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Humanzees Are Right Out
Bush's State of the Union speech last night contained this bit:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.
PZ Myers responds:
But guess what? Creating chimeras is legitimate and useful scientific research; it's really happening. Of course, it isn't with the intent of creating monstrous half-animal/half-human slaves or something evil like that, and scientists are well aware (or should be well aware) of the ethical concerns, and it's the topic of ongoing debate. Let's consider one recent example of such an experiment.
Referring to a mouse model of Down's syndrome, he continues:
So what scientists have been doing is inserting human genes into mice, to produce similar genetic overdoses in their development. As I reported before, there have been partial insertions, but now a team of researchers has inserted a complete human chromosome 21 into mouse embryonic stem cells, and from those generated a line of aneuploid mice that have many of the symptoms of Down syndrome, including the heart defects. They also have problems in spatial learning and memory that have been traced back to defects in long-term potentiation in the central nervous system.I hope he doesn't have this kind of research in mind.
These mice are a tool to help us understand a debilitating human problem.
8 comments:
Why not? How is it ethical to create suffering to study suffering?
--harpingheather
Well, I have to question the assumption that these particular mice suffer, but your question has much broader application--any use of animals in research. Perhaps you oppose all of it?
I don't think Bush is against that. Rather he is against human chimeras. i.e. injecting significant DNA from animals into humans. However I don't think Bush is out of the mainstream in that. Almost all scientists and certainly the vast majority of ethicists reject cloning and that sort of related study.
I agree in principle, Clark. But do we really need legislation on this? I'm afraid that however it is drafted, it will draw an arbitrary line that inhibits legitimate research.
Given that such ethical concerns and committees that govern animal and human research exist, do we really need a law?
Legislation may inhibit some legitimate research. What? I'm not sure yet. However, with the direction society is heading I don't completely trust review boards and committees to always make the right choice. Should science move in that direction it would only be a matter of time before the committees caved in.
In my mind legislation possibly prevents or at least postpones those issues from happening.
We have certainly seen sufficient examples in recent news reports to doubt that contemporary scientists will always properly weigh the most important ethical considerations. Practicing scientists are just people like the rest of us, sadly enough. There are no Spock-like Vulcans, immune to human weakness and error. Just some good people, and some bad. They need the same codes all of us are subject to, through civil laws, to help regulate behavior that might have far greater implications than simply satisfying short-sighted motives.
Scientists often seem so enthralled with their ability to do that they neglect to deliberate on whether they should.
Well, I have to question the assumption that these particular mice suffer, but your question has much broader application--any use of animals in research. Perhaps you oppose all of it?
No, I'm not terribly thrilled with animal testing. I kind of straddle the fence -- I can see the good it leads too -- but I lean more toward one side than the other. We all know that the ends don't justify the means.
However, deliberately creating things like Down's Syndrome mice or growing human ears on their backs seems to be going a step further in a direction I think we should run, not walk, away from. Meddling with forces we don't fully understand and certainly don't have the spiritual maturity to use properly is wrong on so many levels. Nuclear Power has been a great boon to us in many ways, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Not only Hiroshima and Nagasaki but the people who used to watch the bomb testings out in the desert have suffered horribly because of our lack of knowledge. Can you look back and just write them off as an inevitable part of the learning curve? Can you look forward and write these lab creatures off as learning experiences-- worse, bring them to life for them to BE learning experiences?
Animals are God's creation too. He loves them as he loves us. He has told us to use them sparingly and with thanksgiving when we need food. How does He look upon us using them as we use minerals in our experiements?
--harpingheather
harpingheather,
I don't think respect for life and scientific research are mutally exclusive. In fact there are federal laws and guidelines established that govern how animals are to be treated and used. You might be interested in this site. This is not to say that the rules are never broken, but it's certainly not a free-for-all.
I have a hard time imagining that the God who required thousands of years of animal sacrifice and created the animal world with its many cruelties opposes animal research when done appropriately.
Many people just don't realize how essential animals are for any research in the life sciences. Nothing-- no drug, vaccine, device, etc.--makes it into humans before it has been tested in animals.
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