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Biotech Science

Blending Mice and Men 387

Posted by michael from the need-a-brain-for-my-master dept.
An anonymous reader sends in this piece about chimeras - not the ones with a THAC0 of 11, but a more general term meaning any multi-creature hybrid. A comprehensive look at the moral and scientific issues surrounding this area of biotech.
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Blending Mice and Men More

Blending Mice and Men

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  • THAC0? (Score:3, Informative)

    by civman2 ( 773494 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:31AM (#10879107) Homepage
    THAC0 was the one where the lower your score was the better is. Counter-intuitive? Armor Class forever! Long live d20!

    • Re:THAC0? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Romothecus ( 553103 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:58AM (#10879220)
      Actually, your post is only half correct. THAC0 is analagous to what is now called attack bonus; THAC0 stood for "To Hit Armor Class 0." Armor Class was still armor class, however, a lower armor class was better and 0 was considered the best non-magical AC (a human wearing full plate had a AC of 0, as I recall.)
    • The summary mentions THAC0 and has a link. How can it be offtopic to talk about something in the summary?

      LK

  • Non-layable (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:34AM (#10879116) Journal
    The worse cruelty is that no female, mice nor women, would sleep with such a person/thing.

    Well, I take that back. If their freekitude makes them rich, then the babes will probably come.

  • They've been around for a while... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ssand ( 702570 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:34AM (#10879118)
    The latest Chimera's discovered can be found here [worth1000.com] on worth 1000. Behold what science can do now!

    • They've been around 3 billion years or so (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Sunday November 21, 2004 @04:27AM (#10879694) Homepage Journal
      As soon as you get multicellular life - even just two cells - you have the possibility of chimeras. It's actually more than possible, it's a very high probability.


      Ok, maybe they're not chimeras in the sense of two radically different lifeforms, but the article considered a mother carrying DNA in their blood from their child as being close enough, so I think it's OK to consider any lifeform in which there are two or more non-identical DNA sequences present.


      DNA is horribly unstable stuff. That's why mutations occur. It's also why certain cancers occur. All it takes is for a cell's DNA to be altered. A bad copy, a reaction with a free radical, whatever. What you get is a cell with different DNA than other cells.


      99% of the time, that's not a problem. The cell destroys itself or gets destroyed by the body's defenses. No big deal. Some of the remaining time, the cell goes cancerous. Either the cancer or the organism is destroyed.


      Most of the remaining incidents would likely be chimeras of a kind, especially if the organism is still developing. There's absolutely nothing to stop a cell mutating subtly and then copying that mutation into every copy of that cell ever made. If it's a useful mutation (it can survive and it confers an advantage) AND it occurs early enough in life that descendents acquire that mutation, we call it evolution. But I can think of absolutely no reason why a useful mutation cannot occur at any time in an organism's lifetime. It's just going to be rather more regional and it probably wouldn't be conferred to descendents.


      Although much less likely than a single cell mutating, I can see absolutely no reason why it would be impossible for multiple cells to mutate in a way that would (a) individually function and (b) function together as a single organism.


      Exposed to an environment that is sufficiently hostile to DNA, there is a non-zero probability of just about any imaginable set of mutations occuring. This creates an interesting philosophical problem. There's a lot of debate as to when human life begins. But by the arguments given above, there is a non-zero probability that any life could be human, and a (much higher) probability that any human is not entirely human.


      If cells can mutate, blend, fuse, do whatever cells like doing on weekends, etc, then is it meaningful to consider how human a chimera is? We must all be chimeras. It's just a matter of degree.


      "Human" cannot, then, be the state of an organism, because no organism is guaranteed a uniform state, unless it's unicellular. At best, it can only be a composite of states. However, that might not be good enough, either. Let's take the most extreme example possible - some idiot decides to blend humans and chimpanzees - not through breeding, but through genetic and chimeric techniques.


      Now what happens? The cells will very likely fuse extremely well, being far more similar in nature than the pig/human example in the article. Let's say that the result is a "perfect" 50/50 mix. Are they human or not? Would it be possible to tell, without careful DNA analysis?


      Ok, now let's say that the ratio is 90% human and that it turns out most people accept the person is human. Fine. Let's also say that, as a result of normal cell mutations (as outlined above) and/or cell replacement the ratio falls over the lifetime to below 50% human. Are they still a person?


