"A majority of people would find it unethical to continue to develop viable embryos" seems contradictory to the current legal status of abortion in the US. Perhaps it is unethical but worth doing regardless?
Now, breeding/manufacturing animals for experiments is awful and morally complex--ethically unclear (at least to me). But the line must be drawn somewhere, and we can very easily draw it at manufacturing human-monkeys, human-pigs, or human-anythings.
From the article:
The announcement of the new chimeras will no doubt be labelled “unnatural” or “playing God” by some people – but the same could be said about many scientific breakthroughs. An iPhone is unnatural.
When lifeforms are compared to iPhones, we've reached a pretty clear David Mitchell moment of saying "Are we the baddies?" Something reeks here of amoral science.
We need a better understanding of consciousness and awareness before trying such things, or it's only a matter of time before realizing a catastrophic error that joins the many permanent stains of humanity, as we accidentally become the monster "AM" in "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream"
For example, one of the most important cell line in research is called HeLa, which was harvested from a woman with the same initials without consent from a cancerous growth. Since then, it was grown to a huge biomass (couldn’t find exact number). Other than the lack of consent which is obviously amoral, would you consider research on this human cell line bad?
"We need a better understanding of consciousness"
We do know a fair bit about the neural (physical) correlates of consciousness in humans, and the evolutionary purpose of those facets of consciousness, such as fear or pain.
This understanding can help us to make a reasoned guess that cows are more capable of suffering than a small lump of cells in a blastocyst:
(1) We can see that cows have similar brain structures to humans[1], where those brain structures (amygdala, etc) are known to be a necessary condition for pain or fear perception in humans, and those same brain structures are absent in a blastocyst.
(2) We know that pain and fear is an adaptation that all/most mammals likely have, because (i) it confers significant fitness, and because (ii) it manifests below our cortex (e.g. in the amygdala) which suggests it evolved fairly early.
My claim isn't that a blastocyst doesn't have consciousness. My claim is that its consciousness and capability to suffer is likely to be less than that of a cow (based on the above reasoning), and so society should make sure it is being ethically consistent in the way it treats both.
My first question to you would be - if your position is correct, i.e. that we should be extremely ethically cautious with blastocysts because they may suffer and have conscious states - how can society then ethically justify abortion?
My second question would be - how can a meat eater (which you might not be) express such ethical caution pertaining to blastocysts but willingly eat meat? [I am a meat eater].
[1] This is pertaining to sheeps' (not cows') amygdala, but the point is the same - https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.2...
You can't claim "but we don't know what conciousness is" to justify how we treat animals while at the same time have the strongest protections for fellow human beings. Well, usually only those of your own backyard, since we westerners also tend to treat third world country populations like sh*.
We are slaughtering, maiming and torturing people (plants and animals) all of the time, non stop, since the beginning. We build ever more sophisticated machines to do it. I cant even look at the butcher robots that feed me.
Chimeras might actually improve the situation. It would force us to question our holier than thou, my shit don't stink attitude. I for one welcome our chimera underlings. It will be a revolution of philosophy.
Stopping supporting the animal-killing and animal-experimentation industries as far as you easily can, would improve the situation.
i.e. Stop eating "meat". And imagine the oceans without humans fishing them lifeless.
I'm not sure about the purpose of your comment, but it sounds like your conclusion is "therefore can do whatever we want to other species." As if ethics doesn't apply. As if we shouldn't try to minimize that hurt. Maybe I'm wrong about that.
Paragraph speculating about such arguments and why people use them:
Hopefully one day soon people aren't still offering "plant=animal" justifications of eating animals, like this. I find them very depressing. It's as if suffering is a joke to these people. Or something, I don't understand. Just repeating pro-meat arguments they've heard, I guess. Maybe it's a positive sign, and such comments try to bury unease from their growing sense of ethical responsibility to other species.
I would also like to see artificial meat to appear. Then the large number of current captive animals could be "retired".
We do have quite a good understanding of those things in animals. Yet, nobody cares and people make fun of the "animal welfare" concept. Even in this thread. But suddenly a few human cells are involved for a few days and people start screaming.
There are vegetarians who eat fish "because they don't have feelings". As long as society accepts this nonsensical hypocrisy, your line of reasoning goes nowhere.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1945000/images/_1949073_mouse_...
When the baby gets out of womb, their eyes start to gain sight. They're practically unable to focus their vision after birth.
So, we have a quite good understanding on what happens at what week of pregnancy and when it is just biomass, and when it starts to have "structure".
Stats don't say what the abortions were in the name of though (that I see on first review at least).
They are a compromise to help women who made a mistake, were victims of assault, are too young to take care of a child. It's a bit less about "taking ownership of your body", than it is about "being tolerant and understanding about facts of life we can't change".
That's where it's less unethical: it's not like people support terminating a potential human life, they support instead lifting one up that took a wrong step.
Now these chimera experiments are fine to me, but I'd be okay to wait, go slow, debate in society about them rather than point at 16 yo rape victims and say "see she killed her baby and we used it to test a vaccine, why can't I mix a monkey with a human and see what grows before terminating it when I dont need it anymore"? Again, I m anti religious but I wouldnt want street riots and Trump 2.0 because scientists felt it was boring to explain to the idiots.
Even a dog with a dog brain shouldn't be subjected to arbitrary experimentation and pain. If it is sentient, then it should be treated with respect. A robot with consciousness should also be treated with respect, and if it wants love then it deserves love.
I think both cases are probably unethical (creating to begin with, and secondly, more unethically, to bring them to further maturity, or even to the point of being self-supporting, i.e. fully alive)
If we start going down this road, eventually someone will allow them to be brought to life.
We already know the horrors wrought on other humans by our very selves in the name of "science" in the past (think unit 731, not really science, but "science"), I can only imagine we'd do worse to something not fully human.
interestingly the perpetrators received immunity from the US...in exchange for information...I wouldn't be surprised if history repeats itself and a lot of people are counting on it...
Even supposing they had, completely unethically, actually transferred these embryos into a woman or monkey, the odds of any of the three surviving to term are likely quite low. The most likely outcome would be miscarriage and probably a quite early one at that.
We don't even know if survival to term would be possible. It may be simply impossible due to some genetic incompatibility. Even if it were possible, it would quite likely take (on average) hundreds of attempts before you'd have a success.
I find those experiments until a certain threshold okay.
1 day: no problem here 20 days: still no issue.
Life doesn't start just because we let a biological machine execute something.
From a Hindu perspective, consciousness begins associating with the body at the moment of conception. Though it does not fully inhabit it yet.
There is actually no way to know whether this is true. About all you can justifiably say is something like, "if it turns out that clusters of cells can experience suffering, well... we are already probably causing suffering anyway all the time to chickens and cows and who knows to what else, so it would not really be much of a change".
It is tempting to say that something that has no nervous system cannot suffer, but such an attitude is not scientifically justified. It is just folk speculation.
> After 10 days, there were 103 of these chimeric embryos remaining, but by day 19 only three still survived. After that, the embryos were terminated before they developed any further.
Clusters of cells can't be 'tortured in a lab,' there are plenty of legitimate problems in the world to be outraged about but this really isn't one of them.