Britain is experiencing some dissent over research on human-animal hybrid embryos. One the one hand, you’ve got researchers and charities arguing that this is a technique to probe deeper into the genetic and molecular properties of developing organisms, and is key to developing treatments for genetic diseases and developmental abnormalities; on the other side, we have plaintive lowing from the do-nothings and ignoramuses about the “sacredness” of human life, and kneejerk rejection by the usual collection of suspects, the Catholic church.
In his Easter address today, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, will describe plans to allow hybrid human-animal embryos as “monstrous”.
I addressed this a couple of years ago when Bush wanted to ban this kind of research (by the way, we aren’t ahead of the Brits in this game; they’re at least discussing this, while our government has mostly acted to shut this work down, leaving little to argue over). This is not a science-fiction project to create half-human slave labor or anything silly like that — it is serious research in early development that puts human disease-related forms of genes into animal models so that we can try experimental treatments. “Monstrous” would be taking risks or doing experiments on Down syndrome children; humane would be inducing an analog of Down syndrome in mice so that we can figure out causes and treatments of health problems in an informed way. I would also put using ignorance and medieval dogma to prevent biomedical research in the “monstrous” category, but then, I put just about everything about the Catholic church in that bin.
Just so everyone knows precisely where I’m coming from, though, in addition to appreciating the practical value of hybrid research for alleviating human suffering, I also think all forms of reproductive biotechnology are just plain cool. Some people think the next revolution in humanity will be an outcome of advances in neuroscience and technology (the geek rapture), but I’m inclined to think that the most significant changes in how we think about who we are are going to arise from radical reproductive technologies.
Now now now, let’s not be too hasty and file this away under medical research. I’m thinking this is step one in getting those shiny new tentacles.
Don’t we regularly use porcine heart valves to replace malfunctioning ones in people? How is that any less “monstrous”?
I think that it’s absolutely disgusting that these religious dunderheads, or bishops, can influence politicians with their ideological pronouncements when their ideology conflicts with obvious human benefits. They did it about a year ago in the British Upper House when they ganged up to defeat proposed legislation to allow euthanasia.
If only human deaths could be pinned upon them, then their followers could haul them off & stone them dead, as it instructs in their holy bile book.
How is it that these followers of insane iron age mythologies don’t get treated by the general public with the didain that they deserve? Fecking egits.
Ugh, I agreed with everything up until it was “monstrous” to experiment on humans but “humane” to experiment on mice… I don’t see lesser intelligence in a creature as a reason to experiment on it but that’s a whole different argument. I do agree, though, that religion and gov’t need to take a step back from this stuff.
To give mice Down’s Syndrome is definitely more human-e than experimenting on humans with DS, but in what way is it less monstrous/more moral/nice? Because mice are less intelligent (but humans with DS aren’t very bright either)? Because they’re weaker (might makes right)? Because God created Man in his own image, to rule over everything that swims, crawls et c?
Kcanadensis, how is it less humane to experiment on mice than to shred several dozen (at least) every time a farm machine drives through a wheat field?
I suspect the mice will be well treated in the lab situation, whereas in the agricultural situation, they are subject to all the tragedies of small mammals living in an agricultural habitat.
Don’t we regularly use porcine heart valves to replace malfunctioning ones in people?
Yep. And we used to use porcine and bovine insulin regularly (less often now that we know how to make human insulin in yeast–eeekk! it’s a man/yeast hybrid!) We also make human/bacteria hybrids all the time: putting human genes in bacteria isn’t even exciting anymore it’s been done so often. Nor are transgenic animals (animals, usually mice, with one human gene) anything new. And then there’s this tricky little test called the hamster egg assay. It’s a test for sperm viability in which a (human) sperm is put in a dish with a hamster egg (minus its zona pellicula). If it can’t fertilize the egg then there could be a sperm problem. Usually, the resulting embryo fails to divide. Sometimes, however, it does. What to do then? Throw it out quick or transfer it to the ICU?
“Kcanadensis, how is it less humane to experiment on mice than to shred several dozen (at least) every time a farm machine drives through a wheat field?”
Uh, so, because someone else is doing damage that makes it okay to do it in a different way? That makes no sense.
Because some fathers hit their daughters, surely it’s okay to punch a woman… I mean, it happens somewhere else anyway, right? What’s the difference? And it makes you feel better. Bleh I’m done arguing about it… But I can see already that other people are not pleased with the comment, and justly.
I hate having to eat every day. Can you guys figure out how to make me photosynthesise?
