Cloning Monsters:The Ethical Dimension
by JoyThis blog started as a response to Krauze's David Barash thread about advocacy of creating a human/chimp chimera, but got too long on sources so I'm blogging it. I did not see Barash's publicly-stated motivation mentioned in that thread, and I think it's something that bears greatly on the issue of why the public so strongly distrusts science and scientists.
Barash isn't shy about his reasons for advocating something he knows to be unethical (though he's hoping it will be considered ethical in the future). Or, he doesn't shy away from publicizing A reason the one he wants to make public. From The LA Times article:
This may seem perverse, because even the most liberal ethicists shy away from advocating the breeding or genetic engineering of half-person/half-animal. Why, then, am I rooting for their creation?
Because in these dark days of know-nothing anti-evolutionism, with religious fundamentalists occupying the White House, controlling Congress and attempting to distort the teaching of science in our schools, a powerful dose of biological reality would be healthy indeed. And this is precisely the message that chimeras, hybrids or mixed-species clones would drive home.
Barash's public motivation may not match his actual motivation, but it certainly expresses a level of arrogance and political naivete that concerned scientists at the NRC, public universities and such should probably denounce soundly and publicly - as Mesk did with no hesitation in Krauze's thread - just for the likelihood that such outrageous stunts in brazen defiance of law and ethics will result in more stringent oversight than already exists, along with greater tightening of the public purse strings. Does biology really need that kind of trouble?
Consider another recently-engaged genome project, in which researchers hope to sequence the entire Neanderthal nuclear genome. From the article:
If Dr. Paabo and 454 Life Sciences should succeed in reconstructing the entire Neanderthal genome, it might in theory be possible to bring the species back from extinction by inserting the Neanderthal genome into a human egg and having volunteers bear Neanderthal infants. This might be the best possible way of finding out what each Neanderthal gene does, but there would be daunting ethical problems in bringing a Neanderthal child into the world again.
Dr. Paabo said that he could not even imagine how such a project could be accomplished and that in any case ethical concerns "would totally preclude such an experiment."
Interesting. This research project is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and a Connecticut company [454 Life Sciences]. American-based research concerns (usually corporate) have been known to maintain labs in other countries with lax laws and little oversight for the purpose of researches that would not be allowed inside the US. And while US corporate researchers outside of public universities can and do get around the legal and funding barriers to harvesting embryos for creating ESC lines, that's quite a bit different from US and/or British corporate researchers using a lab in a third world country to do unethical experiments on primates/apes/humans that aren't legal in either host country. It's possible that Barash and Dawkins could actually create their desired human-chimp chimera (if such is viable, something we don't know). Or Paabo could create a Neanderthal or two or more.
But the difference between chimeras that we could imagine being created on The Island of Drs. Barash and Dawkins and the ethical framework for the Neanderthal suggestion is well articulated by Dartmouth ethicist Ronald M. Green…
…Dr. Green said there could be arguments in the future for resurrecting the Neanderthals. "If we learn this is a species that was wrongly pushed off the stage of history, there is something of a moral argument for bringing it back," he said. "But the status quo is not without merit. Curiosity alone could not justify what could be a disaster for both species."
I have come to accept the fact that there are many scientists in the generic and amoral (on purpose) halls of 'Science' who are so disdainful of greater humanity's hard-won morality and ethics that they don't mind advocating for - or doing, since certain departments of government research tend to ignore laws and ethical considerations applied to general research - things that drastically violate those higher ideals. There are a few who do it, too. I heard of appalling and fatal research in third world labs using chimps and gorillas when taking the UA course - research soundly denounced by all participating neuroscientists and cog-scis.
Humanity can commit evolutionary suicide thanks to science, and it is working hard toward targeted genocidal WMDs as well (engineered plagues that will kill certain ethnic groups). Science in the service of humanity's prides and prejudices and strong propensities to murder. The things about human nature that legal, moral and ethical systems were designed to control. Science hasn't changed - it's still amoral and as likely to engineer death as life. So it's a little unreasonable IMO for scientists to believe they have much of a leg to stand on with the general public on being the saviors of humanity because they're just so darned much smarter than the rest of us.
If science would like to change its less-than stellar image with the public, it'll have to come down harder on the Evangelical contingent - those who openly advocate unethical experiments and/or champion a 'new', morally repugnant eugenics. They like to ride science's dangerous image to personal fame and fortune by fanning fear and loathing of science in the public as much as possible - because for them, the science is far less important than their own hatred of human moral/ethical systems spawned by religious traditions.
Science would be better off denouncing them, then putting them out to pasture. In my opinion.
August 5th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Dr. Green:
"If we learn this is a species that was wrongly pushed off the stage of history, there is something of a moral argument for bringing it back."
