Human-Animal Hybrids Coming Soon!

A modern-day chimera is “a hybrid organism with organs or tissues from multiple species… Scientists have mixed-and-matched human and animal cells for years, hoping to one day grow replacement human organs or discover genetic pathways of human diseases.”

Until earlier this month, the NIH had a ban on funding of animal-human chimeras. One of the main concerns was the possibility that scientists could “endow research animals with human cognitive abilities, or even consciousness, while transplanting human stem cells into the brain of a developing animal embryo.”

Now they are debating the ethics of which human-animal chimeras would be appropriate to use as “tools for medical research.”

You can read the article here.
http://www.wired.com/2016/08/new-nih-rules-let-grow-pigoons-cant-breed-em/

Do higher cognitive abilities make it worse to harm someone?

There has long been a debate about whether it’s wrong to test on nonhuman animals because they feel pain and suffering, or whether we should only be concerned about animals that exhibit higher cognitive functions like autonomy and moral reasoning. Such animals would include primates, cetaceans, elephants, and many species of bird such as parrots, crows, and magpies.

But there has never been a satisfactory reason given why more human-like animals deserve greater respect and protection than those with lower cognitive functions. Pain is pain and suffering is suffering, and the worst psychological pain is not any worse than the worst physical pain. So when we base respect and protection on cognitive abilities, it’s just discrimination plain and simple. We think more human-like animals are special.

Interestingly, when determining which species of animals to torture in labs and which not to, we actually set the bar higher than we do for humans. No one (OK, almost no one) is suggesting that humans who lack autonomy or the ability to reason morally should be used in lab experiments.

What do you think? Should respect for other beings be based on whether they can suffer or on whether they can do math?