I want my half-human slave labor!!!
One doesn’t have to be a religious zealot to oppose this kind of research. If we’ve learned nothing else from human history, we’ve learned that humans are infinitely crafty in using their tools for good OR evil. Because of that, I believe some lines shouldn’t be crossed, and that researchers share a special responsibility to police themselves. (I also share kcanadensis’s view that we shouldn’t be experimenting on beings we arbitrarily designate as inferior.)
A few weeks ago I read that someone at MIT? had succeeded in interfacing a live roach with a radio-control system. I’m sure lots of people think a radio-controlled roach is cool, but is there anyone who doubts that scientists (esp. with the prod of govt. or military funding) will migrate the technology “up” to mammals, and then to humans? And, if you do doubt that, exactly which govt./military/corp. entity do you trust NOT to abuse the technology, and where do we draw the line?
“Because some fathers hit their daughters, surely it’s okay to punch a woman… I mean, it happens somewhere else anyway, right? What’s the difference?”
Because killing a mouse is EXACTLY like hitting your daughter.
Uh-huh.
Sure.
No matter what happens, I think we’ll still make babies the old fashioned way.
I guess the Inquisition, using just one example, wasn’t ‘monstrous’.
You know what’s sad?
The religious cranks pretend to believe that a sentient being created everything and that humans are the masterpiece.
Seems to me that if this critter of theirs were so perfect, the result would have been much better than what’s cluttering up the planet these days.
Just saying…
The objections to experimenting on mice can be taken on their own merits. They are, however, incidental to the primary topic: The religious objection to the “monstrous” experiments has nothing to do with the treatment of mice, and everything to do with the use of human genetic material – which is where that objection stumbles over a crack in the sidewalk and bloodies its own nose.
Brownian,
I feel I should make a joke about vegetative lifestyles, but it won’t gel.
More importantly, I like clothes – on me as as well as others. So please, no photosynthetes.
Hillary: With respect, I understand your concern but if we refused to investigate any technology that could be misused, we’d still be hunting and gathering. Persistence hunting only, of course. Any technology can be misused. Reflecting on the implications of what we are doing and using due caution I’ll agree with. Simply opposing all use of human DNA in animals, no.
“Because killing a mouse is EXACTLY like hitting your daughter.
Uh-huh.
Sure.”
Wow, you don’t actually believe that’s what he said?
Cardinal O’Brien, a staunch ally for us on the side of reason, is doing a spectacular job of demonstrating the kind of immorality made possible when we mingle faith with ethical matters.
In his world, Condoms promote promiscuity – which is a far greater immorality than innocent children being born with lethal viral infections. In his world, he gets to bully MPs with the non-existent threat of excommunication for supporting abortion legislation. In his world, doing potentially life saving research is an exercise in Frankensteinian monstrosity. Well, as we know – he’s obviously well qualified in the field of bioethics.
Normally we see these guys as an American phenomenon, In the UK they are usually too timid to get involved. When they do stick their inflated sense of moral-high-horsery into the fray – I tend to get a little annoyed. Just who are these people?
I’m not entirely certain that the vast majority of people who are against these hybrids actually know what is going on and honestly believe we’re on track to create humanimals(!). I think this is primarily a problem of communication. Even if you told people “it’s just a gene or part of one”, most would likely still be appalled, primarily due to a lack of understanding of just what in the whozits a gene is anyway.
The other day the hole in the ozone came up in conversation. Forget any of the classical culprits of that particular atmospheric phenomenon, the man told me he was convinced we punctured it sending our spacecraft into space. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy, but this was definitely evidence of just how innocently illiterate people are on the basics.
The Catholic Church knows better with the various educated people it ostensibly keeps on staff, but that’s a whole can of worms I’ll leave to others.
P.S. I’m a newbie on this blog, but so far I like. Especially the frequency of content-rich posts.
So just how many Hail Mary’s does one have to say for creating human-mouse hybridomas, anyway? Do they need to employ self-flagellation while saying them? Can they disinfect their whip, or do they have to drag it through a hayfield first?
“Kcanadensis said: “Uh, so, because someone else is doing damage that makes it okay to do it in a different way? That makes no sense.
Because some fathers hit their daughters, surely it’s okay to punch a woman… I mean, it happens somewhere else anyway, right? What’s the difference? And it makes you feel better. Bleh I’m done arguing about it… But I can see already that other people are not pleased with the comment, and justly.”
Wow. You think that’s a good comparison to my comment?
