progression and treatments. "As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,"
Interestingly, the review paper suggests that perhaps the creation of human-animal chimeras might help people realize that humans don’t necessarily have any higher moral status than any other creature.
Yeah sorry but fuck off with this. If your explicit goal is to create living organisms for medical research / donor organs that would be unethical to perform in humans, don't turn around and justify it with "maybe our monkeyman will increase people's concern with animal welfare!" If it did then we would turn around and ban your research and/or just do it in humans directly.
Frankly I'd find it a lot more ethical to figure out how to grow a brainless human clone for these purposes than a sentient hu-monkey that can be tortured in a lab.
> After 10 days, there were 103 of these chimeric embryos remaining, but by day 19 only three still survived. After that, the embryos were terminated before they developed any further.
Clusters of cells can't be 'tortured in a lab,' there are plenty of legitimate problems in the world to be outraged about but this really isn't one of them.
Okay, on day 19 three of them are clusters of cells, how about day 280? How about year 5? I think the argument is that a majority of people would find it unethical to continue to develop viable embryos, and even more unethical to conduct research on them were they to mature.
Research is already performed using human fetal tissue obtained from aborted fetuses. How is this significantly different?
"A majority of people would find it unethical to continue to develop viable embryos" seems contradictory to the current legal status of abortion in the US. Perhaps it is unethical but worth doing regardless?
Just how many women create a fetus and abort it in the name of science? Human embryos are not manufactured for experimentation. What you're talking about is completely orthogonal.
Now, breeding/manufacturing animals for experiments is awful and morally complex--ethically unclear (at least to me). But the line must be drawn somewhere, and we can very easily draw it at manufacturing human-monkeys, human-pigs, or human-anythings.
At what point does a thing become a human-thing? Imagine there was a way to copy a few human genes over to a mouse so that its immune system more closely resembled a human, but it was still, in every other respect, a mouse. Would it be a human-mouse?
It's a great discussion to have when the matter at hand is that subtle. Frankensteining together human stem cells and monkey blastocysts until something works is pretty far from surgically selecting specific genes.
From the article:
The announcement of the new chimeras will no doubt be labelled “unnatural” or “playing God” by some people – but the same could be said about many scientific breakthroughs. An iPhone is unnatural.
When lifeforms are compared to iPhones, we've reached a pretty clear David Mitchell moment of saying "Are we the baddies?" Something reeks here of amoral science.
We need a better understanding of consciousness and awareness before trying such things, or it's only a matter of time before realizing a catastrophic error that joins the many permanent stains of humanity, as we accidentally become the monster "AM" in "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream"
I agree that we should be maximally wary of ethical considerations here, but a uniform mass of cells is a uniform mass of cells. We do know when important structures develop.
For example, one of the most important cell line in research is called HeLa, which was harvested from a woman with the same initials without consent from a cancerous growth. Since then, it was grown to a huge biomass (couldn’t find exact number). Other than the lack of consent which is obviously amoral, would you consider research on this human cell line bad?
[citation needed]
No one has any idea what consciousness is, how it arises, what its physical correlates and boundaries are, what perceived valence corresponds to, whether small systems can experience pleasure or suffering beyond what humans are used to...
> No one has any idea what ... its physical correlates ... are
We do know a fair bit about the neural (physical) correlates of consciousness in humans, and the evolutionary purpose of those facets of consciousness, such as fear or pain.
This understanding can help us to make a reasoned guess that cows are more capable of suffering than a small lump of cells in a blastocyst:
(1) We can see that cows have similar brain structures to humans[1], where those brain structures (amygdala, etc) are known to be a necessary condition for pain or fear perception in humans, and those same brain structures are absent in a blastocyst.
(2) We know that pain and fear is an adaptation that all/most mammals likely have, because (i) it confers significant fitness, and because (ii) it manifests below our cortex (e.g. in the amygdala) which suggests it evolved fairly early.
My claim isn't that a blastocyst doesn't have consciousness. My claim is that its consciousness and capability to suffer is likely to be less than that of a cow (based on the above reasoning), and so society should make sure it is being ethically consistent in the way it treats both.
My first question to you would be - if your position is correct, i.e. that we should be extremely ethically cautious with blastocysts because they may suffer and have conscious states - how can society then ethically justify abortion?
My second question would be - how can a meat eater (which you might not be) express such ethical caution pertaining to blastocysts but willingly eat meat? [I am a meat eater].
Things can't be further detached from reality. Once you ever spend a few days with a herd of cows, you get a feeling for their personalities, their joy, their pain. Comparing to a group of humans, be it kids on a playground or some factory worker, you really start to wonder why in one case we allow ownership, life-long suffering and death under excruciating pain, while in the other case those things are punished by lifelong imprisonment or even the death penalty.
You can't claim "but we don't know what conciousness is" to justify how we treat animals while at the same time have the strongest protections for fellow human beings. Well, usually only those of your own backyard, since we westerners also tend to treat third world country populations like sh*.
Did you know that when you cut grass it sends out distress signal - the lovely smell of fresh cut grass. In principle it is the grass screaming out loud in horror. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30573/what-causes-fresh-... Unfortunately we can't survive without hurting other species.
Humans are also great at personifying non-person things. The grass isn't 'screaming out in horror', rather it's emitting a chemical that its evolved to emit in response to certain stimuli.
Its one giant organism, we are awfully hung up on that its parts are not touching and imagined some fringe type of individualism like covering your eyes with your hands makes you invisible. We are nothing without context.
We are slaughtering, maiming and torturing people (plants and animals) all of the time, non stop, since the beginning. We build ever more sophisticated machines to do it. I cant even look at the butcher robots that feed me.
Chimeras might actually improve the situation. It would force us to question our holier than thou, my shit don't stink attitude. I for one welcome our chimera underlings. It will be a revolution of philosophy.
I'm not sure about the purpose of your comment, but it sounds like your conclusion is "therefore can do whatever we want to other species." As if ethics doesn't apply. As if we shouldn't try to minimize that hurt. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
Paragraph speculating about such arguments and why people use them:
Hopefully one day soon people aren't still offering "plant=animal" justifications of eating animals, like this. I find them very depressing. It's as if suffering is a joke to these people. Or something, I don't understand. Just repeating pro-meat arguments they've heard, I guess. Maybe it's a positive sign, and such comments try to bury unease from their growing sense of ethical responsibility to other species.
> We need a better understanding of consciousness and awareness before trying such things,
We do have quite a good understanding of those things in animals. Yet, nobody cares and people make fun of the "animal welfare" concept. Even in this thread. But suddenly a few human cells are involved for a few days and people start screaming.
There are vegetarians who eat fish "because they don't have feelings". As long as society accepts this nonsensical hypocrisy, your line of reasoning goes nowhere.
