We’ve seen the image: an animated, hairy monkey dancing around in some kind of silly get-up. It might be an orangutan in a baby doll dress and pearls, or a chimp in one of those red, hotel bellhop outfits, serving dinner or opening doors.
While these images are good for a chuckle, jump to the year 3978 and we see an image that no human would find entertaining. After thousands of years of human domination, a race of intelligent apes has taken control of the planet Earth. The apes have shed the bellhop jackets and instead of being served dinner by dancing monkeys, humans have been reduced to a dumb, primitive state. If they wanted to, the apes could now start dressing the humans in pink tutus and prancing them around a stage.
How did this reversal come about? When the humans reached the pinnacle of technological achievement, they became lazy and made a lesser race of monkeys and apes to become a class of servants and do their physical work. The dependency of the humans on the apes increased over time, until the humans had devolved and the apes had progressed, to the point that the humans were overthrown and enslaved.
LIFE IMITATING ART
Sound like something out of a science-fiction novel? That’s because it is. It’s a summary of the 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle, La Planète des Singes (The Planet of the Apes, or Monkey Planet), which spawned a movie franchise beginning with the acclaimed 1968 film starring Charlton Heston (and a remake in 2001).
In the case of The Planet of the Apes, the adage that life imitates art increasingly rings true. Science fiction has exploited the human dependence on technology for decades, but the stories are no longer just thrilling page-turners — they’ve become much more real. This is because we now possess the means to modify the genetic makeup of living organisms. Indeed, the mixture of human and animal genetic material would fit well as a device in Boulle’s novel. In the new version of the story, the technologically advanced humans would manufacture a race of semi-intelligent hybrids by adding genetic material from human brains.
Think this is too far-fetched? Think again. Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, is working on experiments combining human brains and mice. He’s already conducted experiments where mice were created with one percent of their brains made up of human neurons. But Weissman wants to take it to the next level and is pushing to create a breed of mice whose brains are entirely made up of human cells.
In scientific jargon, the intermixing of species creates what is known as a chimera. The original Chimera was a fire-breathing creature from Greek mythology, with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent.
Innovations in genetics over past decades have greatly upped the ante with regard to the legitimacy of chimera research. Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, put it this way at a hearing on human-animal chimeras: “I think it’s very important as a Council that we make sure that we distinguish between using human or animal parts across species, such as insulin, heart valves, things of that nature, and mixing the genetic material that has proliferative capacity…there’s a huge difference between those two things.”
What’s really troubling about new kinds of human-animal chimeras is the “proliferative capacity,” as Dr. Carson calls it, or the ability of this genetic material to be passed on. And Irving Weissman wants to push the envelope. He has acknowledged that there are important ethical implications for such research and is currently waiting to pursue more of these kinds of experiments until an ethical consensus has been reached in the scientific community. His proposed answer to the ethical dilemma is to kill the mice before birth, then dissect their brains to see if any human structure had formed and whether there would be the possibility of pseudo-human consciousness.
But beyond this, it’s clear that Weissman bridles against any real ethical or moral restrictions to his research. “Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will — not just be part of an argument — if that leads to a ban or moratorium,” he says. “They are stopping research that would save human lives.”
A TALE OF TWO WORLDVIEWS
In the current debate over chimera research, there are essentially two positions, which roughly relate to two different ways of viewing the world. Christian apologist C.S. Lewis has called these the Naturalist and the Supernaturalist positions. Generally speaking, Naturalists find little to be wrong with the creation of chimeras, while Supernaturalists are much more circumspect about the legitimacy of this research.
Lewis describes the Naturalist position as the belief that all that exists is the natural world, the cosmos, the universe. Conversely, the Supernaturalist position holds that there is a deeper reality, what might be called the spiritual world, which stands behind and is the foundation of the material world. A key difference is that, for Supernaturalists, the world is contingent on some sort of creator God, but Naturalists declare independence from any such creator. As Lewis says, “What Naturalism cannot accept is the idea of a God who stands outside Nature and has made it.”
