Brave, new biotech world – Human, animal mix raises ethical concerns

By John L. Allen Jr.
2/13/2007
National Catholic Reporter -- (www.ncronline.org )

English tabloids are nothing if not colorful, but recently they’ve outdone themselves, splashing images of bizarre genetic mixtures of humans with rabbits and cows across their front pages, derisively dubbed “Franken-bunnies” and “moo-tants” by the headline writers of Fleet Street.

The frenzy was triggered by England’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which is pondering the legality of “chimeras,” meaning organisms that carry both human and animal genes. Such creatures may seem like science fiction, but in less spectacular form they’re already common, from cows injected with human stem cells in order to produce a human protein in their milk, which is extracted and used to cure hemophilia, to mice with human neural cells in their brains in order to test treatments for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Those examples may seem relatively benign – after all, a cow producing human protein is still basically a cow – but it is fear of a slippery slope toward confusion between human and animal that really causes conniption fits.

That’s the terrain, for example, of Michael Crichton’s new Jurassic Park-style thriller, titled Next, about a researcher at the National Institutes of Health who mixes human and chimpanzee DNA, and then tries to pass off the resulting child as fully human. (Perhaps inevitably, wags label it a “humanzee.”) The riddles that would surround such a creature – what rights it might enjoy, whether it could be exploited for manual labor or have its organs forcibly harvested, and for the religiously inclined, whether it would possess a soul – give most ethicists and theologians a migraine.

Then there’s the “yuck factor,” the basic repugnance many people feel about species-bending mutants whipped up in labs. Such doubts notwithstanding, experts say the technology is largely in place to make it happen – and human history, they ruefully observe, is not exactly replete with examples of technologies that, once developed, were never used out of a sense of restraint.

Welcome to the brave new world of the biotech revolution.

[...]

Redemptorist Fsther Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at The Catholic University of America in Washington, said that the church does not have any official teaching directly on chimeras. But documents on transplants have carved out a clear principle: Transferring genetic material across species lines is OK, as long as the identity of the individual, and its offspring, is maintained. Anything that blurs the distinction between human beings and the rest of creation goes too far.

Religious leaders concerned about human dignity are not the only forces raising questions about chimeras. Animal rights groups generally approach the issue from the other end, objecting to the exploitation of animals for human use, while environmentalists worry about the genetic manipulation of nature.

Whatever one makes of them, chimeras exemplify the rapidly developing, and occasionally creepy, ethical challenges that arise on the frontiers of today’s genetic science. The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced Jan. 28 that it’s working on a new document on bioethics, a successor to 1987’s Donum Vitae, to address this sort of new moral conundrum.

[...]

As opposed to a hybrid, where the genetic materials of two species fuse, in a chimera the genes remain separate. Technically, a human being with a transplanted pig liver could therefore be considered a “chimera,” but such procedures have not generated serious ethical qualms – mostly because nobody really believes that carrying around a pig’s liver diminishes personal identity, turning the recipient into a pig-human mutant.

The basic idea for a chimera is not new. Futurists have predicted such creatures for centuries. Two decades ago, Harvard researchers patented a mouse which carries a human cancer gene, known as the “onco-mouse.”

What makes today’s debate different, at least in part, is the connection between chimeras and stem-cell research. The “holy grail” of stem-cell research is to be able to shape these primitive cells into healthy hearts, kidneys and livers, in order to replace defective human organs. Those organs, however, have to be grown and tested somewhere, and that means using animals. Ideally, an individual patient’s genes could be implanted into an animal so the desired organ would not later be rejected by the patient’s immune system.

The bottom line is that to unlock the potential of stem-cell research, you need chimeras. But that raises the specter of a monkey growing up with a human heart, or a pig with human eyes – prospects that some people find disturbing.

“You’re creating beings without knowing what your ethical obligations to them are,” warned Richard Doerflinger, deputy director of pro-life activities for the U.S. bishops’ conference.

Many chimeras are created today with little ethical objection. Pigs have been injected with human blood cells to study how the AIDS virus appeared; mice have been injected with human prostate cancer cells to study treatments; and sheep have been injected with human blood cells to stimulate the production of clotting factors, which are later synthesized and used to treat heart attacks and strokes.