No. I was trying to point out that humans routinely accept injury and death to small animals – like mice – as part of the cost of keeping humans fed, sheltered and healthy. How is using mice in a lab different? Because it is slightly less random? Slightly more deliberate?
Basing arguments on anything as nebulous and “faith based” as religious perspective is inherently problematic, as 99% of readers already are aware.
As to “inducing an analog of Down syndrome in mice so that we can figure out causes and treatments of health problems in an informed way” being the more “humane” option, it belies and presupposes another inherent fallacy: that we possess and occupy so special and privileged of a position in our biosphere that we can [as other comments have mentioned] – if not *should* – use other creatures according to our needs and wants.
Something that I think is of absolute importance is when PZ talks of non-human animal use in an “informed way”.
Have the test subjects been informed of their fate? Has consent been given?
The status of non-human animals as property, as “things” not beings, is based on a hierarchy of attributes/skills which we – as humans – have created, with our respective qualities being “best”. I think that we would be “lesser” and severely lacking were canines to develop the ‘grading’ system by which to classify and rank species’ relative importance [more like self-importance]. I for one cannot lick my privates.
Similarly, were felines in charge, I would be sorely lacking in the “fall asleep at any moment of any day regardless of what is happening around me” category.
As to the comment regarding photosynthesis [which I am sure was tongue-in-cheek, though far too many seem to think that such a response is a legitimate line of thinking], one word cuts through all the hyperbole and bullshit: sentience.
While plants certainly are living things which are perfectly capable of responding to stimuli, lacking sentience means that they do not have interests the way we define human and sentient non-human animal interests.
Certainly we can have moral obligations that concern plants, but unlike the moral obligations which we *owe* to sentient non-human animals, we do not have any obligations that we owe to plants.
Indepth [and original post]
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?p=7
Cheers.
All hail FSM
I don’t see what the big fuss over human/animal hybrids is. I’m waiting for the human/plant hybrids.
I’ve always thought the intelligent designer really fucked up by not giving us green photosynthetic skin.
that’ll teach me to not read all the other comments first. mod me down as redundant, slashdot editors.
“…that we possess and occupy so special and privileged of a position in our biosphere that we can [as other comments have mentioned] – if not *should* – use other creatures according to our needs and wants…”
I love animals, but if a Cooper’s Hawk is special enough to warrant the right to use pigeons, then I’m special enough to use a mouse.
I agree that we need to think very carefully before we permit experiments on animals that involve causing them pain or discomfort. I’d write more, but I’ve got some bacon on the stove. Excuse me.
You know, something just occurred to me about the Christians who object to genetic changes to human cells: is this really a consistent position for them to take? I mean, most of them tell us that the “soul” is what is important, and what lives on after death, while the body is just a material husk that we leave behind at death, right? So why do genetic changes to the body even matter? Won’t the “soul” be the same, regardless? Or do they think that the “soul” has a genetic component?
I’m inclined to think that the most significant changes in how we think about who we are are going to arise from radical reproductive technologies.
I’m eager to see the day when we can manually combine DNA from two donors to make an embryo. When two men or two women can get together and make genetic offspring, it’ll be hard to sustain the “marriage is only for reproduction” argument (as laughable as that is already).
IANAB, but think it is fairly obvious that a biologist could hesitate to designate a species inferior to another as it seems fairly meaningless, at least out of narrow context. But it is easy to note that they are different.
Perhaps that is why PZ calls damaging or risky research on other species humane, it can be a matter of human morals as opposed to shared morals.
Also, while it isn’t an argument that supports these morals as such, I note that animals can be as keen to attack and eat humans as humans have evolved for meat eating. Does anyone doubt, noting our behavior, that if the situation was reversed mice could easily be seen experimenting on humans while noting that it is musane and musan moral?
When and if species develop a set of shared morals it is IMO time to reconsider always putting ones relations first. (And I don’t mean simply sharing altruism when say a dog is adopted into the extended family.) At this time I don’t see any reason for that.
[This claim doesn’t bar anyone from trying to replace intelligent mice with say yeast, or pure in vitro research.]
IANAB, but think it is fairly obvious that a biologist could hesitate to designate a species inferior to another as it seems fairly meaningless, at least out of narrow context. But it is easy to note that they are different.
Perhaps that is why PZ calls damaging or risky research on other species humane, it can be a matter of human morals as opposed to shared morals.
Also, while it isn’t an argument that supports these morals as such, I note that animals can be as keen to attack and eat humans as humans have evolved for meat eating. Does anyone doubt, noting our behavior, that if the situation was reversed mice could easily be seen experimenting on humans while noting that it is musane and musan moral?