      Or take the reverse scenario. They start off 90% chimp, and (through cell mutations/replacement) become over 50% human. In other words, can you "become" human after you're born?


      It seems to me that the entire problem is very complex and that existing definitions of what an organism is simply aren't good enough to classify organisms that are non-trivially chimeric.

      • Re:They've been around 3 billion years or so (Score:5, Informative)

        by shawb ( 16347 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @04:41AM (#10879726)
        And then there's the whole issue of mitochondria/chlorplasts. Those were originally single celled organisms that got absorbed by another single cell organism, but then reproduced rather than being consumed.

        The resulting Chimera passes down both the "host" organism plus the mitochondria/chloroplasts with their own unique DNA from the cell proper.

        End result: Now these two once foreign cells are essentially the powerhouse of modern life. Chloroplasts are where plants actually convert light energy into chemical energy (stored as sugar) and mitochondria are where plants and animals (and most other assorted organisms as well) then convert sugars into readilly available energy, ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate.)
    • Interestingly, some of these critters look like they have real potential. In particular, I'm thinking of the bighorn squirrel. I can just envision squirrel butting heads with each other and cracking nuts.

  • "Blending Mice and Men" (Score:5, Funny)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:41AM (#10879146)
    Funny, that's exactly what I wanted to do to that book when I had to read it for English class.
  • The only way I see blending of mice and men is when our hands are merged with our mice when gaming 24/7 on the hot new RPGs!

  • it's a new age (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:45AM (#10879162) Homepage Journal
    The implications of a "humanzee" is enough to keep philosophers and religious thinkers busy for quite a while.

    Does a humanzee really have a soul? Should they be granted "human rights"? Can we use them to test drugs or clean out clogged sewer lines? Really quite interesting.

    Just another humbling experience for those who think humans are something special apart from the rest of creation.

    • Re:it's a new age (Score:5, Funny)

      by ParadoxicalPostulate ( 729766 ) <saapad.gmail@com> on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:55AM (#10879202) Journal
      "Does a humanzee really have a soul? Should they be granted "human rights"?"
      More importantly, can they run Linux?

    • Re:it's a new age (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tasidar ( 604319 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:57AM (#10879214)
      The implications of a "humanzee" is enough to keep philosophers and religious thinkers busy for quite a while. Does a humanzee really have a soul? Should they be granted "human rights"? Can we use them to test drugs or clean out clogged sewer lines? Really quite interesting. Just another humbling experience for those who think humans are something special apart from the rest of creation.

      More likely we'll just revert to the definition of humanity that our ancestors used...
      The fact that humanity must be earned (ie, creatures that look human may not necessarily be human)

      Hopefully, we'll used enlightened definition of humanity, but the more likely possibility is that we will create slaves.


    • Hopefully, atleast this will make people realize that animals should be given much the same right as humans. But then, we're having trouble giving rights to most humans to begin with. So I suppose it's asking for too much to hope that we'll grow civilized enough not to kill any animals.

      • Re:it's a new age (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Planesdragon ( 210349 ) <`slashdot' `at' `castlesteelstone.us'> on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:03AM (#10879244) Homepage Journal
        Hopefully, atleast this will make people realize that animals should be given much the same right as humans

        "An animal may have rights when it asks for them."

        This may be a parahrased quote from a Supreme Court judge. If not, it's one that I'll wager they would agree with.

        When your ape signs "please let me vote for president, I care about ecological progress" as interepted by someone without bias, and it can then sign "yes, I swear and understand" in court, it'll be able to win rights in a rather simple court.

        But they can't. And so they don't have equal rights to humans.

        OTOH, it's entirely civilized to kill humans. It's all about WHEN and WHY that defines civlization, not the actual killing or lack thereof.
        • Some people already replied with disagreement, but support your point and add this:
          Righs come together with responsobility. You can't get one without the other, and I'm afraid animals aren't as good as this as some of the least responsible humans.

      • Re:it's a new age (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Dun Malg ( 230075 )
        Hopefully, atleast this will make people realize that animals should be given much the same right as humans

        Rights are not "given", they simply exist. They are a philosophical concept essentially limited to sentient beings. Rights only exist for those that are capable of respecting the rights of others. No animal, as yet, has demonstrated this capability. They do deserve our protection, but they cannot exercise rights.