Tara Seyfer, a Catholic research scientist who works in the Family Life Office of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, and who has written on chimeras, calls these procedures in the main “morally legitimate.”

[...]

Perhaps the biggest moral dilemma with chimeras isn’t what’s being done today, but what might be done tomorrow.

Crichton, for example, got the idea for his “humanzee” from Stuart Newman, a developmental biologist at New York Medical College, along with biotechnology critic Jeremy Rifkin. The two submitted a patent application in 1997 for a human-chimpanzee mix. They didn’t actually want to fabricate such a creature, but rather to tie down the patent for 20 years to prevent others from doing so.

Seyfer said chimeras involving humans and nonhuman primates set off special alarms, because the chromosomal structure of these animals is most similar to human beings, creating the risk of “genetic fusing” between the species. Primates are most likely to develop “human-like” attributes if exposed to human genes. Yet that danger hasn’t stopped many scientists, such as Eugene Redmond, a professor of psychiatry and neurosurgery at Yale, who has injected human neural stem cells into African green monkeys in order to study treatments for Parkinson’s disease.

Some worry that, intentionally or not, other research is moving into similar territory.

For example, Stanford scientist Irving Weissman injected mice with human brain cells, seeking new treatments for brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s. In this case, the genetic material represented less than one percent of the mouse’s brain. (Naturally, it was called “the Stuart Little experiment.”) In 2005, Weissman said he’d like to transplant human neural cells into mice to such an extent that the mice lose all of their own neurons, upping the ante from less than 1 percent of human genetic material in the brain to virtually 100 percent.

Granted, a mouse’s brain is so small that even with fully human genes, it’s hard to imagine a rodent Einstein. Nevertheless, how can anyone say for sure what might be going on in there?

Doerflinger said Weissman’s first experiment seemed acceptable, but his second would be “a step too far” – though he admitted it’s difficult to pinpoint where the ethical border falls between the two.

“It’s easier to see night and day than to distinguish exactly when it becomes dusk,” he said. “I’m not sure where the line is.”

Johnstone said this is an area where moral theology has some work to do.

“The Catholic position needs to spell out much more clearly what it means by human dignity,” he said, adding that to date, the theological literature on chimeras is limited.

Johnstone said he sympathizes with Doerflinger’s intuitive reservations, but “we have to have reasons to back up our intuitions.”

“Human dignity doesn’t attach exclusively to our DNA,” he said. “It attaches to the person, and we need to explore what that means.” In the meantime, however, Johnstone said he would place the burden of proof on those who deny moral status to chimeras, especially in cases where a significant percentage of human genetic material is involved.

The U.S. Patent Office, for its part, drew its own line at the “humanzee.” The creature described by Newman and Rifkin would be “too human,” the office ruled. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery, it said, means that a human being cannot be owned, and hence cannot be patented.

No inherent objection

The Catholic Church has no inherent objection to implanting genetic material from an animal into a human being. As far back as 1956, Pope Pius XII approved of transplanting animal corneas into humans, “if it were biologically possible and advisable,” in an address to the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and the Italian Union for the Blind.

Where the church demurs, however, is transplantation of either the brain or the reproductive organs, which it considers essential to personal identity.

[...]

Others, however, believe criticism of chimeras is fueled largely by hysteria.

Deborah Brunton, an expert in the history of medicine at England’s Open University, describes today’s worries about chimeras as reminiscent of fears about smallpox vaccination in the 1800s. At the time, the vaccine involved small amounts of “cowpox,” a skin disease picked up from cows, which creates immunity to smallpox. (A scientist got the idea from observing that milkmaids usually didn’t catch smallpox. This, by the way, is where the term vaccine comes from – the Latin word for cow is vacca.)

The idea of injecting children with a cow disease caused panic about genetic abnormalities, Brunton said.

“One cartoonist showed cows’ heads and tails erupting from the bodies of people who had just undergone the procedure,” she said. “Medical practitioners actually reported children developing patches of hair, running around on all fours and coughing like cows.”