David P. Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, holds a Naturalist worldview. In an opinion piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Barash welcomes the creation of chimeras as a sign of the “continuity” between humans and other creatures. He attacks “religious fundamentalists” who draw a line between humans and animals. “It is a line that exists only in the minds of those who proclaim that the human species, unlike all others, possesses a spark of the divine and must have been specially created by god,” he wrote. “It is a thin and, indeed, indefensible line, but one that generates a consequential conclusion: that we stand outside nature.”
Human beings, for Barash, reside on a continuum of all organic life, which does not recognize any priority or superiority. Since all that exists is simply the natural or material, any difference between humans and animals is glossed over and any special difference for humans as created by a deity is denied.
So while the Naturalist position cannot accept a creator God, the Supernaturalist position, according to Barash, cannot give an explanation for the physical continuity of the world. He finds the material similarities between humans and animals to be evidence supporting his view: “Human beings share roughly 99% of their genotype with chimpanzees.”
But the Supernaturalist position does not really deny a measure of material continuity with the physical world. The Judeo-Christian tradition, in fact, affirms that God formed humans “from the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). The Old Testament also teaches us that this creator God made human beings in his own image.
Anthropology, the definition of what makes us truly human, is the real issue. Can the Naturalist position give us an adequate answer? Can the Naturalist account for the human achievements in art, music, and literature? Can it even identify the real difference between an intelligent human researcher in a scientific laboratory and a test rat in a cage?
Simply put, the Supernaturalist position explains both the material continuity of human beings with the rest of creation as well as the difference in intelligence, rationality, culture, and language. On the other hand, the Naturalist position sets up an untenable division between the material and the spiritual. It tries to explain our passion for the expressive brushwork of van Gogh, our ear for an exhilarating guitar solo, or other truly human creative pursuits with arguments based on little more than biochemistry.
A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS
It is precisely the recognition of this spiritual distinction between humans and animals that has put the brakes on the unbridled push for technological progression. But there are powerful forces in the scientific community that are pushing forward.
In 2005, the National Academies of Science issued guidelines that, in part, address the creation of human-animal chimeras. The academy said that such hybrids are important in understanding human disease and in testing new drugs and human embryonic stem cells. There are seemingly limitless possibilities for the future of such research.
The NAS guidelines do allow for the introduction of human embryonic stem cells into nonhuman mammals, although “only under circumstances where no other experiment can provide the information needed.” But the controlling power of such a “need” for scientific information attests to the underlying pragmatism of mainstream science. And this view is not restricted merely to elite scientific circles — it’s making its way to the masses via media such as The New York Times, which has editorialized in favor of “more mundane experiments with chimeras that will be needed to advance science.”
Weissman says that his project “will test human neuronal cells in a mouse brain micro-environment as a prelude to studying stem cells that have human genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and cerebral palsy.” As usual, the benefits of such research are highlighted: “Which of these diseases should we not be working on as fast as we can?”
What attitudes like these confuse is that science, even the advance of medicine, is not an end in itself. Chimera research may indeed have some potential benefits, but we cannot ignore the question of potential costs. What toll does such research take on the dignity of human beings? Must we destroy the human person in order to save it? As a society, we need to question whether our technological reach has exceeded our moral grasp.
The Naturalist worldview may celebrate the creation of human-animal chimeras, but in the final analysis, this position devalues what it is to be a human being in the name of honoring it. The irony of chimera research is that the technological progress that testifies to the difference between humans and animals is precisely the tool that can corrupt and destroy that important distinction.
One of the most celebrated movie quotes is Charlton Heston’s growl to his simian captor, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” But it remains to be seen to what extent we humans, in turn, can keep our hands off the animals.
Jordan J. Ballor is associate editor at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty and a Ph.D. student at Calvin Theological Seminary.
(This update courtesy of the Breakpoint.)