      • So I suppose it's asking for too much to hope that we'll grow civilized enough not to kill any animals.

        It sure is. I like steak.

    • Just another humbling experience for those who think humans are something special apart from the rest of creation.

      I do think humans are something special, and this one is easy: the difference between humans and animals is the ability to speak.

      If this hybrid can speak it's human, if it can't it's not. (And don't give me nonsense about humans who can't speak - that's always either a physical problem, or deafness so they never learned how. Fix those problem and they can speak.)

      Even the most retarded perso

      • Re:it's a new age (Score:3, Insightful)

        by tasidar ( 604319 )
        I'm a "religious thinker" and this didn't take long. The definition of human in Jewish law is the ability to speak. (In fact that's the name of the human soul: the "speaker".)

        Can't dolphins speak? Based on your definition, if you correct their physical limitations, they should be able to learn a human tongue.
        Of course their language model is different than ours.

      • Re:it's a new age (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:24AM (#10879325) Homepage Journal
        Speaking is just a mechanisim to communicate. It just so happens that we "evolved" a way of communicating by modulating and receiving gas pressure waves. What's so special about that.

        Whales and dolphins do the same except they use the ocean instead of the atmosphere as a transport media.

        In the field I have seen coyotes communication via vocalizations - does that give them soul status?

      • Re:it's a new age (Score:5, Informative)

        by RsG ( 809189 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:36AM (#10879370)
        No offence, but that's simply nonsense. "Speach", as you define it, requires a human vocal arraignment. This means we need a dedicated section of the brain, highly specialized vocal chords, and a trachea/esophagus system that allows us to use it for speach. None of these features are in any way related to intelligence. We could engineer a creature or artificial intelligence that possessed greater cognitive capabilities than a typical human, yet lacked the ability to speak. How would you deal with a chimp granted supernormal intelligence by splicing it's brain tissue with the genetic material required for a human neocortex? It can't speak (chimps can learn sign language btw, but cannot physically speak), but it's mute becasue it lacks sophisticated vocal chords or a speach center. Conversely, programmers have written programs capable of simulating complex conversations with users, which, according to your narrow definition of personhood, should qualify as people provided they are equipped with audio.

        Personhood presently is defined as humanity. If we find or create intelligence that is not human, then we will need a new definition. I would much rather that criteria be based on something substantial, like complex independant reasoning, rather than something as specific and unrelated as speach. Yet that won't happen for some time, since we do not yet have an example of such intelligence, and when we get there, doubtlessly people will cling to the old human definition, and resist change on the basis of emotion or religion.

        As a side note, primates and cetacians (dolphins etc) have been shown to have language. In fact, there is a considerable body of evidence supporting the conclusion that dolphins "speak', using their sonar system. Chimps, as I've already mentioned, have shown that they can learn and intelligently use sign language. Defining speech as language, and using your definition of personhood, whould higher mammals such as these qualify? They can speak in a way, and they have demonstrable intellect. If we set a threshold for personhood based on speach, dolphins would qualify, at least. If we used a definiton based on human level intelligence, they would not (but neither would fetuses or the severly mentally disabled, which opens up a major political can of worms, not to mention an ethical debate of huge proportions). There is a valid ethical question here, and genetic engineering is only going to complicate it further. To quote someone whose name I've forgotton "For every complex question there is an answer that is simple, elegant and wrong."
      • I'm a "religious thinker" and this didn't take long. The definition of human in Jewish law is the ability to speak.

        First, what would you make of telepathic species? They don't speak as far as you know. Ants don't speak, but they communicate chemically - this is an example of communication beyond our understanding. Dolphins speak ultrasound; whales speak infrasound; some fish speaks electrically.

        Second, apes can be taught human sign language, and they then can talk about simple matters. So do mute/deaf

      • (In fact that's the name of the human soul: the "speaker".)

        I'd just like to point out that soul literally means "breather" not "speaker". And that if you really want to get serious about "soul" and what it means you need to take into account that in the hebrew language the term is applied to all living breathing creatures on earth. Of course most people's bibles that are translated into English doesn't use the term soul every time it's written in hebrew, instead it's substituted with "life", "person", "
      • "And don't give me nonsense about humans who can't speak - that's always either a physical problem, or deafness so they never learned how. Fix those problem and they can speak."

