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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.
The latest Chimera's discovered can be found here on worth 1000. Behold what science can do now!
Funny, that's exactly what I wanted to do to that book when I had to read it for English class.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
The only way I see blending of mice and men is when our hands are merged with our mice when gaming 24/7 on the hot new RPGs!
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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.
Wow. A super intelligent mouse. Aren't they afraid that mouse will then get a slow-witted sidekick and try to take over the world?
In my opinion the "we should not do this" argument splits into three branches: it's dehumanizing for humans, we're opening pandora's box, and it's bad for the chimeras.
I'll leave the first and second branch alone and focus on the third. These sorts of experiments probably put the chimeras through a great deal of hardship: we're creating organic systems which are not found in nature, and very probably have deep physiological problems.
My grandparents' ranch bought a critter that was 3/8 buffalo, 1/8 cow, and 1/2 yak. It was a very messed up animal and walked around in a constant state of confusion- I would guess due to conflicting instincts and brain chemistry.
I can only imagine what a mouse with human brain cells (mentioned in the article) would feel like- it'd almost certainly feel unwell, to say the least. Worse yet, how a non-human critter with human brain cells exposed to culture would feel like (and thus being smart enough to 1. know how messed up he is and 2. feel more dimensions of pain).
We may be creating hell on earth for some of these critters. That's not very cool.
RD
Actually, your post is only half correct. THAC0 is analagous to what is now called attack bonus; THAC0 stood for "To Hit Armor Class 0." Armor Class was still armor class, however, a lower armor class was better and 0 was considered the best non-magical AC (a human wearing full plate had a AC of 0, as I recall.)
Maybe now they can actually serve real buffalo wings at Pizza Hut.
Well, it does beat the crap out of the mouse-brained human overlords we seem to have now!!
Ok, maybe they're not chimeras in the sense of two radically different lifeforms, but the article considered a mother carrying DNA in their blood from their child as being close enough, so I think it's OK to consider any lifeform in which there are two or more non-identical DNA sequences present.
DNA is horribly unstable stuff. That's why mutations occur. It's also why certain cancers occur. All it takes is for a cell's DNA to be altered. A bad copy, a reaction with a free radical, whatever. What you get is a cell with different DNA than other cells.
99% of the time, that's not a problem. The cell destroys itself or gets destroyed by the body's defenses. No big deal. Some of the remaining time, the cell goes cancerous. Either the cancer or the organism is destroyed.
Most of the remaining incidents would likely be chimeras of a kind, especially if the organism is still developing. There's absolutely nothing to stop a cell mutating subtly and then copying that mutation into every copy of that cell ever made. If it's a useful mutation (it can survive and it confers an advantage) AND it occurs early enough in life that descendents acquire that mutation, we call it evolution. But I can think of absolutely no reason why a useful mutation cannot occur at any time in an organism's lifetime. It's just going to be rather more regional and it probably wouldn't be conferred to descendents.
Although much less likely than a single cell mutating, I can see absolutely no reason why it would be impossible for multiple cells to mutate in a way that would (a) individually function and (b) function together as a single organism.
Exposed to an environment that is sufficiently hostile to DNA, there is a non-zero probability of just about any imaginable set of mutations occuring. This creates an interesting philosophical problem. There's a lot of debate as to when human life begins. But by the arguments given above, there is a non-zero probability that any life could be human, and a (much higher) probability that any human is not entirely human.
If cells can mutate, blend, fuse, do whatever cells like doing on weekends, etc, then is it meaningful to consider how human a chimera is? We must all be chimeras. It's just a matter of degree.
"Human" cannot, then, be the state of an organism, because no organism is guaranteed a uniform state, unless it's unicellular. At best, it can only be a composite of states. However, that might not be good enough, either. Let's take the most extreme example possible - some idiot decides to blend humans and chimpanzees - not through breeding, but through genetic and chimeric techniques.
Now what happens? The cells will very likely fuse extremely well, being far more similar in nature than the pig/human example in the article. Let's say that the result is a "perfect" 50/50 mix. Are they human or not? Would it be possible to tell, without careful DNA analysis?
Ok, now let's say that the ratio is 90% human and that it turns out most people accept the person is human. Fine. Let's also say that, as a result of normal cell mutations (as outlined above) and/or cell replacement the ratio falls over the lifetime to below 50% human. Are they still a person?
Or take the reverse scenario. They start off 90% chimp, and (through cell mutations/replacement) become over 50% human. In other words, can you "become" human after you're born?
It seems to me that the entire problem is very complex and that existing definitions of what an organism is simply aren't good enough to classify organisms that are non-trivially chimeric.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)