Abortions are not a desired action, by society, doctors, women, families, anyone really.
They are a compromise to help women who made a mistake, were victims of assault, are too young to take care of a child. It's a bit less about "taking ownership of your body", than it is about "being tolerant and understanding about facts of life we can't change".
That's where it's less unethical: it's not like people support terminating a potential human life, they support instead lifting one up that took a wrong step.
Now these chimera experiments are fine to me, but I'd be okay to wait, go slow, debate in society about them rather than point at 16 yo rape victims and say "see she killed her baby and we used it to test a vaccine, why can't I mix a monkey with a human and see what grows before terminating it when I dont need it anymore"? Again, I m anti religious but I wouldnt want street riots and Trump 2.0 because scientists felt it was boring to explain to the idiots.
An interesting short story about an android child who desperately wants to be loved is "Supertoys Last All Summer Long".
Even a dog with a dog brain shouldn't be subjected to arbitrary experimentation and pain. If it is sentient, then it should be treated with respect. A robot with consciousness should also be treated with respect, and if it wants love then it deserves love.
Too late to edit to add: when I say "continue to develop" I don't mean to continue creating new viable embryos, I mean allowing the existing embryos to mature.
I think both cases are probably unethical (creating to begin with, and secondly, more unethically, to bring them to further maturity, or even to the point of being self-supporting, i.e. fully alive)
If we start going down this road, eventually someone will allow them to be brought to life.
We already know the horrors wrought on other humans by our very selves in the name of "science" in the past (think unit 731, not really science, but "science"), I can only imagine we'd do worse to something not fully human.
interestingly the perpetrators received immunity from the US...in exchange for information...I wouldn't be surprised if history repeats itself and a lot of people are counting on it...
> Okay, on day 19 three of them are clusters of cells, how about day 280?
Even supposing they had, completely unethically, actually transferred these embryos into a woman or monkey, the odds of any of the three surviving to term are likely quite low. The most likely outcome would be miscarriage and probably a quite early one at that.
We don't even know if survival to term would be possible. It may be simply impossible due to some genetic incompatibility. Even if it were possible, it would quite likely take (on average) hundreds of attempts before you'd have a success.
There is actually no way to know whether this is true. About all you can justifiably say is something like, "if it turns out that clusters of cells can experience suffering, well... we are already probably causing suffering anyway all the time to chickens and cows and who knows to what else, so it would not really be much of a change".
It is tempting to say that something that has no nervous system cannot suffer, but such an attitude is not scientifically justified. It is just folk speculation.
I mean you obviously can't prove a negative, but it stands to reason that a biochemical automaton is no more capable of 'suffering' than a wristwatch. Suffering, as humans define it, is really only possible with consciousness.
Yes, there can be no suffering without consciousness. However, I do not know of any way to determine whether any being other than oneself is conscious.
It seems contradictory to suggest at the same time that a) these hybrids might teach us that the line between humans and animals isn't as stark as a lot of people think, and b) these hybrids will not be human and therefore will be suitable for medical research that could not be ethically performed on "real" humans.
If you buy the former, it seems to suggest we should be going in the opposite direction with the latter.
> so you see the first statement as, "animals are people too" instead of "humans are just animals."
You're assuming a lot yourself by telling me how I interpret the point about the line between humans and animals, and (in fact) you have assumed incorrectly.
The article includes a quote about how they intend to follow "all the ethical, legal, and social guidelines in place". So I don't think the point I made about their stance being contradictory is way off base. Of course, they could actually be aliens from the planet Omicron Persei 8 with zero genuine concern for human or animal life. Or whatever.
Yes. So the point of my comment was to illustrate that either they haven't thought their position through very well, or they're being disingenuous in their claimed intent to follow "all the ethical, legal, and social guidelines in place". If they want to start rocking the ethical boat, it's at best a lie of omission.
Generally, I think bioethicists will look askance at attempts to skirt current guidelines around experimenting on human specimens by creating human/monkey hybrids that are human enough to be useful to science but not enough for the letter of the law to call them human. That's the context.
To me the disingenuous part would be claiming they’re going to follow the prevailing ethical guidelines (paraphrased) when in fact they disagree with those guidelines and have essentially hatched this whole monkey/human hybrid scheme to sidestep them. (hypothetically)
I’m not necessarily attaching a value judgement to this. I’m just pointing out that their public position is either poorly thought out or not entirely honest.
The other disturbing thing is that it can be read two ways and the reverse is implicating that because they think they can do live experimentation on animals, they think doing the same experimentation on humans would be fine. Maybe their experimentation on monkeyman will lead to atrocities on people. That seems more likely than having people accept experimentation on monkeypeople and then deciding to stop abusing animals.
I think animals have enormous intrinsic worth, emotions, and value; I think humans have even more. Maybe we should stop doing this type of testing on either one.
You're a layperson forming opinions about a topic you didn't even take the time to read about.
First, they didn't develop infants. This is a cell culture. There is no animal to "torture".
Second, we use animal models to understand critical problems in biology. This is sometimes the only way to conduct research. There are protocols in place to keep it as humane as possible.
Please don't step on the science for failing to see the big picture.
“It is sometimes argued that … [the creation of part-human chimeras] will undermine an important moral view: that it matters, morally, which species we belong to,” the report reads. ”This argument assumes that we ought to preserve the view that boundaries between species are fixed, natural, and morally relevant, with full moral status reserved exclusively for humans. Yet even if creating part-human chimeras alters public attitudes in this way (and it is not obvious that it would), it is unclear why it is important for us to preserve the view that biological humanness is both necessary and sufficient for full moral status… Accordingly, it might be a good thing if the creation of part-human chimeras prompts us to rethink the significance we currently attach to species membership.”
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Love things that poke at the arbitrary borders in our heads, its part of the reason that I appreciate what the pandemic has shown us about the education system here in the US: <inflammatory-statement> we were forced to confront the reality that the main purpose of grade-school is more so to act as a glorified mass-daycare, rather a 'critical source of development of intelligence/knowledge/maturity'. </inflammatory-statement>
From my perspective, the fact someone could say that a line is drawn "arbitrarily" is absolutely a worthless red herring. You could argue that the difference between pre-birth and post-birth fetuses is fuzzy and arbitrary, but we still don't allow people to kill newborns. You could argue that the difference between a child and an adult is a fuzzy, arbitrary line, but we still don't allow the exploitation of children. We can argue that the line between a combatant and a non-combatant in a warzone is a fuzzy, arbitrary line, but we make killing civilians a war crime. The fact that moral lines can be drawn in a way that someone considers to be arbitrary is basically no different in form or substance from arguing that morality does not exist. Nothing is fixed. Everything is fuzzy. If you can't draw a line because you could draw it somewhere else, the end result is barbarism.