        Not in the case of non-speaking autistics -- there's no mechanical failure involved, our brains (like those of other species) simply aren't designed to communicate via spoken words any more than non-human species are. We don't consider that a problem, and happily communicate in other ways [autistics.org]; we have no interest in "fixing" the esse [autistics.org]
    • The whole "does it have a soul" crowd is going to get a rude awakening in the coming years, as the lines between human and non-human become fuzzier and fuzzier. The religious right definitely has a lot to fear from progress in genetics.

      And yes, I think we can use them to test drugs and clean out sewer lines, since we use humans to do such things now.
    • We *ARE* something special apart from the rest of creation. We can create something like a "Humanzee", to use the very example you (and the article) did! Let's see a monkey do that.

      The fact of the matter is, we are indeed something special. Not apart from creation, but special. We, and as far as current research shows, we alone, are the sole holders of the ability to reason: the ability to focus on goals other than those driven by immediate instinct. As Kant once said, we alone are independant moral

  • See what's gonna happen... (Score:5, Funny)

    by cy_a253 ( 713262 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:47AM (#10879172)
    Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains are 100 percent human.

    Wow. A super intelligent mouse. Aren't they afraid that mouse will then get a slow-witted sidekick and try to take over the world? [google.com]

  • Chimera? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Infinityis ( 807294 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:48AM (#10879177) Homepage
    First things first, they need more descriptive names. What's that mouse-like thing in the corner? A chimera. What's that pig in the pen? A chimera. And the sheep?

    Pretty soon some arcane naming convention will evolve, and a college-level genetic engineering will be much like organic chemistry with its names oxy-lacto-3-alpha-nano-5-methane.

  • Culture (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raindance ( 680694 ) * <johnsonmx@@@gmail...com> on Sunday November 21, 2004 @01:49AM (#10879182) Homepage Journal
    In my opinion the "we should not do this" argument splits into three branches: it's dehumanizing for humans, we're opening pandora's box, and it's bad for the chimeras.

    I'll leave the first and second branch alone and focus on the third. These sorts of experiments probably put the chimeras through a great deal of hardship: we're creating organic systems which are not found in nature, and very probably have deep physiological problems.

    My grandparents' ranch bought a critter that was 3/8 buffalo, 1/8 cow, and 1/2 yak. It was a very messed up animal and walked around in a constant state of confusion- I would guess due to conflicting instincts and brain chemistry.

    I can only imagine what a mouse with human brain cells (mentioned in the article) would feel like- it'd almost certainly feel unwell, to say the least. Worse yet, how a non-human critter with human brain cells exposed to culture would feel like (and thus being smart enough to 1. know how messed up he is and 2. feel more dimensions of pain).

    We may be creating hell on earth for some of these critters. That's not very cool.

    RD

    • Re:Culture (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jormundgandr ( 816741 )
      This creature you speak of sounds like a crossbreed between very closely related species. These are not at all uncommon. I refer you to mules/hinnies. An animal that is basically 100% bovine IS going to wander aimlessly all day. This is normal.

      "I can only imagine what a mouse with human brain cells..." woah woah. Stop there. Yes, you can imagine that. Have fun with your excellent imagination. But the assertions you make based on your totally random subjective imagining, how can anyone take that se

    • and thus being smart enough to 1. know how messed up he is and 2. feel more dimensions of pain.

      So the animal will be a teenager (or a 5 - 40 year old geek) from day one?

    • Stress (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      Oh, certainly. The cells are wired to work with specific other cells, in a specific way. Certain chemical triggers are expected and/or given, certain types of amino acid are required, electrical interactions (where applicable) are going to be highly specific, etc.

      Putting a cell from one type of organism into another type of organism is of questionable value. Let's take the testing of drugs as an example. When you blend the cells together, you not only have the two cell types, you have cells which are a mi

    • Aye, a very good point! If they were to develop the capacity to reason, then reason would lead them inevitably to discern the true nature of the state they were in: that is, that they were the products of an experiment, and are treated as base animals dispite having the intellectual prerequisites for being a part of "Humanity" (if you define Humanity as being those who have the ability to reason... which seems to make sense, given that we're the only ones right now.)

