Some tricky questions ahead of us down the road:
If stem cells ever show promise in treating diseases of the human brain, any potential therapy would need to be tested in animals. But putting human brain stem cells into monkeys or apes could raise awkward ethical dilemmas, like the possibility of generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee’s body.
No such experiments are planned right now. But in a paper today in the journal Science, a group of scientists and ethicists is advising researchers to exercise care with such experiments, particularly if they should lead to a large fraction of a chimpanzee’s brain’s being composed of human neurons.
The group, led by Ruth R. Faden, a biomedical ethicist at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledged the view that monkeys and apes should not be experimented on at all, but nevertheless considered what kinds of research should be permitted if the experiments were required by regulatory authorities.
This will be a snarled and contentious debate.
jcricket
Perhaps it will be. I prefer that we allow scientists and their oversight boards to hash it out, rather than politicians and/or religious leaders.
Look at what happened with Plan B, for example. Religion and politics should have little, if any, place in scientific debate.
Just like scientists shouldn’t be called on to debate religion or set religious policy.
Toren
Gee, good idea. Can’t have the hoi-polloi interfering with the Grand, All-Knowing Wisdom of the Scientists, after all.
Say, how about we start by getting environmentalists out of all scientific debates?
John Cole
Well- science without ethics and moral judgements isn’t something I am necessarily in favor of… My problem is when the ethicists and religionists attempt to dictate the results of science, such as pretending creationism and ID are valid science.
Molly McRae
If, as it appears, we have reached the point in science where we can change the essential nature of what it means to be human, then I think we have to pause at least long enough to consider what may be lost in the process.
Unlike jcricket, I don’t think this is simply a biological question. I also don’t think it should be left to people who single-mindedly focus on their own field of study to the exclusion of other aspects of humanity. Why are they more qualifed to decide than me? My genes have managed to survive thousands and thousands of years just like everyone else alive today. Anyone who wants to tinker with how they work should be able to convince me it is worthwhile.
ppgaz
Porcine insulin has kept huge numbers of diabetics alive. Porcine skin grafts …. a miracle for burn patients.
I can’t understand why anyone would get breathless about any kind of cross-species therapy and its “ethical” considerations. There aren’t any, save for those who see all of the world as an opportunity for deep thoughts a la navelgazing.
If you are profoundly sick or injured, and there is a therapy that will make you better, you have a right to expect that all available and effective measures will be taken to ease your pain, heal your sickness, repair your wounds. Whether it’s medical marijuana, pig skin, or stem cell treatments derived from experiments such as ones described in the thread.
If there’s an animal rights issue, then I say as long as the treatment of the animals is humane, the human need wins. And this is the answer to the silly “what it means to be human” question. What it means to be human is that humans have the capacity to advance science — at least, in those countries where science is not demonized (whether that continues to include the US remains to be seen).
Animals having “human thoughts” because they got human stem cells? Uh, yeah. If you think that human thought is just the result of cell architecture, then …. you might think that porcine skin grafts could turn your uncle into Porky Pig. Is your grandfather, with his pacemaker, a robot? Is a chimp going to have “human thoughts” after a human cell infusion? Well, when the chimp exhibits a penchant for political dirty tricks, and voting Republican, call me.
KC
I have a feeling that whether anyone likes it or not, if this were ever a story that made the front pages, Congress would get involved.
Simon
This is one of dozens of issues in the pike that will reveal the true nature of our respect for religion. We often claim science cannot speak to the morality of anything, but only to empirical fact. The problem is, science (as it has now come to be), respects nothing but what it calls
ppgaz
Science is no more “godless” than it is “godly.”
It’s god-neutral. It’s about information.
Your rant is just silly. Science is not tied to “materialists” any more than it is tied to “scientologists” or “violinists.”
Science isn’t about isms. It’s about information.
What you do with information is up to you.
Marx Marvelous
But putting human brain stem cells into monkeys or apes could raise awkward ethical dilemmas, like the possibility of generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee’s body.
Awkward? I think it’s spelled “awesome.” I don’t think this technology is anywhere close to becoming a reality, but maybe someday. The sheer possibilities it opens up for what humanity can do make it an unqualified good, despite the thoroughly reasonable objections of “it’s icky,” and “shouldn’t they consult me before they learn things?”
In other words: God, Shmod. I want my monkey man!
ppgaz
Well, we gave you your Chimp President.
Simon
Of course this is a mere euphemism for godlessness. It is to say that science has no interest in anything that does not reveal itself via what you call “information”, which scientists insist be acquired by materialism. So then even if a thing exists mysteriously undetectable by reproducible material experimentation, science is incorrigibly helpless to engage it.
This means should 5.7 billion of the world’s 6 billion inhabitants insist, however imprecisely, upon a non-materialistic certainty that God exists, science is compelled to ignore their evidence. Should anyone of these 5.7 billion on the basis of their God declare the wrongness of growing a human brain within a chimp, science absolutely must ignore their declaration. Science is godless indeed.
The stem cells will be inserted into the chimp, despite religionists and despite “bioethicists.” The godlessness of science is why we now attempt to clone children even now, despite our former disdain for it. It is why we are now aborting genetic humans with impunity, why we will create a host of other beastly and macabre creations in the future if ever we can. There is no materialistic evidence informing science of the moral wrongness of anything. “Wrong” from a scientific perspective necessarily has to do with that which threatens the material existence of a human, and even this is fairly arbitrary.
Science will not long bow to anything that does not speak via materialism. It is less of god (god-less) and therefore its intellectually consistent advocates must also be less of god. The rest of its advocvates are simply deceiving themselves or else re-defining redefined science.