I'm pretty sure the idea that drawing a line somewhat arbitrarily implies there shouldn't be a line is a straw man. Who is arguing this? The quote from the article advocates for more stringent morals--that beings that aren't fully human should be given similar moral weight as humans. It also suggests, more broadly, that we should reconsider both where these lines are drawn and if they should really be lines instead of gradients. But I see no indication that the lines should become less restrictive or any trend toward barbarism.
I took issue with the quoted part: "it is unclear why it is important for us to preserve the view that biological humanness is both necessary and sufficient for full moral status."
Notice how they said both "necessary and sufficient"? When both are included, there's an implication here that it might be possible for someone to be fully biologically human and yet without full moral rights - that, for example, someone with a different number of chromosomes isn't entitled to life - that someone can be a human and that being human is not "sufficient" for them to have human rights. That's dystopian. Maybe I'm assuming bad faith on the part of the author.
>That's dystopian. Maybe I'm assuming bad faith on the part of the author.
I think you are. Because while your examination of the logic is sound as far as it goes, I think you stop where the author trusts you to continue.
The idea that humans don't deserve full moral rights is so unpopular that author trusts you to infer that they hold some other view. Along the lines of "maybe there are non-human species which deserve full moral rights as well."
I will deliberately not get more specific than that about what the author, because if I did I would probably be bringing the details of my own views rather than theirs. But for myself, it seems highly plausible that other species with highly sophisticated individual social behavior may be able to suffer in ways we're used to thinking of as unique to human experience. And I think there are other people, maybe not yourself, who might accept this plausibility if they are forced to confront the reality of human chimeras.
Of course, there's also the priests, and I expect a very different reaction from them.
I think the other direction is implied, that is someone not being biologically human can be considered conscious and “human” like a chimp, or some hybrid chimera monkey-human.
In fact, now that the line can be blurred means we will need to put the matter up for lawyers, legislators, and judges to decide. What can go wrong there?
> You could argue that the difference between pre-birth and post-birth fetuses is fuzzy and arbitrary
If you don’t view the “attached” women as a living person that can die from childbirth..
Also, there is a very real difference between a first trimester fetus and a third trimester one. The latter is only ever aborted when the life of the mother is in danger (eg. with mothers less than 18).
I'd like to believe that something like this would lead to only eating fruit that has fallen from the tree and started to rot, and people wearing face masks at all times and sweeping the ground in front of them as they walk to avoid killing anything, but it will probably go the other way - a caste system would form.
Wow what a ridiculously asinine and misleading comment (the qouted comment, not the HN comment).
The moral reprehensibility of such an experiment is not the result of humans treating any other species as lesser, morally- rather, it is because it is immoral to create something sentient which has not been created by natural processes. To bring a sentient being into the world which is created by human engineering process is immoral because there are no guarantees that we do not create something which is horribly mutated, fucked up genetically, and experiences only pain for its entire life.
It has nothing to do with humans thinking they are better than animals, and everything to do with the fear of humans thinking they are better than God (or nature if that strikes your fancy)
I didn't put this quite as eloquently as I would like to have, but for fucks sake y'all - get your head cut in and don't drink the coolaid of these psychopathic scientists that think they have a better understanding of morality through science the the aggregate of a long heritage of human moral reasoning.
"...create something which is horribly mutated, fucked up genetically, and experiences only pain for its entire life."
'God' does this all the time already. Friends of mine recently had a baby girl; she is missing part of one of her chromosomes. The family is very religious, and is being torn apart trying to understand how their 'loving God' could have done such a thing. So this 'morality' you speak of is making a tragic and difficult event far worse.
You are also neglecting the 'unnatural' processes that allow many worthy people have children via IVF.
'Natural' science and medicine had it's place back in medieval times, but not now. Same goes for religion.
Eh like I said I was not as concise as I would like to have been in my comment :
IVF is not creating a completely new, engineered organism. Not really what I am talking about.
And man, the idea that religion has no place in the modern world would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Religion serves a veokry important role in society and we abandon it at our peril.
I am sorry to hear about your friend, but this is really not comparable to engineering a new unique organism. And I'm sure her pain would be just as great or worse without a god in her life. Christians realize that there are trials in the world. Re: the book of Job.
As someone that doesn't abhor religion, the following isn't meant as argumentative, but rather curiosity:
> Religion serves a very important role in society and we abandon it at our peril.
What "important role" might that be? I don't see the necessity of religion and don't think there's anything inherent of religions that can't be supplemented by the surrounding culture.
In my travels around the U.S., I encountered many institutions helping the disadvantaged, and almost all of them were religious, mostly Christian or spiritual. I don't know any other organization or entity feeding, clothing, listening, aiding those who need it, day in and day out, giving time and effort and resources without expecting anything in return. No photo ops or social media posts.
With Christianity supposedly in decline, especially in tech, how will we replace it?
Some would argue it's the role of the state to look after the disadvantaged. This model works very well in much of the OECD. Conflating religion and welfare is not a winning combo imo. Further, the state can do so in a way that doesn't impose, foist or solicit religion on the poor.
If I wanted to provide help to the poor without involving my religion, I would do so by donating to charities that aren't religious, or I would do so away from church. Religious institutions help the poor in part as a recruiting drive. That doesn't mean the poor don't benefit, of course, but it is opportunistic IMO.
> I HAVE seen the state fail to help after burning through millions in many places.
Sure, but that's a red herring. It's fair to say both have a checkered past.
Sikh temples unconditionally offer free meals to all without concern for a recipient's religion or economic status.
Religion and charity are voluntary. You can choose to donate to charities that will most effectively utilize your donations. You don't have that choice with a state, and the outcomes are not always good. Even in Democracies, the state social services are often such inefficient massively entrenched institutions that they are resistant to change.
Religions also serve as bulwarks against increasing state power. Depending on your perspective this could be a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm more concerned about the great harm an unrestrained state can inflict on the world than what good it may be able to do.
The US made the welfare state a dogmatic evil. In other places it's percieved as necessary, and it does replace the role of religious institutions of taking care of the underprivileged.
So, learn from europe and other social democratic states. Stop believe in the dogma of the invisible hand, and that what makes money is inherently good.
I think that reasoning about morality without an irrational, faith-based approach leads to a "slippery slope" if you will of reasoning. Essentially, I believe that the fundamental utility of religion is that it provides a framework for morality which is external to logic : therefore it allows one to establish moral barriers which cannot be cross regardless of any logical rationalization. This is important when considering things like eugenics - there are rational lines of thought that lead you to very very ugly conclusions. If you have an arational "hard stop" at the personal and societal level, we avoid these situations.