      That would indeed be a sad fate: to be

      • That would indeed be a sad fate: to be given consciousness only to have that very state lead you to realize the inescapable hell you have been placed into.

        And this differs from the "reality" that most people on this earth experience how, exactly?

        Truely depressing, now that I think about it some.

  • I see no "moral" rights with these experiments. Humans themselves are likely a result of such an experiment, carried out by Green Mother Geia.

    Creatures born with such mixed genes are generally neither better nor worse than any other creature with "pure" genes. If they are actually worse they will die. If they are better, they will thrive. Nothing wrong here, that's how the biosphere of this planet operates.

    And besides, why should we automatically assume that a being with some "standard" set of genes

    • Can I get a hit of the stuff you've got?
  • the accidental creation of The Littles [tvtome.com], in which case someone should alert the Bigg family about them living in their walls.

    Someone also might want to alert the Fitzgibbon's that they should keep an eye on the Rats [amazon.com] living under their rosebush as they might be up to no good.

  • From TFA:
    Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human architecture -- a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness -- they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research.

    I wonder how humalike a mouse with a 100% human brain would be. I

    • I wonder how humalike a mouse with a 100% human brain would be. I guess I'm asking: to what extent does size matter?

      Neuron count surely matters. A mouse skull won't hold nearly as many neurons as a human one.

  • It's bad enough (Score:3, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:00AM (#10879230) Homepage Journal
    being a single guy and worrying about being led astray by beer goggles.

    In the future they'll have to worry about getting drunk and waking up with a real dog. Well, half.

    Ruff!

  • Buffalo Wings... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ParadoxicalPostulate ( 729766 ) <saapad.gmail@com> on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:02AM (#10879236) Journal
    Maybe now they can actually serve real buffalo wings at Pizza Hut.

  • NOOO! (Score:2, Funny)

    by edrams ( 778721 )
    That's funny. When I read THAC0, I thought, "where do I know that from?" Now I'm regressing. Thanks. A lot.

  • Genetic Mosaics (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:09AM (#10879264)
    This already happens, in a form of twin birth where a pair of fraternal twins fuse into a single embryo. This can result in an "embedded twin", where one twin is partially absorbed into the body of the other. You get individuals with second faces on their shoulders, etc. But there is the happier case where the twins get mixed up at a very early stage in blastular development and develop normally from then on. This produces a chimeral individual whose cells are of two different genotypes.

    This is extremely rare; a case was discovered in 2002 when a woman needed a kidney transplant. Tissue typing revealed her to be a tetragametic individual, having developed from four gametes instead of two. Half her cells were genotypically different from the other half. During development, this woman and her twin fused into one embryo, and appeared to the world after birth to be one person. There are probably more people like this out there. I seem to remember a story where another woman surprisingly failed a maternity test for her own son, and was found to be chimeral.

    See here [rcn.com] (or its Google cache [google.com] to avoid slashdotting) for details.

    • I seem to remember a story where another woman surprisingly failed a maternity test for her own son, and was found to be chimeral.

      Scratch that sentence- the failed maternity test was part of the same story about the tetragametic kidney patient. Lucky for her, actually; it meant she could accept kidneys from any of her siblings.
  • I suppose blending men with pan-galactic hyperdimensional beings could be a *good thing*
  • Reading this article reminds me of the first time I learned about Chimeras. NPR once had a segment [npr.org] about a woman whose flesh, bones, and blood was made up of genetically heterogeneus tissue. Admittedly, this was not an interspecies thing, but this apearantly was an all natural (albit rare) occurence.

    I remember thinking a the time what if something like the reverse happens, where one single egg splits in 2 and is fertilized by two different sperms. Would the resulting twins, sharing half their materna

  • I don't have a problem with mixing up all kinds of genetic materials to come up with weird creatures. It would be cool if some mutant monster thing got created that quickly multiplied, took over the whole planet, and enslaved us all.

  • Can we try something less controversial first? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foniksonik ( 573572 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @02:42AM (#10879390) Homepage Journal
    How about if they transplant animal stem cells into other animals first and see what happens.