When and if species develop a set of shared morals it is IMO time to reconsider always putting ones relations first. (And I don’t mean simply sharing altruism when say a dog is adopted into the extended family.) At this time I don’t see any reason for that.
[This claim doesn’t bar anyone from trying to replace intelligent mice with say yeast, or pure in vitro research.]
They damn well better. I want my Full Cyborg Conversion, dammit!
Yeah, but some of those green chicks on Star Trek were really hot!
“I’m not entirely certain that the vast majority of people who are against these hybrids actually know what is going on and honestly believe we’re on track to create humanimals(!).”
Well then, there’s the answer for when those same people deny evolution by saying “I’ve never seen a half human half fish, have you?”
“Not yet, but just wait…”
I once went downstairs on a Sat morning to find a small mouse sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, shivering. It had obviously ingested some of the poison I had put down. I put it swiftly out its mysery. It never budged as I approached it*.
Now if I had been at work and one of my mice was like that, unless i had VERY specific authorisation I could have been fined GBP5,000 And/Or jailed for up to 6years. I have actually been in that situation with mice, with a natural mutation, who are very prone to intestinal polyps, but unlike humans who get them, from the same mutation in their bowels, the mice get them all along their digestive tract.
*’humane’ traps often merely condemn the mice to slow deaths from cold or predation when they get released. But hey, it salves the consciences of humans so its ok, right?
The Catholic church in Britain has being arguing for MPs to be given a free vote on the issue when it comes up. I assume this because they hope that Catholic MPs will vote against the legislation as an issue of conscience.
Why should MPs have that right ? They were elected to represent their constituents not the Catholic church. If MPs are want to know how to vote they need to ask the people who live in their constituency, not Catholic Bishops.
If there’s any morality at all, it should minimize unnecessary suffering, and it shouldn’t matter what species does the suffering.
Animal experiments may be necessary but has the potential for horrible abuse, as with factory farming. People are right to be troubled by it, and watch it closely.
There are still plenty of Dick Cheneys around.
Brian (@27):
Thanks ever so much for the hot-coffee spit take! 8^)
As Kseniya points out (@15), the morality of using mice in research is really tangential to the original point… but FSM help us, we’ve ended up in an animal rights thread. [sigh]
Following on Craig’s argument (@26), I have to wonder how arguing that we’re not special adds up to an argument that we have a greater moral obligation to other species than they do to each other. If, as Chad (@23) suggests, it’s a fallacy that “we possess and occupy [a] special and privileged of a position in our biosphere,” then by what logic should we hold ourselves to a higher moral standard than the rest of said biosphere?
Some would suggest that the very fact we can debate these abstract moral questions (and other species cannot, as far as we can tell) is evidence that we we do occupy a “special and privileged” position, but be that as it may, one fact is inescapable: Human civilization has been, since its very prehistoric beginnings, entirely and inevitably dependent on an uninterrupted story of the killing, capturing, enslavement, and manipulation of nonhuman animals. Even if you argue that, owing to modern technology, we could begin to wean ourselves from the food, clothing, labor, and scientific knowledge we derive from nonhuman animals, it’s impossible to imagine that we could have reached this point without the millennia of animal use that came before.
Either it’s been moral for us to build our civilization on the backs of nonhuman animals, or we are all criminals against nature on a scale that dwarfs any of the crimes against humanity that stain our collective history. Personally, I’ll choose the former, in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence for the latter.
Call it “speciesism” if you will, but please explain to me under what principle it’s wrong to give preference to the wellbeing and survival of one’s own species? And please show me some other species that doesn’t do so (and that hasn’t been extinct for millions of years).
None of this, BTW, amounts to me arguing for cruelty or unnecessary harm in our dealings with other species: Because we are capable of this sort of moral introspection, I think indulging in cruelty or unnecessary violence is corrosive to our indiviual and collective spirits (by which term I mean consciousness, not some sort of mystical, metaphysical “soul”).
So I do think we should be more concerned about treating laboratory mice humanely than a Cooper’s Hawk is about its prey… but that’s because treating animals as well as possible is good for us, not because the animals somehow have moral rights that supercede our own.
Now I’m going to see if Brian has any of that bacon left over!
PS: Those of you who object to using mice in research aren’t wearing any leather, right? Because nobody would ever suggest that trying to cure Down’s syndrome is a lesser moral imperative than keeping your feet dry or your pants up, right? Right?