Empathy stops people from doing awful things pretty regularly. Moreover, many religions allow people to subvert their empathy w.r.t. people who don't fit heteronormative standards. Hell, some sects of Christianity are pretty awful to women.
I don't see a use for religion other than to allow people to skirt their responsibility in having/maintaining a mature line of empathy.
Empathy can also lead you to make destructive decisions and fallcious moral reasonings.
Truly though, any sect of christianity that abuses non heteronarmative people or women is not living by the law of the bible.
I know this sounds like a "no true scotsman" fallacy but really, If you read the bible, 100% of awful christian behaviour is in spite of the bible, not inspired by it.
I think logic builds a stronger moral foundation than religion ever could.
Almost all of the worst atrocities in history have be committed due to faith/some other non-logical idealism.
In this way relgion does very little to create a "hard line that can't be crossed" in fact it's often used as the justification.
Empathy can be derived from logic and is sufficient for deriving modern morality.
I'm not saying all religion is bad, just that it doesn't have utility over and beyond logic. Logic is more than sufficient to establish all of the perceived benefits of religion with none of the inherent risks/downsides of organised religions.
This seems similar to the Jordan Peterson view that religion, mythology, and even good fiction serves to encode generational wisdom on how best to organize a society.
Maybe similar. While I agree with that view, I think religion is more than that.
My practical argument is not that it encodes generational wisdom, necessarily, but rather that it is a source of moral reasoning that lies external to pure logic, which sacrifices what is right for what is practical, or expedient, in many cases
Religion needs a major update, tbh. People are following something written thousands of years ago, which is asinine. Either make a modern version or abandon the whole thing in favour of just being a normal human. It doesn't take much - be kind, understanding, don't hurt others, that's like 90% of it.
i heard someone make this interesting observation: handicapped people could be a test of god for the rest of us.
but your friends may also consider this:
any suffering in this life is rewarded in the next life (the life after death)
god doesn't give us tests that we couldn't possibly pass.
if you are compassionate, i hope you won't ridicule your friends for their belief but try to help them come to terms with their situation using their own belief to strengthen them
> god doesn’t give us tests that we couldn’t possibly pass
I get that you’re framing this in a context that OPs friend might take solace in, but when you put it like that it just sounds like a cruel joke to me.
i appreciate that you take this in the spirit that it was meant.
it just sounds like a cruel joke to me
what would be the alternative?
when anyone suffers, they need help to end that suffering, but also hope and encouragement that they will get through it, because some things just can't be fixed with material means.
if you look at this as if there is a god out there that goes: hmm, this family needs a test. how about i mess up their baby?
that would indeed be cruel. but that is not what i believe is happening. i don't know what that particular child suffers from, but by now we can explain many birth defects to some humans mistakenly or intentionally doing something wrong, like poisoning water with chemicals or malfunctioning nuclear reactors, or what not. i don't believe that any of these are pure acts of god. but they could all be prevented if humans as a whole were more diligent. (i don't mean that any individual could have done anything by themselves, but that as humanity we need to work together to avoid and remove things that cause people to suffer[1])
this is a consequence of free will. bad things happen, because if god were to prevent them, then we would not have free will.
nevertheless on an individual level god does promise that whatever suffering we experience is rewarded in the next life, and that we are all given the capacity to pass the tests that we experience and get through that suffering.
[1] that is in fact happening. we have eliminated many diseases and quality of life on average is improving globally. there is more work to be done, but we are getting there.
It would absolutely be immoral to genetically engineer a human to be born so that their gender identity and their biological form don't match. It would absolutely be immoral to genetically engineer a human so that they need to have organ transplants. It would absolutely be immoral to have scientists in the lab spend years doing research on how to create a human being that will be born needing to use a prosthetic leg.
I don't think anyone is saying that if a fucking Frankenstein's monster human/monkey hybrid were engineered, that people would say that the chimera itself had committed an immoral act. They would say that it was wrong to make that thing. You don't even understand what point you're trying to make.
If the technology were readily accessible to conceive what could be referred to as a "super human" (without genetic disorder, resistance to disease, no predisposition for mental illness, superior athletic ability, high IQ), would it absolutely be immoral to conceive a human being via an entirely natural process?
If it is absolutely immoral to genetically engineer a human being that would require an organ transplant then it would seemingly also be immoral to not utilize readily accessible technology that could have prevented such a disorder, no?
>"If it is absolutely immoral to genetically engineer a human being that would require an organ transplant then it would seemingly also be immoral to not utilize readily accessible technology that could have prevented such a disorder, no?"
Well, actually, no - that doesn't necessarily follow. It's not valid to say "if it's wrong to do x then it's wrong to not do things that prevent x" - you can substitute X for plenty of other things. It's wrong for me to steal money from a friend, but it doesn't logically follow that I'm morally obligated to buy a security system for my friend so he doesn't get stolen from. The analogy is kind of funky here, but I think you get what I'm saying.
There's an intentionality that exists with genetic engineering that doesn't exist with people having kids the old-fashioned way. If someone has a child, and that child turns out to have a birth defect that causes issues, that's a sad accident most of the time, and accidents don't have the same moral quality as intentional acts, like genetically engineering someone.
Let's not lose track of why this came up. The question was "So, are trans folks immoral? Organ transplants? Prosthetics? Where do you draw the line?" and that was in response to "It is immoral to create something sentient which has not been created by natural processes. To bring a sentient being into the world which is created by human engineering process is immoral because there are no guarantees that we do not create something which is horribly mutated, fucked up genetically, and experiences only pain for its entire life."
Asking if we're morally obligated to try to make super babies is a distraction from that earlier question. I said what I did not because I wanted to argue for or against the validity of eugenics, but because I wanted to call attention to how absurd the line of reasoning was.
The person commenting thought that they hit on a pretty solid point when they seemed to equivocate scientists making human-monkey chimeras with people that have to use a fucking cane. I pointed out that no one is intentionally genetically engineering people to force them to have to use canes, and then you've come along to say that if it's possible to ensure that someone will be born without having to use a cane, then they're morally obligated to do that. Somewhere we went off the rails, huh?
Are trans folks immoral :
No I don't care what someone choses to do with their own body, that's their business.
Organ transplants :
No, this is a life saving (or condition improving) medical procedure. Same for prosthetics.
I am referring only to experiments where the outcome might be the creation of a new species of sentient being. Pretty much I'm drawing the line at exactly the posted experiment.
While I'm not sure I entirely agree with the point OP made, it's pretty clear that 'creating a sentient being' is the line being crossed. Modding a being already in existence is not at all comparable.
OK, as long as they were taken from someone who was actually dead. Not all organs can be taken after death. In these cases, the transplant surgeon ends the donor's life in the process of harvesting.
Death is irreversible, but our understanding of it keeps improving.