    I know there are more immediate 'benefits' to immediately going straight to human/animal but there would be plenty to learn by studying animal/animal chimera and we might just avoid making some serious mistakes in the process.

    What's the rush all of a sudden? People have suffered from genetic disorders and trauma and disease in the past and will continue to in the future, regardless of how many discoveries we make... why do we need to find all the answers now?

    The scientific community needs to learn a little patience and self-control and get their heads out of the pharmaceutical industry's ass and take a breath of fresh air.

    The only way human/animal makes sense at this stage in our understanding of this area of science is that the Return on Investment is more immediate.

    Is that good enough reason to jump into the deep end before we know how to swim?

  • Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with speech and an enhanced potential to learn -- what some have called a "humanzee."

    "There's a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did it, and you gave it the protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?"

    Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, speaking last fall at

  • THACO is so Old School (Score:3, Funny)

    by drfrog ( 145882 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @03:02AM (#10879449) Homepage
    get up to version 3.5 of D&D and then well talk about rolling d20's

  • I could've used a Chimera earlier tonight (Score:4, Funny)

    by corbettw ( 214229 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @03:25AM (#10879511) Journal
    Luckily, I took "Light Infantry" as one of my Regimental Doctrines, and the scenario called for Infiltrators. So I managed to setup about 150 guardsman after the Ork player had deployed his entire army. But still, having a Chimera or two as mobile weapons platforms would've come in handy. Multi-lasers seem tailor made for killing Orcs (wounds on a two, with no save). Though things would've gone a lot better if the damn Stormtroopers had ever deployed their grav-chutes and hit the table. That looted Basilisk was just asking for melta-love.

    Oh, you meant something else. Nevermind.
  • I just want my 4 assed baboon. Screw the sharks with lasers!

  • Huh? (Score:2, Funny)

    by tony1c ( 610261 )
    OK, the mice I can understand, but how do you get the men in the blender?
  • MASTER SPLINTER! oh wait that was a rat...

  • You've got to be kidding me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Vthornheart ( 745224 ) on Sunday November 21, 2004 @05:15AM (#10879807)
    Come on, people! They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!


    Indeed, I am one of the people who, as the article put it, has a "negative backlash" against giving animals human traits. It's not for religious reasons, either. I'm no Religious Fundamentalist... (EDIT pre-sending: On a quick glance at what I typed, however, perhaps I'm a Humanitarian Fundamentalist. If so, then so be it.)


    Rather, a Human is something that, to me, has an innate quality over all other animals: not derived from religion, but rather from the innate quality of being human. Having a capacity to reason, for example. Call me biased towards Humanity, but we are the best thing this planet has produced (indeed, dispite the trouble we cause, which I acknowledge is vast). Giving human parts to animals, at least in large quantities, seems to me to be some kind of basic betrayal of humanity. Whose side are we on, anyways? =)


    Small transferences, like the ones mentioned at the very beginning of the article, are mildly disturbing but not outright revolting to me. But as they go on, and talk about potential half-human fetuses in mice (and letting them die as the accidents that they would be), or monkeys with human intelligence disturbs me to the deepest roots of my being. Call it Pro-Humanity zeal if you wish, but Humans > Monkeys. I mean, look at us, and what we've done! We are all here right now, typing in a complex common language over wires that harnass the fundamental powers of energy, and into a complex system of "code" which are products of our thought and our will to create something that serves us beyond our desire for mere survival.


    Indeed, humans have done some horrible things as well, and continue to do them. But as it stands, humanity is one thing I will hold an allegiance to. I don't believe in having zeal for a government (which tends to be one of the more faulty institutions of our humanity), or for most beliefs (the zeal for which some people wrongly hold to them cause a great deal of the horrible things I spoke of), or for most organized groups in general. But humanity as a whole is something that, to me, is worth pledging allegiance to. If another animal species can come to our point on their own, then so be it: they would be our peers. But to make some human/animal cross breed feels to me to be the closest I have ever come to calling something treasonous. Usually I find the word absurd, as its usual political usage comes with a heavy bias and hides a greater truth. But for some reason, it feels... appropriate here.


    So in summation, Hum4n5 >> 4n1m475, Hum4n1ty r0xx0rz j00, and other such nonsense.

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