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Blending Mice and Men
An anonymous reader sends in this piece about chimeras - not the ones with a THAC0 of 11, but a more general term meaning any multi-creature hybrid. A comprehensive look at the moral and scientific issues surrounding this area of biotech.
You'd be surprised...
I might as well preempt the trolls on this one: I know that such things will only be fesable far beyond my lifetime; but if these hybrids are to both be humanoid and have human intelligence, then likely yes, I would (with a female of such a creature).
Now, let the trolling commence!
P.S.: You either haven't seen enough of the Internet or are too naive to know what kind of a hornet's nest you've opened up with this comment---I can't tell which.
More likely we'll just revert to the definition of humanity that our ancestors used...
The fact that humanity must be earned (ie, creatures that look human may not necessarily be human)
Hopefully, we'll used enlightened definition of humanity, but the more likely possibility is that we will create slaves.
Can't dolphins speak? Based on your definition, if you correct their physical limitations, they should be able to learn a human tongue.
Of course their language model is different than ours.
Speaking is just a mechanisim to communicate. It just so happens that we "evolved" a way of communicating by modulating and receiving gas pressure waves. What's so special about that.
Whales and dolphins do the same except they use the ocean instead of the atmosphere as a transport media.
In the field I have seen coyotes communication via vocalizations - does that give them soul status?
"Ethics" in biotech research is just a set of arbitrary rules defined by popular social standards at this point in time.
In other words, it's meaningless restrictive nonsense.
I don't want "Ethicists" with an bachelor's in liberal arts deciding what people with Ph.D.s in Biology do in their research. It's asinine in the extreme. They are unqualified to decide.
Science needs to progress free of undue influence from people who haven't the slightest clue of how the field functions. It's the only rational thing to do. Set the emotions aside.
If you don't like the idea of creating "chimeras", don't create one. It's not your decision. Same with abortion.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Rights are not "given", they simply exist. They are a philosophical concept essentially limited to sentient beings. Rights only exist for those that are capable of respecting the rights of others. No animal, as yet, has demonstrated this capability. They do deserve our protection, but they cannot exercise rights.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
This creature you speak of sounds like a crossbreed between very closely related species. These are not at all uncommon. I refer you to mules/hinnies. An animal that is basically 100% bovine IS going to wander aimlessly all day. This is normal.
"I can only imagine what a mouse with human brain cells..." woah woah. Stop there. Yes, you can imagine that. Have fun with your excellent imagination. But the assertions you make based on your totally random subjective imagining, how can anyone take that seriously?
REAL chimeric humans, the kind who start out as twins and fuse as embryos, NEVER EVER know about it until they get weird results on unrelated DNA tests. So based on FACTS that have been proven in studies, we can surmise that perhaps other chimeras wouldn't notice either.
Now this is totally open to disproof, but its better than imagining something and going from there.
Oh, and by the way, the structures you mention as unnatural are indeed found elsewhere in nature, in the species of their respective original owners, they are just moved over to another organism.
-sig removed for tax purposes-
Ever heard of furries?
Give a million of them a keyboard and they can write Linux. Eventually.
karma capped
Indeed, I am one of the people who, as the article put it, has a "negative backlash" against giving animals human traits. It's not for religious reasons, either. I'm no Religious Fundamentalist... (EDIT pre-sending: On a quick glance at what I typed, however, perhaps I'm a Humanitarian Fundamentalist. If so, then so be it.)
Rather, a Human is something that, to me, has an innate quality over all other animals: not derived from religion, but rather from the innate quality of being human. Having a capacity to reason, for example. Call me biased towards Humanity, but we are the best thing this planet has produced (indeed, dispite the trouble we cause, which I acknowledge is vast). Giving human parts to animals, at least in large quantities, seems to me to be some kind of basic betrayal of humanity. Whose side are we on, anyways? =)
Small transferences, like the ones mentioned at the very beginning of the article, are mildly disturbing but not outright revolting to me. But as they go on, and talk about potential half-human fetuses in mice (and letting them die as the accidents that they would be), or monkeys with human intelligence disturbs me to the deepest roots of my being. Call it Pro-Humanity zeal if you wish, but Humans > Monkeys. I mean, look at us, and what we've done! We are all here right now, typing in a complex common language over wires that harnass the fundamental powers of energy, and into a complex system of "code" which are products of our thought and our will to create something that serves us beyond our desire for mere survival.
Indeed, humans have done some horrible things as well, and continue to do them. But as it stands, humanity is one thing I will hold an allegiance to. I don't believe in having zeal for a government (which tends to be one of the more faulty institutions of our humanity), or for most beliefs (the zeal for which some people wrongly hold to them cause a great deal of the horrible things I spoke of), or for most organized groups in general. But humanity as a whole is something that, to me, is worth pledging allegiance to. If another animal species can come to our point on their own, then so be it: they would be our peers. But to make some human/animal cross breed feels to me to be the closest I have ever come to calling something treasonous. Usually I find the word absurd, as its usual political usage comes with a heavy bias and hides a greater truth. But for some reason, it feels... appropriate here.
So in summation, Hum4n5 >> 4n1m475, Hum4n1ty r0xx0rz j00, and other such nonsense.
-Vendal Thornheart
You are going to have to change your fundamentals slightly.
Life is an arbitrary definition that matches an innate idea. Technically speaking, viruses are not alive. The division between life and nonlife is completely arbitrary. We have only a vague notion of complexity and sustainability to guide us.
That in mind, for you to live with anything approaching a reasonable metabolism you will have to destroy some amount of life in the process. You cannot stop that, you can only attempt to minimize it.
Why not gentically engineer meat to grow in vats...no creature with brains need be created.
"An animal may have rights when it asks for them."
This may be a parahrased quote from a Supreme Court judge. If not, it's one that I'll wager they would agree with.
When your ape signs "please let me vote for president, I care about ecological progress" as interepted by someone without bias, and it can then sign "yes, I swear and understand" in court, it'll be able to win rights in a rather simple court.
But they can't. And so they don't have equal rights to humans.
Then comes te question: Do children have rights? Do mentally ill people have rights? Do people that can't communicate have rights?
I don't thinks it's that simple, yes the right to vote maybe can be associated with the ability to communicate(hard to vote if you can't), but the right to live and the right to not be physically abused shouldn't.
Rights isn't an easy topic, it's much affected by peoples feelings. I think animals should have rights, if not the kind of rights an human have.
IRC, we humans use only a small percentage of our brains.
Thats asolute bullcrap, check this out. Why would we evolve such a big brain if it was mostly deadweight?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -Aldous Huxley
Yes, and that inefficiency is reflected in the high price you pay for steak. If you ate foods that required fewer resources, they would be cheaper and you would have more money to spend on other things. The cost of producing whatever you choose to buy instead will be rougly equal to the cost of growing 100lb of grain and feeding it to cattle. The cost may not come from land usage but from other resources which are equally scarce - for example, people's time. A hand-knitted jumper is 'inefficient' by some measure compared to mass-producted clothing, but many people still prefer to pay the high price needed (forgoing other things) to get something they'll enjoy more.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
"evolutionarily-hardwired moral reasoning"
Would this not mean that your ethics are based on the principle of increasing the probability of replicating the set of genes that constitute you.