In the end, Brunton said, those reports turned out to be flights of imagination, and she believes current fears about chimeras will resolve themselves as well.

Most parties to the debate seem to agree in rejecting two extremes – one, a Luddite panic about chimeras that would squelch valuable and ethically harmless research; the other, an “anything goes” attitude that would open the door to Crichtonesque monstrosities. The problem, as always, is where exactly the “just mean” lies, with scientists pushing the envelope, and ethicists and spiritual leaders pulling in the reins.

Doerflinger said that beyond the science involved, something deeper is at stake in the chimera debate.

“Some would like to render the sanctity of human life technologically obsolete by demonstrating that species membership is fungible,” he said. “If so, then the idea of natural law based on a fixed human nature is over. You’d have to come up with some other basis for rights, like sentience.”

Doerflinger called that prospect a “real threat, a real motivation on the part of some,” and hence “something worth worrying about.”

Public opinion, however, ultimately may be moved less by such philosophical considerations than by gut-level instinct.

Leon Kass, former chair of the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, put the point this way: “Revulsion is not an argument,” he said. “In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”

Given this dialectic of science versus shudder, the debate about chimeras seems a long way from resolution.

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=23037

[...] - I chopped it up a little, pretty long article.


Articles of Interest

Press Statement Regarding Human-Animal Hybrid Research - Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority

Humanzee - Wikipedia

People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid

Ancient human and chimps mixed

Researchers propose human-cow hybrid



Personally I see nothing wrong with creating "chimeras", "humanzees" or transplanting human neural cells into animal brains. But what I'm wondering is why is this a question of science versus religion? Why would "moral theology" have anything to do with this type of research?

I thought the churches and religions are there for the guidance of the human soul not to determine how far scientific research goes with humans, animals or human-animal hybrids. Doesnt the Bible have descriptions of hybrid creatures, multiple faced animal-human thingies? If God can make hybrids why cant we?

And if there is evidence that ancient humans and chimps have interbred in the past, how is it wrong or unnatural to do the same today using todays technology? If God had a moral objection to the interbreeding of species or creating hybrids He should not have made it possible to do so, He is God He could have done that right?

In my opinion if it can be done, its not unnatural.

Errmm should this be in the 'Spirituality vs Skepticism' forum?

Now I feel bad for laughing with the rest of the crowd at that guy that got caught with his cat.

Oh no, don't feel bad for laughing at him. Personally laughing at people makes me feel good and ya know that saying 'if it feels good, do it'. I guess that goes for the guy with his cat too haha.

When Man Mated Monkey

Icky as it sounds, we mingled across species in the past, which could help us win evolution wars in the future.

By David P. Barash, DAVID P. BARASH is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington.
July 17, 2006

GENETICISTS studying human and chimpanzee DNA have concluded that a few million years ago, pre-humans and pre-chimps produced hybrids between the two species. And in the American evolutionary wars, this is good news.

Of course, the very idea of ancestral human beings and chimpanzees "exchanging genes" makes people squirm, because (let's face it) this means sexual intercourse between our ancient human and animal ancestors. It is hard enough to contemplate our parents copulating; to think of our very great-grandparents not only descended from "monkeys" but having sex with them is difficult to conceive. But conceive is what they evidently did.

There is, however, an even greater source of discomfort at work here; not simple squeamishness about sex but a deeper repugnance that goes to the heart of why so many Americans continue to be so resistant to the theory of evolution. And this is why I not only welcome the news that humans and chimpanzees commingled genes in the past, I also look forward to the possibility that, thanks to advances in reproductive technology, there will be hybrids, or some other mixed human-animal genetic composite, in our future.

This may seem perverse, because even the most liberal ethicists shy away from advocating the breeding or genetic engineering of half-person/half-animal. Why, then, am I rooting for their creation?

Because in these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism, with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed. And this is precisely the message that chimeras, hybrids or mixed-species clones would drive home.

