National Geographic recently published an insightful look at the debate over the creation of human and non-human hybrids — chimeras if you will — territory that researchers are increasingly venturing into.
In 2003, Chinese researchers inserted human cells into rabbit eggs creating embryos that carried genetic material from both species. The embryos were destroyed after a few days and their stem cells harvested.
Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University’s Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, plans to inject human brain cells into embryonic mice until the human brain cells constitute 100 percent of the embryonic brain tissue. Then he plans to allow the mice embyros to develop and kill them before they are born to see if the brain cells develop human-like brain structures.
Not surprisingly, such research has its fair share of opponents, most of whom offer what are, frankly, little more than religious arguments against such chimeras. National Geographic reports, for example, that Jeremy Rifkin is right there fighting against these experiments, even though he concedes they are likely to lead to important discoveries,
Biotechnology activists Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.
He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.
“There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals,” Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals.
“One doesn’t have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn’t make sense,” he continued. “It’s the scientists who want to do this. They’ve now gone over the edge into the pathological domain.”
Lets see, it would lead to important breakthroughs but the best argument Rifkin can muster against it is that there is something pathological about crossing the species barrier. Sounds like you do have to be religious to buy into Rifkin’s non-argument.
Cynthia Cohen, a member of Canada’s Stem Cell Oversight Committee and senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, offers a similarly silly argument according to National Geographic,
Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity.
“It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected,” said Cohen. . .
In this case, claiming it “diminishes human dignity” is just another way of Cohen saying she doesn’t have any real argument against it.
Of course what really “diminishes human dignity”, in my opinion, is watching people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s. Weissmann’s experiment transferring human brain cells into mice embryos — an experiment that Cohen would outlaw — is designed to give insight into how the brain develops and works which might prove useful in better understanding brain diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Stopping such research on vague pseudo-religious grounds is the real affront to human dignity.
Source:
Animal-Human hybrids spark controversy. Maryann Mott, National Geographic News, January 25, 2005.