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has a go at ”atheistic secularism” in the Guardian today.
It’s phenomenally vapid stuff. As seems to be a trend with the religious, he starts off by shooting himself in the foot, talking about HIV/AIDS victims in Zimbabwe and how the church can give them hope through love (love, by his definition, clearly meaning declaring that god is terribly offended by the little pieces of rubber that can help to prevent people from getting HIV/AIDS in the first place).
It goes downhill from there. This is the money shot:
“This is why I wonder if there is not a lie that lurks in the appeal of an atheistic secularism. It is not its attacks on religion that gives me pause for thought, but its vision of what is human. It says that this is all we are, this is it! We have no significant purpose; we’re merely chance products of material processes. I believe we do have a purpose; that we are made for greater things. Atheistic secularism ultimately diminishes us; it kills the human spirit under the pretence of liberating it. Our democracy is too precious and costly a gift to be narrated by this version of the secular alone. I want to keep alive the church’s vision of humanity which is part of the truth it carries.”
The cardinal obviously has as much understanding of the meaning of the word “truth” as he does of the meaning of the word “love”.
Crap, link got eaten. Read the rest here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/24/catholicism.religion
The good news is he gets ripped a new proselytizing hole in the comments.
Hillary #11 “I also share kcanadensis’s view that we shouldn’t be experimenting on beings we arbitrarily designate as inferior.” So, Hillary, do you take any medicines? Where do you think those came from? If you or a loved one got cancer for example, would you shun all medical treatment? Not only that, do you eat? What do you eat and why? Aren’t you “arbitrarily designating” all of those organisms (plant or animal) as “inferior”? I’m with craig #26: “I love animals, but if a Cooper’s Hawk is special enough to warrant the right to use pigeons, then I’m special enough to use a mouse.” with the addendum that we should make every effort to minimise suffering in both food and research animals.
This claim doesn’t bar anyone from trying to replace intelligent mice with say yeast, or pure in vitro research.
In vitro research, at least on mammalian cell culture, uses fetal calf serum. Or newborn calf serum. Which is obtained by puncturing the heart of a fetal or newborn calf and draining the blood out. True, the researcher doesn’t have to do any of this, but in terms of animal suffering, I think mouse work might be less objectionable.
My rationale for using animals in research, even though I’m a vegetarian, is this: If I were lost in the woods and had no idea what plants were edible but could manage to hunt down a squirrel or rabbit or something, I’d do so rather than starve. I’d expect most people to do the same. I don’t need to eat animals, not in everyday life, but using animals for research might save a person’s life. So it’s the moral equivalent of eating a squirrel to avoid starving, not the moral equivalent of eating veal because it tastes better than tofu.
Damn you Prof Myers and your ability to blog using 8 tentacles at once! I’ve been collecting links on the mad Cardinal and the fallout from this for a few days in order to blog about it today.
I have blogged about it today but now you have made me feel all dirty for doing so.
One day…one day I shall beat you to the punch.
(In the meantime I shall happily continue being one of the mere minions if that is quite alright with you oh mighty Cephalopod Overlord?)
There is indeed an awful lot of crap talked about this bill — particularly this past weekend — and it’s difficult to avoid concluding that many in the media and church are deliberately aiding the confusion. Nobody misses a chance to have a go at Brown for the most trivial of things, and it would appear that MPs and the media are playing politics with this.
Anyway, I’ve had a go at understanding O’Brien’s objections to the bill, and you can find the results here.
Is it less cruel to use mice, or creationists for scientific experiments? If one regards ‘humanity’ as intrinsic to biology, you may have one answer; if one’s criteria is in intelligence, you may have another.
I’m brought to mind of the rumored Soviet-era “Chuman” project. As cool as an army of invincible super-gorillas may be, it was rather poor science even for that era.
I for one, welcome our Moreau overlords.
Show me an animal that respects the rights of others, and I’ll show you an animal worthy of rights.
When humans violate the rights of others, we take some of their rights away.
Zona pellucida. Per-lucida — shining-through.
Sure, but you don’t have enough surface to actually live off it. :-Þ
Please explain that in some detail. How isn’t “sentience” a shades-of-gray thing? Where do you draw the line, and why?
Zona pellucida. Per-lucida — shining-through.
Sure, but you don’t have enough surface to actually live off it. :-Þ
Please explain that in some detail. How isn’t “sentience” a shades-of-gray thing? Where do you draw the line, and why?