The latest tactic of creationists in the United States has been to accept "microevolutionary" events, such as drug resistance in bacteria, but to draw the line at the emergence of human beings from other, "lower" life forms, cloaking their religious agenda in a miasma of pseudoscience. It is a line that exists only in the minds of those who proclaim that the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and that we therefore stand outside nature.

Should geneticists and developmental biologists succeed once again in joining human and nonhuman animals in a viable organism — as our ancient human and chimp ancestors appear to have done long ago — it would be difficult and perhaps impossible for the special pleaders to maintain the fallacy that Homo sapiens is uniquely disconnected from the rest of life.

It is one thing to ignore the fact that we share roughly 98% of our genotype with chimpanzees; but such "ignore-ance" would require even more intellectual sleight-of-hand when human and nonhuman cells are literally conjoined.

Moreover, the benefits of such a physical demonstration of human-nonhuman unity would go beyond simply discomfiting the naysayers, beyond merely bolstering a "reality based" as opposed to a bogus "faith based" worldview. I am thinking of the powerful payoff that would come from puncturing the most hurtful myth of all time, that of discontinuity between human beings and other life forms. This myth is at the root of our environmental destruction — and our possible self-destruction.

Four decades ago, historian Lynn White wrote a now-classic article in the journal Science making the point that much of the damaging disconnect derives from the Judeo-Christian proclamation of radical discontinuity between people and the rest of "creation." White argued that the Western world took its marching orders from a literal reading of Genesis: not only to go forth and multiply but also to dominate and, whenever inclined, to destroy the animate world, which, lacking our unique spiritual essence, existed only for human use and abuse. Whereas "we" are special, chips off the old divine block, "they" (all other life forms) are wholly different, made merely of matter. Hence, they don't really matter.

So let's hear it for our barrier-busting, hybridizing past as well as our future — anything that promises to wake up Homo sapiens to its connection to the rest of life. Or, better yet, let's leave the last words to that modern icon of organic wisdom, a kind of hybrid himself, SpongeBob SquarePants. Mr. SquarePants, a cheerful although admittedly cartoonish fellow of the phylum Porifera, is only distantly related to anyone reading this. But related he is. As any child knows, Mr. SquarePants "lives in a pineapple under the sea, absorbent and yellow and porous is he." Ere long, even the most resistant anti-evolutionary "species-ists" will be forced to admit that absorbent and porous are we, too.

LA Times

Exactly

I don't remember reading anything in the Bible anything about hybrid creatures. It mentions giants. That's it as far as I know. According to the Bible the giants were the off spring of fallen angels. They weren't produced by God. Can you tell me where in the Bible it mentions hybrid creatures?

Are you a Christian or are you an Atheist? First you mention the Bible and God then you mention some evolutionary theory about humans and chimps mating. You're not being consistant. Which do you believe? Do you believe in the Bible or evolution?

Just because it is possible for people to do something doesn't mean they ought to be doing it. Genetic engineering is tappering with nature. It needs to be watched very carefully. There is no telling what sort of problems it could create. They could produce all sorts of genetic freaks by mixing human DNA with animal DNA. Have you ever seen the movie "Dr. Moroe's Island"?

if scientists start screwing around with nature... sign me up for a sphinx, a centaur, a minataur, a satyr, and a goose that lays golden eggs...

i think those thing would be great to have running around... lol...

Just leads us into a new era of bodily modification and transmutation. And when the animal modifications start coming...sign me up for claws, serpent based enhancement and a pair of horns.

At the time of writing my comments I had Ezekiel chapter 1 in mind when I said "multiple faced animal-human thingies". Are you familiar with Ezekiel chapter 1, are you familiar with multiple faced animal-human thingies?



I am an atheistic, Satanic, Christian, Scientologist, nihilist, Human Devolutionist at the moment but I am looking into Mormonism and Raelianism for some polygamy and excitement.

I'm not being consistent?!?! I believe I am being entirely consistent with my beliefs. What am I saying that is inconsistent with my beliefs?