At one point, pulmonary arrest was considered death. Then, cardiac arrest. Now, we use the cessation of brain activity as an approximation, but there have been plenty of cases of patients with zero brain activity making full recoveries.
The best definition of death is probably information-theoretic death. But that's not something we know how to measure (yet), so the organ harvests continue:
Interesting points.
Personally, not sure I agree with 1. Lots of scenarios where creating a sentient being would be bad - like if that being can only experience endless pain.
On point 2 : well you got me there. Let me be more precise : its not the "natural processes" part that is important, but my point was rather that this type of hybridizing results in the creation of organisms which have not been time tested and weathered the refining pressures of evolution. We have no gaurantees of the probabability of a successful organism - could be, as I said, some fucked up abomination which only exists to plead for death. Quite tragic in my view if this is the outcome.
> We have no gaurantees of the probabability of a successful organism - could be, as I said, some fucked up abomination which only exists to plead for death.
Although I think this is unlikely, let's accept it as true for the sake of argument.
Eventually I think it's fair to presume we'd come to understand which variations of the process produce your 'abomination' and solve that problem, such that we go on to produce many, many more organisms that don't suffer this same experience.
Would this not be a better outcome than 'not even going there'?
Personally, I think it would not be a better outcome, no.
What would be the point of creating new species? Sow more division and war and violence. I just dont see it turning out well. Inherently humans would be the "creators" of the other species. Sounds like a recipe for some horrible problems with speciesm.
> What would be the point of creating new species?
I've not given it a lot of thought but off the top of my head:
Imagine a monkey or ape that possesses above-average (for an ape) intelligence that could be a home-health assistant, taking care of an elderly person who wishes to maintain some independence and not move into a nursing home. Or a disabled adult who needs special care throughout the day.
Speciesism seems a remote risk when you consider the fact that our moral circle of concern has only widened across history.
Just to be clear about what evolution optimizes for: It’s propagation of genetic information.
Evolution is not kind. And evolution doesn’t optimize for happiness or even health beyond reproductive.
Evolution has produced plenty of humans who plead for death. We treat it as a disorder and try to fix it.
I’m wholeheartedly on board with (1) not creating more suffering and (2) reducing suffering. However I’m not convinced that evolution does better on either of those two fronts than empathetic humans.
For the purposes of moral evaluation, why would you say that our actions fall into the "natural process" bucket? I would place our actions in the "unnatural process" bucket because our actions involve unnatural language which comes from a combination of intention, objectivity, and abstraction.
> What is unnatural about the behaviour of humans.
If we define "natural" to mean "things that happen", then sure, I would see no difference between natural things and human things. But we use the word "natural" to separate some of our actions from the actions of animals.
I think we could come up with a list of things that people do that animals don't do. Looking at actions from the standpoint of culpability, intentionality, objectivity, language, and planning might shed some light on what actions we would consider "natural". For example, feeling attracted to another person would fall under the "natural" category because we would not consider ourselves "culpable" or "use intention" for such an action. Another example: desire paths made by humans in the grass would probably fall under the "natural" category because people do not plan the paths with language or use objectivity to create the paths. We simply walk "mindlessly" and the paths spring up from under our feet. Another example: asking a stranger for directions would fall under the category of "unnatural" because we need to use language and an objective view of the world around us to engage with another person to share information.
Definition 2b is succint: "an inner force (such as instinct, appetite, desire) or the sum of such forces in an individual"
According to this, of course, something like murder is quite natural. Is the stranger giving you directions not following that "nature" within which makes him help you for nothing in return? Is your request for help not a natural thing?
Ultimately, I don't like arguments about definitions, because I think they're a cheap way out: "x is (not) bad because its y"; they also force discussions about all the wrong things, ignoring the core of what both parties care about regarding the issue.
In my previous post I mentioned that I want to separate human actions from animal actions, and that we can actually do that using some sort of test. We have used the word "natural" and "unnatural" to talk about this difference, but I also used lots of other words.
I want to find what essential quality separates people actions from animal actions. It seems to me that all unnatural things got "affected by human discernment". Using that rubric, I find it interesting that all of the definitions of "natural" you provided fall into those categories of either "fundamentally affected" or "not affected" by human discernment where things left in their base state we call "natural" and things left in their affected state we call "unnatural".
Examples:
1. Natural justice - that humans have a kind of justice beyond what nature provide which also implies that humans have sussed out the various justices allotted by nature.
3. Adopted vs natural child - human convention creates long-lasting parent-child relationships without a birth connection.
10. Growing without human care
13. (a) Closely resembling an original, (b) freedom from artificiality -- both of which require a human to create the artificiality.
Bee and wasp foragers give each other directions to food sources every day - not usually by pheromonic recruitment, although a few species including V. mandarinia do use that method, but by communicating. As far as we know, they don't have symbolic language or anything like the same level of abstraction we do, which is reasonable when our brains outsize theirs by eight orders of magnitude, but that doesn't stop them telling each other what they need to know. And that's just hymenopterans; we should also talk about corvids, who are well known to pass knowledge across populations and generations, and also to possess tool use and theory of mind.
The definition of "unnatural" toward which you're extensionally groping here is "things only humans, and no other animals, do". I suspect you are going to find it a considerably narrower category than you presently appear to imagine. I also don't think it is going to lead you anywhere useful; many anarchoprimitivists have trodden this ground before you, and if nothing else it may be worth familiarizing yourself with some of their work lest you find yourself in one of the same pitfalls they so often do.
Human language and animal language also differ in that people use grammars which recurse which shows a sense of abstraction (as you stated) and also objectivity.
Do you see a narrow difference between human output and animal output? Would you consider that difference somehow not "useful"? I think the bird and bee examples do not provide a compelling sense of language in the same way human talking does because animal language appears tightly bounded and human language through its recursive features appears possibly limitless.
You see a difference of kind where I see one merely of degree, and your confidence in the sufficient extent of knowledge of nonhuman language and communication, to draw such clear delineations as you do, strikes me as unwarranted. It is a relatively recent innovation in modern understanding even to recognize that any animals beyond our own species have language; where come you by this idea that we know enough about how nonhuman language works to even attempt so broad a conclusion? - or, for that matter, even enough about how human language works? Anyone who's ever tried to explain a complex idea to someone and have them comprehend it, or tried to become a polyglot beyond the age of about ten, should have a better sense of our own limitations than you evince here.
Definition 2b is succint: "an inner force (such as instinct, appetite, desire) or the sum of such forces in an individual"
According to this, murder is in fact quite natural.