Zifnab
Wait. I’m confused. What exactly are we afraid of? Creating human nero-pathways inside a chimp’s brain? Are we afraid the chimps might become super-intelligent and destroy us all? It’ll be like that fourth Planet of the Apes movie all over again. But with worse acting.
Seriously, it sounds like we’re afraid of accidentally proving evolution or some such non-sense. This is where the science and ethics of animal testing breaks down. You can do horrendious experiments on baby kittens, but on a baby human we draw the lines. Why? Because cats are cats and people are people and we’ve got to look out for number one. But if we were to make a cat as smart as a human… ? Suddenly, we have to ask ourselves whether we’re dealing with a human that looks like a cat or a cat that thinks like a human, and our guilty consciences start rearing their ugly heads.
I think these types of experiments don’t just bring up the pecular ethical situations of doing testing on animals that seem a bit too human, but on the much more broad-based question of how we do testing on animals at all. Suddenly we might be faced with the reality that we’re all made of the same basic stuff and maybe animal testing on a whole isn’t ethical at all.
Simon
LOL! Absolutely. No honest science advocate can think otherwise.
Simon
Indeed. You are correct. Since humans are nothing but animals no more worthy of life than any other animal, there is no valid reason we should become so squeamish about experimenting on humans in view of our willingness to experiment on other animals
Zifnab
You are exactly backward on the issue Simon.
Humans are no better than animals. Therefore, we should avoid doing testing on animal. I love this reverse logic. The “if he makes the link between humans and animals, he clearly wants to drag us down to their level” logic. I am all for science. But I am for ethical science. I simple raise the question that all animal testing in which the animal will suffer or has a very high chance of suffering, is unethical. This becomes clearer as we see the similarities between animals and human beings. Or at clearer to some people.
ppgaz
Science is a process. PEOPLE have interests.
Science is neutral. People may apply it in non-neutral ways, but that’s about them, not about science.
“Scientists” are not science.
Science is about information. What you do with it, or how you characterize it, is up to you. But your characterizations are just yours. Others are not bound by your charcterizations.
In any case, when somebody shows up with a chimp that has a human brain ….. we should run it for president. It would be an improvement.
Simon
Zifnab:
This simply does not follow. It is to say that since one lion is no better than another, it is wrong for a lion to kill another lion. It in fact is not
Simon
A process that has nothing to do with God and that can never, in its current form, have anything to do with Him even if He truly exists – UNLESS He is willing to speak via materialism. It is a godless process and those who advocate it with intellectual consistency are necessarily godless.
I can see we are simply speaking around each other and so you may have the last word on it if you wish it.
CaseyL
I have no problems with “godless” science.
God is one nasty mofo, and the less God there is in science, politics, and society, the better off we’ll all be.
Simon
Indeed. Might surely makes right. Always has, always will – despite our fantasies to the contrary.
Tim F
The key to human brains is the nature of the network, not the neurons themselves. There isn’t enough room in a chimpanzee skull for higher human-style consciousness.
If we grafted an entire human head onto a chimpanzee, then we’d have issues.
Stormy70
Just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. Chimps are actually dangerous animals in the wild, and exhibit violent behavior against weaker members of their group. Most chimps in labs are juveniles because the adults are too dangerous. If a juvenile starts showing human tendancies, what do we do with them when they become adults? I love science and find it facinating that we can do so much, but I think that ethics should be involved. One of the reprehensible acts of the Nazi’s were human experiments performed on Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals. I don’t think people are ready to see that kind of genetic tampering, without a comprehensive debate involving science and morals. Ethical guidelines should be in place for scientists.
PS I’m not invoking Godwin’s law here, or comparing any modern day scientists with Nazis.
ppgaz
This, from the person who said she would “light up” all Palestinians if one terrorist came over the fence?
No offense, but it’s hot …. have you had a few scotch on the rocks already today?
Or did I misunderstand that other post?
Jon H
I don’t see the point in the concern.
We make tons of human cells. There are probably thousands or millions of human neurons living in petri dishes. There’s a line of cells, called HeLa cells after the woman they came from, which has long outlived her.
A bunch of neurons in a monkey’s head isn’t going to make that person human, any more than they would make a pyrex beaker human.
ppgaz
Experiments now being conducted in the Oval Office notwithstanding :-)
Jon H
zifnab writes: “Humans are no better than animals. Therefore, we should avoid doing testing on animal.”
However, it’s hard to pin down what would be so horrible if the change is done in a test tube, rather than as major surgery.
If the experiment involved, say, inserting some human DNA into a fertilized chimp egg, you can’t really say it is hurting the ape, unless the result is an ape with a painful condition.
There is one such experiment I’d like to see. The FOXP2 gene appears to be related to speech, and/or vocal control. It would be interesting to splice a human FOXP2 gene into a chimp, and see what happens. Perhaps the chimp’s ability to communicate would improve, by having more control over the physical tools; then we might get a better idea of what level of thought regular chimps are capable of.
Jon H
“If a juvenile starts showing human tendancies, what do we do with them when they become adults?”
What about “human tendencies” that may already exist in animals, but which we dismiss or ignore due to the language barrier?
Between Koko’s sign language communication (and, uh, breast fixation) and that gorilla in Chicago who saved and held the unconscious little boy who had falled in the enclosure, there are plenty of signs of “human tendencies” in gorillas. But we still keep them in cages.
Marx Marvelous
Since your conception of what is right and what is wrong is dependent wholly on which religion had the best guns in the past, you’re hardly one to throw stones.
Marx Marvelous
Since your conception of what is right and what is wrong is dependent wholly on which religion had the best guns in the past, you’re hardly one to throw stones.