Somehow I missed this one: this past summer, the Roman Catholic bishops of England said that chimeras -- the part-human, part-animal creatures Britain's mad scientists are to concoct in their labs -- have the right to life. Excerpt:
But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to raise them as their own children if they wished.The bishops said that they did not see why these “interspecies” embryos should be treated any differently than others.
The wide-ranging draft Human Tissue and Embryo Bill, which aims to overhaul the laws on fertility treatment, will include sections on test tube babies, embryo research and abortion. Ministers say that the creation of animal-human embryos - created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs - will be heavily regulated.
They insist that it will be against the law to implant “chimeras” - named after the mythical creature that was half man and half animal - into a woman’s womb.
The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.
In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.
I don't know what to think about this. Would the women raise their little pig-men as pets or as children? This is what I do think: the fact that we even have to think about such ethical questions shows how far gone our society is. But you knew I'd say that.
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Not that I want them to have done this, but what have been the results of intraspecies (intragenus, intrafamily, intraorder) nuclear transfer?
Gene insertion in bacteria doesn't bother me a bit morally; the things mutate like...bacteria, anyway. Gene insertion in animals does - spider genes in sheep so that sheep can produce silk protein in their milk, for instance.
Wholesale nuclear transfer and chimera creation give me the willies. When it comes doing it to humans, the word is "abomination."
Yet, to people to whom it is not abomination, you cannot prove that it is, any more than you could prove that incest is.
I can hear the mom now, "CLEAN YOUR ROOM! This place is a P-I-G PIG-STY!
I consider myself a scientist (well, of the mathematical/computer bent), and I am scared by even the prospect of gene insertion in bacteria, in the sense that there has to be the potential for an "oops" here or there. What terrible disease could be inadvertently created by an unfortunate combination of genetic material. My schooling in biology is high-school level, circa 1980, but I know over and over from my own work and that of fellow software engineers that we are quite capable of spectacular "oops" moments.
Until we have the potential to "back up" this planet and hit the restore button, as much as I admire the outcomes of many uses of biotechnology, I fear our abilities will outpace our wisdom and ethics.
I think what it comes down to is that if you are in doubt whether something is human nor not, err on the side of caution. Creating these chimeras is horrible, but once created, they must be treated with human dignity in case they are.
If this is what society is coming to, perhaps an Islamic takeover would not be such a bad thing.
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