I don't like arguments about definitions, because they're a cheap way out: "x is (not) bad because its y"; they also force discussions about all the wrong things, ignoring the core of what both parties care about regarding the issue.
i agree. i do however like to clarify definitions so that we all know what we mean. i am quite happy to continue the discussion with OPs definition of natural, because now that we understand what that definition is we can get back to the actual core of the issue.
uhm, bringing up natural as an argument in defense of the creation of sentient beings heavily implies that you consider everything natural as good.
since we obviously agree that murder is not good, and you also agree that not everything natural (by your definition of natural) is good either, using natural in support of your argument no longer works.
this doesn't invalidate your argument. we can still discuss whether creating sentient beings is acceptable or not. just arguing whether it is natural or not does not help us here
Something that contributed to caring about all life on this earth was understanding it will likely not last forever, either due to the sun expanding or, ultimately, cooling near zero. Related song: Born to Die, by Kelly Clarkson
Off-topic, but responding regarding US schools: as a licensed physics teacher I generally agree; schools are holding pens, with an upside of strengthening peer-bonds through suffering together. The experience that best lined up with helping students find joy in learning (so they might continue on their own, at the library, etc) was teaching at an alternative public school. The small team of teachers was able to get to know all the students (in a community-size below Dumbar’s number) enough to genuinely care and get closer to meeting individual needs, as if everyone were on an IEP (individualized education plan). I don’t know what changes to prioritize except early-childhood education to minimize trauma and educate our first teachers (parents). It’s a big, complex system with inertia.
The problem is not acknowledging that elementary school functions as daycare. That is obvious and important. The problem is asserting that it only functions as daycare (which many do - in bad faith - when the topic is discussed).
>The first orks of the sixth World emerged during the Unexplained Genetic Expression in the year 2021 as either young humans changed to orks or ones born as orks from human parents. They are considered metahumans, like trolls, elves, and dwarfs. Orks are able to interbreed with humans and fellow metahumans. Despite this, their offspring will be of the race of only one of their parents. No half-breeds exist.
Four observations like this, and more, I suggest Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It’s a phenomenal book about inspecting humanity from an outsider perspective
I am by no means whatsoever an Alex Jones listener or fan. But he's been laughed at for proclaiming that human/animal hybrids are being "developed" for some time now (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa9jXkVpnw0, for example).
It's scary to see this article because it's essentially "proving" Alex Jones right. This is a very bad precedent.
The issue at hand is serious, but it's obscured because of the comedic/crazy veil that Jones's delivery and accompanying distortion/exaggeration of the facts causes.
This reminds me of his erroneous "they're turning the friggin' frogs gay" comment, which has links in a serious issue — atrazine feminizing male frogs: https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/03/01/frogs/.
Alex Jones claimed 1) that the US Air Force attacked Texas with weather control weapons 2) that the majority of frogs in the US are now gay because the government is intentionally turning people homosexual for population control 3) that the most monstrous shooting in my lifetime, Sandy Hook, was a false flag and the bereaved families of the murdered first graders were crisis actors.
Alex Jones is an awful person. He lies about so much, some of it will end up being accidentally correct. What he says or thinks should be shunned by any decent human being, and he should not be brought up here.
My point here is that a lot of people who are not very informed, who may be susceptible to his conspiracy theories, will see this news come out and think, "Oh, he was right. Maybe he's right about something else."
IMO the problem is that it was ridiculed when he said it. Now he can look back and post a link to an NPR article stating that human-monkey chimera embryos have been created.
I make this comment only because a friend of mine sent me the NPR article [0] with a note saying "man maybe Alex Jones is right about a lot of stuff, lol." I don't know how common this sentiment is, but it's another talking point lodged in Jones's favor (to the detriment of all of us).
I don't care for cancel culture, too. That doesn't mean we can be selective about who and what we spend our limited time on Earth discussing. Not talking about a pathologically lying conspiracy theorist is good for efficiency and mental health. To each their own.
I barely knew Alex Jones existed before he was starting to get censored from all kinds of platforms. What was previously just a blip on the radar, censorship turned into a mainstream talking point.
You're both lucky. He's been around a while, and had explosively grown in prominence before deplatforming.
What has been challenging, as an adult growing up into the internet is seeing younger kids exposed to polished and talented psychopaths. These people are very, very good at exploiting social systems and have no qualms about leveraging social norms for their personal benefit. This goes well beyond partisan media. I'm sure this will all sort out someday, but it usually takes years to develop resistance to the sort of manipulation techniques they employee to leverage standard weaknesses that all people have, and the internet has given them massive leverage. People are now exposed to this well before their cognitive development is complete. It is a lot to ask of kids to be able to develop defense mechanisms to military grade propaganda while their prefrontal cortex is still a work in progress.
Anyway, Alex Jones is bad, and while I don't care for cancel culture like I said earlier, I will worry about that after the many other more pressing problems facing life on Earth are in a stabler place.
The frog thing is interesting because there's a kernel of truth there; we're releasing an enormous number of endocrine disrupters into the environment (PVC, BPA, etc, etc etc), which is wreaking havoc on both animal animal and human animal hormonal balances.
Obviously it's not an intentional government plot... but that doesn't mean we _aren't_ "turning frogs gay".
Conspiracy theories usually start with a kernel of truth. And then a combination of misunderstanding, paranoia, and intentional disinformation fills them with heavy amounts of untruth.
If he referenced some good reasoning, he'd be proven right. If he's just screaming random ideas often enough that one turns out to be true... he's still just screaming random ideas.
(Also turning frogs female is not the same as turning them gay - if he meant that it would propagate harmful stereotypes)
Jones is a kind of "bullshitter," as defined by Harry Frankfurt [0][1].
To paraphrase — a liar has some respect for the truth, because he knows its power and shies away from it. A bullshitter doesn't care if something is true or false, only if they persuade their listener, and therefore the bullshitter has no respect for the truth.
The point I was trying to make, and maybe I did not make it well, was that this is another thing Jones's adherents can point to to say "well, look, he was right about this." That means he can persuade more people, which is clearly not good.
We can't prevent it until it crosses into directly harmful territory. We can just ignore it and call out the random luck when it is. He wasn't the first one and won't be the last one.
1996, Jose Cibelli implanted his own DNA into a cow egg, then let it divide into 32 chimeric stem cells before destroying it. I heard about the news in 1998 and was blown away by how little anyone seemed to care.
Not the first time, unlike what the article says [1]. I don't know if there was any follow-up on the previous case, but a big ethical concern was that human DNA was used to increase their brain capacity, and if they had been allowed to be born, then they would have been as intelligent as humans. So it raises the question of what counts as a human, and did the scientists effectively create "humans" in a lab, then terminate them once the experiment was over.
What these researchers are doing is very different than that Vox article. They aren’t giving a monkey a human brain, they are just adding some human cells into a monkey so the monkey will carry them around. By my understanding the Chimera is a host for human tissue that can be used for disease research, sort of like a more effective version of growing human tissue in Petri dishes (e.g. HeLa).