Just because people ought not to be doing something doesnt mean they... ought not do it. Yes I have seen the 'The Island of Dr. Moreau' among other Val Kilmer movies but I dont see what Val Kilmer has to do with animal hybrids? Now if you said Planet of the Apes, the one with Mark Wahlberg I would know exactly what you are saying, genetic engineering could result in a human finding himself on a planet of talking apes which may be frightening to some. But I doubt this will happen in real life, it was just a movie.

But I can tell that you are against, say, creating a humanzee, correct? Well I am all for it. So am I wrong and you are right or maybe these are just opinions, perspectives, neither being right or wrong. So now what? I cant one day see a humanzee because you dont like it? Well I'm not telling you you cant not have them, there are like 6.5 billion people on Earth, that is alot of non-hybrid humans, yet I cant have just one hybrid? That sounds very selfish to me, 6.5 billion to 0. Not to mention I am sure God would have a really good gutbusting laugh when he hears about the humanzee, what have you done to give God a good laugh lately?

I think the point of mixing animal and human DNA is to make animal parts which can be used in humans, such a pig heart with human DNA to replace a human heart which is failing. Face it if your heart was failing and they offered you a new one that would work that came from an animal I bet you would take it. I know not long ago there was an article about them growing human ears on mice on this site.

I WANT CAT GIRLS!!!

FOR THE LOVE OF TOM CRUISE, I WANT NEKOS!

*falls to knees*

I'm begging.

LOL that would be hot Doc!

I'd like a reptilian female. A girl with snakeskin perhaps....



... wearing fetish gear lol.... and a humanzee for a best friend.

Strangelove wants a Lizardgirl too.

^.^

I'd settle for this- YAY!

Mmmmeeeeeeeow lol!

Well its settled then, human animal hybrids would be a great thing for us and an even greater thing for the unimaginative porn industry.

Now if we could just get these sexually repressed holier-than-though "ethical" c***blockers to pipe down the world would be a better place.

"But.. but.. but.. you shouldnt be playing God " they say, well they shouldnt be playing Easter Bunny every year hiding little chocolatey treats for their kiddies, but they do. How do you think the real Easter Bunny feels about that? He cries! Thats right he cries himself to sleep every night because selfish parents need to play Easter Bunny! Where's the ethical concern for that!?!

i'm all for the cat women... and maybe a real playboybunny/girl mix...

i'm not too thrilled about reptile women... lol...

and may i ask... why does that girl look like she has giraffe spots?

*sipping on Phenobarbital and vodka bevvy* uhmm giraffe spots??? holy crap you're right she does have giraffe spots I didnt even notice, I was staring at her boobs.

"He who breaks the law goes back to the house of pain!"

"Petting a girl feels good. Petting a cat feels good. Petting a cat girl must feel really really good."

I'm kinda up in the air about this. I suppose it would be cool if a person decided they wanted some wolf hearing or snake skin. But I don't think it would be a good idea if people started designing their own kids, or human DNA was just stuck in animals.

Going back to the Moral and Ethical issues related to doing this i have been doing a little research.

Firstly, this is going to happen no matter what the papers say or what protests people put up, and there also will be consequences. Diseases will be cured and mutants will be sold and bought, it will all happen, i believe it will

They speak of all these conferences about ethical issues, should they shouldnt they but this is a farce! Because you can only judge after they have taken those scientific steps whether they were worth taking or not. This can be seen in Eugenics also, does the means justify the end...there is no way of knowing what the end will be, what something like this can lead to. To me, at the end of the day, the quest for health is not simply about helping people, it is about making society strong so it can dominate... man... territory...ape...animal. Its a very arguable view i know, and you could easily prove me to be wrong because my conclusions of this, come from so many layers of a network of information, i am not sure i would be able to express it.

Anyway, my hipocracy in this matter is that i am a type 1 diabetic and have been since i was 3 so i am probably going to be one of the benefiters of this sort of research and treatment, its can be quite confusing.

As for the HFEA? I sense a touch of fnordism

It seems that the media are simply being fed/feeding us inaccurate spin...its funny that even with the positive spin, playing with our genes is still questionable. I have found a kind of "too obvious to notice" smoke screen which i often find when studying/evaluating these associations and governing bodies.

