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.

Comments

Re:it's a new age

[tasidar]

The implications of a "humanzee" is enough to keep philosophers and religious thinkers busy for quite a while. Does a humanzee really have a soul? Should they be granted "human rights"? Can we use them to test drugs or clean out clogged sewer lines? Really quite interesting. Just another humbling experience for those who think humans are something special apart from the rest of creation.

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.

Re:it's a new age

[tasidar]

I'm a "religious thinker" and this didn't take long. The definition of human in Jewish law is the ability to speak. (In fact that's the name of the human soul: the "speaker".)

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.

Re:it's a new age

[Camel Pilot]

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?

Re:it's a new age

[snake_dad]

Give a million of them a keyboard and they can write Linux. Eventually.