There's a solid difference between a laissez-faire "whatever let's just kill it" attitude you might have with a mosquito, and the morality of, for example, assisted suicide in the cases you just described.
I get what you're getting at but I don't think your example serves to make your point. Keeping people alive against their wishes can be really fucking barbaric, especially in cases of irreparably debilitating brain injuries.
You know an easy way to tell awful comments? How about this: a sarcastic reply to someone who didn't even make a particular point, with "You're right, [here's what I wish your comment was so I could make fun of it]"
What counts as human levels of cognition/awareness? There are many birds that would rank higher thank human toddlers on the cognitive and awareness scale.
The really awkward thing is that human level isn't a discrete level but a wide range based upon the set of all humanity. Not just our assumptions of such. If a new outlier was somehow born with the intelligence of a mealworm or what was previously believed to be a level only reachable by a superintelligence those vast anomalies would still have human level intelligence.
We don't actually apply the set based standards properly but instead based upon imaginary ideas of human level. If we did consistently operate on set logic and the directive people reduced to brainstem autonomous functions only would eithervmake eating plants unethical or we would be arbitrarily excluding humans from the set for reasons other than absolute ethical.
To go more fantastic it would be consistent with ethics to declare obligate murderous vampires who must eat humans non-human because their existence literally depends unconditionally on taking human lives and it falls into paradox of tolerance.
Instead our standard for the irreversible brain stem only is to eventually withdraw life support or harvest their organs as they are effectively judged dead.
People misunderstand what this would do. These would not be human-monkey hybrids. It would not be like a liger where it has properties of both species.
It would be more like a rat-mouse chimera, where a rat has a single mouse organ (e.g. a pancreas) or a human-pig chimera where a small number of human cells are disbursed throughout the pig embryo.
No one is suggesting a race of sentient human-monkey hybrids. Just monkeys which will host some human cells which can be studied for disease research or perhaps grow a human organ for transplant.
We’re all humsters - running in the spinners of our own. I will never unhear Miller saying to a hamster in a wheel, “Keep at it partner. You’ll get there.”
Any moral quandaries may already be rendered moot by superior biotechnology. For any given use case of interest: gene therapies, disease modelling, cell transplantation, etc. High-efficiency computer assisted cellular conversion of stem cells is the holy grail. Recall, you don't need to replace entire organs. Just the diseased sectors. And if in vivo cellular reprogramming can be targeted to organs with historically lacking regenerative capability, base astrocytes into fresh plastic neurons, for example. It would unlock longevity beyond the mere physical ;)
IRENE: computer-guided design tool to increase efficiency of cellular conversions
I don't feel morally panicked by this, unless the goal is to have "human-like" animals to experiment on.
However, saying anything that advances science should be done is a crazy take. I do not believe that people should be tortured, that people should be given drugs against their will, or even be forced to take part in experiments.
It depends on which ethical viewpoint you have. There are two major ones:
The deontological (Kantian) view is that anything that is wrong is so implicitly such that anyone doing something wrong is morally wrong regardless of consequences; murdering a criminal to save thousands in the future would be wrong implicitly.
The utilitarian one says that the ends justify the means, that if one were to murder a criminal to save thousands, it would be morally right.
There is not necessarily a right answer as this argument has been going on in philosophy for a long time, but I'm a utilitarian. If people need to be experimented on in order to advance science, then let it be so. You seem to be less so on this side or even on the deontological side.
I have a hard time imagining anyone commenting about the moral implications of the article would be unaware of the difference between deontological and utilitarian ethics.
Personally, I find your defense of the idea betrays a naive view of utilitarianism. We must take into account not just the immediate consequences of our actions but also the long-term ones. Any society where people may be experimented upon is one where people must live in fear of being experimented upon. To fail to take into account human dignity is tantamount to disregarding human nature, which just means your formula is wrong.
For the case in TFA, the consequences could be dire. I challenge anyone to reference a society where some people can be seen as subhuman and say they would rather live there. One might argue that the chimera is not a person, but that would still, in my opinion, fail to account for all the variables, as the current paradigm where anything with human DNA is considered human is what makes this debatable in the first place.
In short you may say that anything is acceptable but you can't declare it so, and you must also consider that there would be blood in the streets if science had no deontological bounds. You must also account for this in your utilitarian calculation, regardless of how you yourself view morality.
> We must take into account not just the immediate consequences of our actions but also the long-term ones.
Indeed. But we may not necessarily know the long term results of such actions. For example, we might experiment on people for some time in order to advance science to the point that we can cure all people, say for example, 100 years of experimentation for 1000 years thereafter of saving people. Is that enough? Is the suffering of 100 years worth of people enough to overcome the salvation of 1000 years' worth? I don't know, nobody could know, it's still a moral question. You seem to be presupposing a deontological viewpoint from my understanding given the specific sentence "Any society where people may be experimented upon is one where people must live in fear of being experimented upon."
> I challenge anyone to reference a society where some people can be seen as subhuman and say they would rather live there.
One could argue that this is current society, and it has been throughout human history if you take slavery into account; many people did in fact want to live in such societies, given that they were not slaves.
> To fail to take into account human dignity is tantamount to disregarding human nature, which just means your formula is wrong.
Why? This still seems like it comes from a deontological viewpoint. Why must we consider human dignity? It does not necessarily follow from your argument.
> you must also consider that there would be blood in the streets if science had no deontological bounds.
Again, this does not follow. Why would there be "blood on the streets" if "science had no deontological bounds?"
> I have a hard time imagining anyone commenting about the moral implications of the article would be unaware of the difference between deontological and utilitarian ethics.
Perhaps. Most people don't have academic or rigorous philosophical ethics knowledge.
I'm unsure if you're saying I'm coming from a deontological viewpoint (I'm not), I'm assuming you are a utilitarian, as you said.
Remaining in a utilitarian paradigm, I hardly think societies with slavery maximized utility, this was more or less my point.
More to the actual point, science must have deontological ethics for science to, well, exist. Any world where science has no moral rules is a fantasy, and a rather dystopian one. There must be some sort of social contract between scientists and the general population for it to actually be useful. We are already witnessing a rise in anti-scientific sentiment even with the rigorous reviews we currently have. And it has led to many deaths, directly or indirectly.
Now imagine that scientists are allowed to conduct experiments purely for the sake of progress without consideration of absolute morality. People would actively be burning down science labs, and science itself would be seen akin to witchcraft. This would no doubt slow progress to a halt.
To summarize, the idea of a world where we can have science without deontology is fictional, you seemed to argue it should be this way, I'm arguing that it can't, in practice, be this way.
Not sure what you're pointing out by reiterating my comment.