I read the first article link to get an idea of where they were coming from...what was its purpose?
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/SID-3F...s.xsl/1478.html

One thing i always look out for are policies and codes of conduct. Here is a quote from the bottom of the article.

It speaks only of development of genetic research and does not make any mention of intent to explore indirect consequences...i found this troubling so i went to the HFEA websight and downloaded a copy of their codes of practice to get a better idea.

I found this interesting.

Errr, what is increasing knowledge about serious disease/development of embryos?...little bit general isnt it?
It makes no mention of the aim or purpose or direction of this knowledge it simply states that its purpose is to increase it...i find this to be a little suspect, and also leaves a wide girth for all sorts of motives behind research projects. A bit like, you can research for any reason, as long as it can also be applied to treatments of serious disease, this could be a little permitting for certain hidden governing bodies in this world...maybe thats the purpose.


I found that quite amusing, considering that the purpose of the HFEA is to allow all research in the "quest for knowledge" of developing embryo's and serious disease, i do not see why liscencing should even be an issue.

huh, more of the same...dodgy, if you ask me

oo, this was interesting too
But seeing as the only purpose is to gain knowledge there arnt going to be many problems there

ok, now remember that everybody ....referred to a properly constituted ethics commitee.... m hm m hm m hm

Well, wont you look at that LMAO! i'm not sensing any bias there at all REally (sarcasm btw)

So, it seems that the HFEA do not discriminate in their policies into how far genetic research can go as long as it seeks to gain some sort of knowledge and perhaps find a few cures along the way (to keep the public happy) also. The very commitees that assess their aims/ethics and research passed on by them are actually chosen by the HFEA themselves. This means that they are partial to the very aims which they are supposed to be assessing.

Heh he he e, were all F***ed as far as i'm concerned. If a newspaper says "there are talks of..." its already happening i'm sure. They do not care about the public and the "discussions" are a mere smoke screen to allow us to think that they do. They do not care much for our health either, this is a tool (fnord) which these people use to get the public on team, they do it EVERY time. The health implications are just a side issue when compared to all the other things that will come from this.

I'm not standing in their way, this is what humans do, these are diversities of human life. I do like to be aware of it though and have a good old laugh at man outdo himself, still under the control of his animal instincts in his need for power and domination......

he he, but i am interested to know if not being diabetic feels any different, which i am sure it does ....mmm

NICE ONE!
nn23

soooo.... are you for or against us having our cat women?

i'm sure that's the question on most Guys minds... lol...

as far as looking into the future... i could see a situation like x-men happening... humans vs. mutants vs. cyborgs...
and if they did start mixing humans with animals... i want the strength of an elephant...

they should definitely hurry that one up...

Just the strength?

I'm more of a snake woman myself, although i wouldnt want to look like a giraffe. .....cat woman...six breasts??? NOOO WAYYY....


nn23

lol... yeah... just the strength... i don't think anything else would be of use...

six breasts doesn't sound great at all it actually sounds kind of disturbing

but being able to climb walls might have it's benefits

a snake woman might be ok... as long as like you said... you don't look like a giraffe...

LMAO mmmm,

yeah the acrobatic skills would be cool, yeah i'll have acrobatic skills of a cat and skin of a snake thanks

I would like.. cat's eyes, ears and tail.. but I'll pass on the whiskers

how much for a party???

mmm, sounds sexy...

i think i want to add gecko sticking ability to mine...

and be able to move like a cheetah...

and see like an eagle...

and move stuff with my mind like Jean Gray...

That would be awesome

We'd have some really strange creatures running round the place if we could make this come true

Why go public with such controversial news unless the research has already been performed? This might explain cattle mutilations and the unauthorized but surgically-precise harvesting of their sex organs. Without prior knowledge of what our governmental-approved scientists were doing, we had no choice but to blame aliens and satanic cults.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sheep_%282007_film%29

Having owned snakes, I have to say Monkeyboy, when the babe on page 1 sheds, that's going to be stand up ugly! human opaqueness, giving slothing off dead skin cells with a loofah, a whole new visual.

Wouldn't creating catgirls and the like be an abomination in God's eyes?