I’m not happy about experiments on non-human animals that involve them suffering in any significant way, though you do have to balance that bad thing against the good things that may come out of the science. In any event, it’s a separate issue from whether some moral line has been crossed when we “violate nature”, or “play God”, or whatever, when we conduct transgenic experimentation. The latter is irrationalist thinking, and it should cut no policy ice in a modern, free, democratic (I like the word “liberal”, but I don’t necessarily mean by it what Americans do) society.
“1. Some would suggest that the very fact we can debate these abstract moral questions (and other species cannot, as far as we can tell) is evidence that we we do occupy a “special and privileged” position, but be that as it may, one fact is inescapable: Human civilization has been, since its very prehistoric beginnings, entirely and inevitably dependent on an uninterrupted story of the killing, capturing, enslavement, and manipulation of nonhuman animals. Even if you argue that, owing to modern technology, we could begin to wean ourselves from the food, clothing, labor, and scientific knowledge we derive from nonhuman animals, it’s impossible to imagine that we could have reached this point without the millennia of animal use that came before.
2. Either it’s been moral for us to build our civilization on the backs of nonhuman animals, or we are all criminals against nature on a scale that dwarfs any of the crimes against humanity that stain our collective history. Personally, I’ll choose the former, in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence for the latter.
3. Call it “speciesism” if you will, but please explain to me under what principle it’s wrong to give preference to the wellbeing and survival of one’s own species? And please show me some other species that doesn’t do so (and that hasn’t been extinct for millions of years).
4. None of this, BTW, amounts to me arguing for cruelty or unnecessary harm in our dealings with other species: Because we are capable of this sort of moral introspection, I think indulging in cruelty or unnecessary violence is corrosive to our indiviual and collective spirits (by which term I mean consciousness, not some sort of mystical, metaphysical “soul”).
5. PS: Those of you who object to using mice in research aren’t wearing any leather, right? Because nobody would ever suggest that trying to cure Down’s syndrome is a lesser moral imperative than keeping your feet dry or your pants up, right? Right?”
1. If anything, it makes it more immoral, since less intelligent individuals can’t do abstract thinking (as well as most humans).
2. Evidence? This isn’t science, there aren’t any moral particles floating around out there (otherwise I’d say that: in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence, the nazis were perfectly moral). But yes, what human animals have done to unhuman animals is far, far worse than what they’ve done to members of their own species. Does this fact frighten you? I’m sorry, but reality isn’t always what you want it to be. But whatever has happened in the past, the important thing is to make the future as good as possible.
3. Under utilitarianism, for example. And under a more enlightened form of Rawlsianism too.
What members of other species do doesn’t matter, of course.
Under what principles is it wrong to oppress other races? Call me a “racist”, but as far as I know, other races are bad too!!
4. The same argument that some people (pardon me for the weasel words) used against the worst forms of slavery. “Slavery is ok, but the worst forms of it are bad. Not because beating your negro is wrong in itself (prove to me that it is, if you can!), but since it makes Us behave less decent towards our fellow citizens”.
5. Yes, there exist so-called vegetarians and vegans (and I’m one), who don’t eat meat or use other animal products.
I, for one, support this research. Also, once they start making human-animal hybrids out of adults, I volunteer so that I may start my ascension to ferrethood!
Vegan because you feel its a healthier diet? Makes sense, good for you.
Vegan because you love animals and don’t want to personally contribute to their deaths or suffering? I can sympathize, you get an attaboy.
Vegan because of that whole “it takes less energy to make a loaf of bread than a meatloaf” thing? Makes sense, good for you.
Vegan so you can feel morally superior to others and then lecture them about it? Fuck off and die you pompous ass.
Here’s a revealing exchange:
2. Either it’s been moral for us to build our civilization on the backs of nonhuman animals, or we are all criminals against nature on a scale that dwarfs any of the crimes against humanity that stain our collective history. Personally, I’ll choose the former, in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence for the latter.
Answer from Anders:
2. Evidence? This isn’t science, there aren’t any moral particles floating around out there (otherwise I’d say that: in the absence of absolutely compelling evidence, the nazis were perfectly moral). But yes, what human animals have done to unhuman animals is far, far worse than what they’ve done to members of their own species. Does this fact frighten you? I’m sorry, but reality isn’t always what you want it to be. But whatever has happened in the past, the important thing is to make the future as good as possible
And now me: Anders is using the oldest trick in the (Christian/Muslim/religion) book: making you guilty for the sins of your ancestors, in this case for, oh let’s see, how long have human beings and their human-like ancestors been killing and eating animals — let’s say 150,000 years. Under this load of guilt, this tremendous load of thousands of years of guilt, one is expected to give up thought and argument, kowtow to the self-proclaimed moral authority, and — well, we all know where that leads. Naked power-tripping there, not defending or defining the position, but expanding it until it is overwhelming and all-encompassing. Assertion isn’t argument, except for people arguing from Authority.
