HIGH TECH BESTIALITY

High-Tech Bestiality'
Life Imitates Art in the Lab

October 3, 2005

In H. G. Wells's classic novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the sole survivor of a shipwreck lands on an island filled with human-animal hybrids, like "Leopard-Man" and "Swine-Folk." There he discovers Dr. Moreau, a notorious medical researcher who was run out of London for his experiments. Though it was science-fiction in 1896, Wells's novel is frighteningly close to science today.

Whereas Moreau used dissection and surgery to create his hybrids, today researchers are using in vitro manipulation. Embryonic cells from one species, like goats, are inserted into the blastocyst of another, such as sheep. The result is a creature, the "geep," possessing characteristics of both species.

Researchers call these man-made combinations "chimeras," after the mythological creature that was part lion, goat, and serpent. And experiments are not limited to dumb animals. Researchers have created pigs with "partly human livers" in hopes of solving organ transplant shortages. Mice with human cells, including brain cells, are used in testing drugs and in Parkinson's research.

These successes have prompted researchers to think about something involving a species closer to humans: chimpanzees. The genetic similarities between humans and chimpanzees make the temptation to create such a human-chimp chimera almost irresistible. As with cloning and embryonic stem-cell research, advocates promise medical miracles if they're allowed to proceed without interference.

The President's Council on Bioethics disagrees. At its March meeting, it discussed the "reasonable boundaries" between "acceptable" research and the kind that would amount to "high-tech bestiality."

In Congress, Senator Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas has introduced a bill that would "ban the production of human-animal chimeras." If passed, the United States would join Canada in prohibiting this kind of research.

Even the magazine Scientific American says that some human-animal chimeras "disquietingly blur the line between species." It notes that "no one knows what the consequences will be as the proportion of human cells in an animal increases."

One possible consequence is that this "intermingling of tissues could . . . make it easier for infectious animal diseases to move into humans. . . . This hopping of species barriers can be particularly devastating because the [human] immune systems . . . are so unprepared for them." The list of pandemics thought to have originated in such "hopping" includes the 1918 flu pandemic that killed at least 40 million people, and HIV/AIDS.

But even if the research were safe, we ought to be opposed it. The embryonic stem cells needed to produce a chimera can come about only by destroying a human life. And the assault on the dignity of life will not stop there. What would be the moral status, for example, of the human-animal chimera? Would it be human or an animal? The temptation would be animal, of course. And as in Wells's novel, man's proclivity to view his fellow creatures as a means to his own ends is well-documented.

The time to stop this travesty is now. Otherwise, something much more precious than a ship will be lost: that is, our appreciation of what it means to be human.

This commentary first aired on July 13, 2005.