Regardless, very, very few things are inherently "evil" as in actively harming humanity. We got nuclear energy from the atomic bomb. If something like ice-nine were created, it is a fallacy to think that it is only negative in its effect, that no positives could be discovered of it in the future. In fact, it is bordering on "we might discover something bad so we should stop discovery of science in that field as a whole" which does not follow logically.
Mengele's experiments didn't really advance science, most of the experimental data was useless after the Allies examined them. So it's not necessarily the same thing.
Kind a pedantic point, his name is just more recognized than the anonymous doctors of Unit 731 who were forgiven for their crimes in the name of progress.
Layman question. Is it to be assumed that doing what the article suggests between human and pig, is much more difficult if trying to merge a human and a spider?
> ( ... ) researchers from the Salk Institute and Kunming University of Science and Technology ( ... )
> In lab tests in culture, the team started with monkey blastocysts. Six days after fertilization they were injected with 25 human extended pluripotent stem (hEPS) cells, which contribute to the tissue as the embryo develops.
> And sure enough, when the researchers examined the batch of embryos 24 hours later, they detected human cells in 132 of them. After 10 days, there were 103 of these chimeric embryos remaining, but by day 19 only three still survived. After that, the embryos were terminated before they developed any further.
Saved you a click.
I'm guessing that the reason why this is called a chimera and not just a blob of cells from two different species is that the number of human cells increased from 25 to 132. But this seems like a very low bar to me...? I'm guessing that if you keep cells which you just extracted from a living organism and keep them in a comfortable bath, division might occur before they quickly die out.
I know I’ll be downvoted, but here it goes: there’s an implicit and unavoidable act of rebellion (to a potential God), in this and other similar scientific research.
Even if you’re atheist, you cannot escape the underlying reference to a Biblical story: I want the freedom to be like a God.
If you don't accept the proposition of the supernatural, how can you rebel against it?
Any mastery of nature could be viewed as rebellion against mysticism. Viewed in that context, humans have been rebelling since they learned how to create fire on demand rather than relying on 'God' to gift it from the heavens.
> And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
Now the question is if the Bible views this "inculcation" of God-like-ness to be a good or bad thing. In a Gnostic interpretation this transcendence from Man into God is the ultimate goal.
Oh, I just think it's interesting to think about these things! They've obviously played a huge role in the development of our modern societies (at least in the west) and studying the theology is just an interesting and revealing thing to do.
I take your point. It's worth studying these things out of curiosity, but I wouldn't seek guidance from these fables any more than I'd seek Napoleon's advice on air-to-air combat tactics.
Consider that our electromechanical technology is already at the level of various animals. Are we not gods already? Why not biological technology, then?
That's more of a legal question, isn't it? At least in the US and EU, there will be prison time. The length of the sentence depends on whether they're convicted of murdering a human, animal or both.
I don't get the scientific value of this. What can be learned from doing this opposed to observing normal human embryos?
If it's done for ethical reasons then I don't see how injecting human cells in an monkey embryo then killing them is more ethical than just killing human cells.
Over a sufficient timeframe, any industrial process resulting from a method like this will eventually lead to new species in the wild. It won't happen in the same way nuclear meltdowns never happen
I, for one, would be excited to see a variety of intelligent non-human species given rise to. (The chances we’d ever see natural life, let alone an intelligent one, in other worlds seem to be very slim.)
Last I recall there's quite a lot of legislation regarding genetics stuff, too much in my opinion, believe thats why you usually here progress like this happening in other countries
> The announcement of the new chimeras will no doubt be labelled “unnatural” or “playing God” by some people – but the same could be said about many scientific breakthroughs. An iPhone is unnatural.
This is quite possibly the worst take about anything I've ever heard. Intelligent human-monkey hybrids brought in to the world for the purpose of having their organs harvested, vs lil pocket computer.
"Unnatural" is a strawman that's trotted out whenever "professionals" get caught doing something with the potential for profoundly negative consequences and reasonable people point this out. "Oh I see, so you don't like SCIENCE. Why don't you go back to the woods and bang rocks together you SCIENCE HATER."
Science is an amoral tool. It's up to humans to figure out how to use that tool properly. Personally, I'd say there's nothing wrong with lab-grown organs, but creating them via a hilariously dystopian method reminiscent of Michael Bay's "The Island" is almost certainly a Very Bad idea.
Every day the people running the world seem to be trying harder and harder to become the cackling comic book supervillians that conspiracy theorists have always made them out to be.
The author isn't dismissing the ethical issues. He is saying calling it "unnatural" in and of itself isn't grounds for making such a claim, as the world is filled with unnatural yet ethical things. In fact, he goes on for a few paragraphs touching on these more substantive issues.
"Clearly" to you, but not at all to me. The fact that he brings up unnaturalness in one sentence and then spends the following few paragraph discussing actual ethical issues tells me he isn't dismissing ethical issues.
Saying "clearly" is not offering any counter argument; it is just an assertion.
I would say the lesson is can we stop trying to prove him correct. I am getting a bit sick of conspiracy theories going from "that's absurd" to "oh, hey, about that, uhmm, we are actually doing that".
Idiots are like Nostradamus because their incoherent ideas can cover a very large space of possibilities. Especially when steelmanning is taken too far and goalposts are allowed to slide from "this specific resturant is selling child sex slaves in their basement (when in reality it doesn't even have a basement because Washington DC is swampland)" to "my political opponents are all child molestors based upon a tortured redefining of innocous emails" to "child molestors exist!".
Lets be real here, Alex has made a lot of really specific allegations that turned out to be true : he's also said a lot of complete fucking nonsense, but he never "moves the goalpost" ie he doesnt make claim A and then when B turns out to be true he makes claim B. Rather he makes claims A B and C and then B turns out to be true.
Sounds trivial but it is not. He actuall has said a lot of shocking and true shit way before it was public knowledge : e.g. he's been talking about epstein since way before any mainstream media was.
Recently he has been saying that the government is using methods of intravenous dmt injections to talk to interdimensional aliens in order to obtain next gen technology. Inb4 that's true. (/s)
The goal, the team says, is to make better models for studying biological development, evolution, disease progression and treatments. "As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease,"
Interestingly, the review paper suggests that perhaps the creation of human-animal chimeras might help people realize that humans don’t necessarily have any higher moral status than any other creature.
Yeah sorry but fuck off with this. If your explicit goal is to create living organisms for medical research / donor organs that would be unethical to perform in humans, don't turn around and justify it with "maybe our monkeyman will increase people's concern with animal welfare!" If it did then we would turn around and ban your research and/or just do it in humans directly.
Frankly I'd find it a lot more ethical to figure out how to grow a brainless human clone for these purposes than a sentient hu-monkey that can be tortured in a lab.