Incidentally, I invite anyone to march into the next local NAACP luncheon and tell them their tuna melt is like slavery.
Hairhead:
To be fair to Anders, I was the one using that “trick,” albeit not quite to the purpose you describe: My argument is that human civilization as we know it is inescapably built on those 150,000 years (or however long it is) of domination, manipulation, killing, and consumption of nonhuman animals. If we posit that those nonhuman animals occupy the same moral space as our fellow humans, then we are equally inescapably the heir of a literally insupportable load of guilt, and by rights should find ourselves guilty of a functionally limitless number of counts of crimes against nature.
Since I find that conclusion absurd, I reject the premise it is based upon. If I believed in a creator/designer, I’d say no such being would design a world dependent on such moral horror; since I do not, I’ll only say that I literally cannot believe that the universe is so constructed as to permit intelligent civilization to arise only if it is steeped in evil from its very initiation.
So I’m not really arguing that we should consider ourselves innocent of the “sins of our fathers”; I’m arguing that they weren’t sins.
Craig says…
…and I take his point (though a tuna melt would be more like cannibalistic genocide; riding a horse would be more like slavery): If we start from the proposition that nonhuman animals are essentially people, from the point of view of individual rights, then we do arrive at absurd conclusions such as “a tuna melt is like slavery”… and since the conclusion is absurd, it seems to me that so must be the proposition from which it follows. (BTW, if you ask me to prove that “a tuna melt is like slavery” is an absurd conclusion, I will give you the same answer vis a vis absurdity that Potter Stewart gave regarding obscenity.)
Sorry, I have a niece-in-law who is a self-righteous vegan. How righteous? Well, I invited her to a summer meal with family, and I carefully made some nice veg-stuff for her. Not just a salad, but bulgur wheat steamed in vegetable stock, topped with roasted red peppers, plus other vegetables around. She brought her own food, and refused to touch what I had prepared, saying that it was “unclean” because it had undoubtedly been prepared by utensils which had touched meat.
I like my nephew; so I did not do what wanted to, which was to confront her as a bigot no less than the person who wouldn’t want “niggers” or “kikes” to have touched her food, and just as bad, an insolent and inconsiderate guest who was making my son (then four) feel guilty and unclean. I swallowed it for the sake of family amity — but I haven’t invited her to any of my get-togethers, as I refuse to be treated as “unclean” in my own home.
Is it any wonder that self-righteous fanatics have throughout history been crucified, defenestrated, etc., etc.?
…and I take his point (though a tuna melt would be more like cannibalistic genocide; riding a horse would be more like slavery)
But you’re forgetting the cheese on the tuna melt!
Anders:
I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t respond strictly “by the numbers.”
You said…
…and that gets right to the heart of the issue: Is the difference between humans and other animal species one of degree (i.e., we’re all essentially the same; we humans are just a bit smarter) or is it one of kind (i.e., people are fundamentally different — a higher order of being — than nonhuman animals).
Chad’s point, to which I was responding, was that our behavior toward nonhuman species is predicated on the fallacious belief that we’re a higher order of being (or as he put it, that we occupy a “special and privileged” position). Implicit in that argument is the suggestion that if that belief were not fallacious, then our behavior toward animals (excepting instances of animal cruelty that violate human norms) would be acceptable.
My question is how does assuming we’re not “privileged” make it unacceptable for us to favor our own species’ survival and wellbeing, even at the expense of other species? If we are really “just another” animal species, does it not follow that our moral relationship to other species should be equivalent to their moral relationships to each other? And if so, I ask again: What animal species affords other species equal or greater rights to food, habitat, or life than it claims for itself? What animal species hesitates on moral grounds to kill, eat, or otherwise use members of other species as required for its own good?
Personally, my gut feeling is that we are different in kind from other animals… that some combination of intelligence, self awareness, language, the capability to use tools, whatever (but in any case not a divinely created soul!)… adds up to us being “people” and other species not being “people.” But I can’t define that gut feeling with any rigor or support it with evidence, so I won’t represent it as anything beyond personal speculation.