This is hogwash. You can't have moral obligations towards a species, only towards individuals. That means that if we choose to bring neanderthals into the world, we will have have moral obligations towards those individual neanderthals. But no matter how a species went extinct, we don't have any obligation to bring it back.
Comment by Krauze — August 5, 2006 @ 7:37 pm
August 5th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Yeah, Krauze. Neanderthals were selected out of existence. As were all other species of "Missing Link" that isn't us, for whom we have precisely zero moral responsibility to 'resurrect'. A synthesized clone of a Neanderthal wouldn't be a species, he'd be a genetically engineered curiosity, an individual likely to suffer greatly before the kind 'doctors' finally dissect him.
There was never a human-chimp hybrid species to get selected out of the gene pool. It would be a monster, pure and not-very simple - and not the least bit hopeful. That it can even be suggested that scientists somewhere *might* do such a thing, for the purpose of outraging the moral sensibilities of people who believe humans have moral duties in regard to the rest of life is itself a confirmation of the public's distrust of science and its amorality.
Comment by Joy — August 5, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
August 6th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
But that's not quite right, Krauze.
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We (all) *do* have a moral obligation to at least one species, namely: our own. On a slightly less global measure, we (all) have moral obligations to our nations/societies — which are far more similar to a species than to an individual. We (all) have moral obligations to our families — which are certainly not individuals.
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Further, these "corporate" moral obligations take precedence to any obligation (of any sort) to individuals.
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But, prior to, and overriding all other specific moral obligations is the moral obligation to morality itself "“ it is meeting that obligation that helps us navigate the difficult and painful times (thankfully, rare) when obligations conflict.
"¦"¦..
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BUT, "˜species' don't actually exist as things-in-their-own-right, no more than do "˜nations' or "˜societies,' or "˜families.' These words denote concepts which allow us to conceptually treat multiple individuals as a conglomerate-individual.
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So, our obligations still get down to individuals (just as you said).
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SO, do we have a moral obligation to "resurrect" every individual (of *any* species) which has ever existed? I mean, even aside from the fact that it is utterly impossible for us to do this "“ after all, a clone is a new individual, it is not the individual from whose genetic material it was cloned.
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Of course we don't have a moral obligation to "resurrect" every individual that has ever lived. THEREFORE, we have no moral obligation to ""resurrect" *any* individual that has ever lived (even were it possible for us to actually resurrect an individual).
Comment by Ilion — August 6, 2006 @ 7:34 pm
August 6th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
… sorry about that un-closed tag. Even though it has been less than 1/2 hour since I posted it, I'm not given the option to edit it.
Comment by Ilion — August 6, 2006 @ 7:50 pm
August 6th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Hi, Ilion. I edited as best I can. If you wish to emphasize with italics, it's [i] and [/i] but with <> instead of brackets. For bold it's [b] and [/b] with the same bracket qualifier. At least, that works for me…
I don't know why the edit function's not working to give you sufficient time. I'll ask the tech….
Comment by Joy — August 6, 2006 @ 8:16 pm
August 6th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Thanks.
Since the site's software seems to default to 'em' and 'strong,' I hadn't tried to use 'i' and '/i' for italics and 'b' and '/b' for bold (as I've done here now that you've mentioned the possibility).
The problem (in this case) was that I wanted to preserve Krause's italics but I missed closing the second instance. THEN, my PC locked up when I attempted to edit the post (this PC far too often locks up when I attempt to post at ARN, and apparently at TT).
So, after re-booting and logging back into to TT, my connection/process was a different one from the initial. That may explain why I was unable to edit the post.
Comment by Ilion — August 6, 2006 @ 8:55 pm
August 6th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Yes, you are correct, it's a security feature which I'm working to improve, it's not reliable for that very reason.
Comment by Guts — August 6, 2006 @ 8:59 pm
August 7th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Let me just add that you don't have to type out the codes. You can use the quicktag buttons over the text window, or use shortcuts: Alt+b for bold, Alt+i for italics, Alt+a for a link, and Alt+q for blockquote.
Comment by Krauze — August 7, 2006 @ 4:10 am
August 7th, 2006 at 9:01 am
"Let me just add that you don't have to type out the codes …"
Ah, but in my case, anything long enough that I'll be wanting to use formatting codes, etc, will have been typed up in a word-processing program (WordPad, if noting else) before I post it. Trying to go back the text to insert the code after pasting it into the browser is a certain recipe for mistakes.
I wasn't careful enough in typing up what I posted and I neglected to preview before posting. On the "blockquote" misspelling, Word even warned me it was misspelled, but I'd forgotten that I'd added "blockquote" to Word's dictionary, so I ignored the warning.
Comment by Ilion — August 7, 2006 @ 9:01 am