I’m not sure it matters, though: If we’re not “better” than nonhuman animals, we’re surely no worse, and thus deserving of whatever we can do to thrive in “nature, red in tooth and claw.” If we have no higher moral claim to rights, I can’t see how our presumed greater intelligence lays on us a higher moral duty to behave in ways that are counter-survival.
A few more direct responses:
What members of another species do doesn’t matter, anymore than an individual’s behavior defines morality for the species… but it appears to me that the unbroken pattern of nature is that animal species act in furtherance of their own survival. If we posit that humanity is morally equivalent to other animal species, why would we not have the right to follow the pattern of nature?
If you accepted the underlying premise of slavery (i.e., that the slaves were not people), then that would be a perfectly reasonable position to take. Since the premise is obviously false, though, the position is not reasonable in this case. It does not, however, seem quite so obviously false to say that mice are not people, and so maybe the position has a little more merit with regard to nonhuman animals than it does regarding other humans who just happen to look a little different.
I’m not a biologist, but I’ve heard plenty of them assert that race is a purely artificial concept, with little if any physical or scientific significance; I’ve hear virtually nobody say the same about the concept of species.
If we treat laboratory mice as humanely as possible because we value humane treatment, that’s one thing; if we treat them humanely because we think they’re the moral equivalent of people, OTOH, then one has to ask what the Hell they’re doing in the lab in the first place, just as we ask what the Hell even the most well-treated slave was doing in slavery in the first place.
If animals are “just like” people, in terms of rights, then it’s not just a question of laboratory animals, and not just a question of being vegetarian or vegan, either. What about pets? What about working animals? It’s well and good to be vegan, but how sure are you that your veggies didn’t come from fields worked using animal labor?
If we believed that animals are the moral equivalent of people, then even the most loving pet owner would be nothing but a heinous slaveowner, and none of us could possibly be innocent. It would be a horrific world to live in.
Happily, that’s not what I believe, so I’m good. Hot dog, anyone?
Hairhead: There are self-righteous people who are vegan, and there are also self-righteous people who are omnivorous. (For example, I have a friend who for a long time would refuse to eat my delicious, lovingly prepared food because it didn’t have meat in it.) The fact that you know one of the former is irrelevant to the debate.
I think that the use of animals in scientific research should be minimised and alternatives found if at all possible. I don’t personally like experimentation on animals, but I realise that there may always been a need for it. As long as it is done with a minimum of suffering, it can be very beneficial to humanity as a whole.
I say bring on the humonkeys and humorses. That’d be so cool.
I personally find the idea of the Singularity pretty terrifying, but then again, it’s not like I’m an expert on it and humanity is notorious for fearing things they don’t understand, so yeah. My first thought is just, you know, SkyNet.
As for hybridization, it’s all well and good, but why can’t science focus on the REALLY important stuff, like how to turn me into a crime-fighting* mermaid?
*Ocean crime.
What about pets? What about working animals? It’s well and good to be vegan, but how sure are you that your veggies didn’t come from fields worked using animal labor?”
More than that. Think you’re going to build a house on that property you bought? Wrong. There’s a mole living where you’re planning on putting the basement. He’s got squatter’s rights.
PZ, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick on this one. We need to be clear on what exactly it is that this bill will legalize. It’s not the introduction of human genes into animal genomes (or vice versa) or any kind of hybrid in the normal sense. It’s this:
They remove the nucleus from an animal embryo. They add a nucleus from a human adult (ie not an embryo). They kick start it to produce pluripotent stem cells.
The only animal DNA left is in the mitochondria.
http://bhascience.blogspot.com/2008/03/catholics-on-human-animal-hybrids.html
“I’m a Level Four Vegan. I don’t eat anything that casts a shadow.”
“If we posit that those nonhuman animals occupy the same moral space as our fellow humans, then we are equally inescapably the heir of a literally insupportable load of guilt, and by rights should find ourselves guilty of a functionally limitless number of counts of crimes against nature.” – Bill Dauphin
Irrespective of the moral status of non-human animals, this is a load of tosh: individuals are responsible for their own actions, not those of their ancestors.
…which means you can eat other Level Four Vegans… if not now, then soon! ;^)
In the interests of disclosure, my dietary habits are cladistically based: I don’t care to eat close relatives, so I abstain from tetrapods.
I think you’re missing my point(s), but that’s no doubt my own fault: It’s my responsibility to be clear.
Trying again: First, I was never suggesting that present-day individuals should be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors. Instead, I was suggesting that the “crime” of using nonhuman animals for our own purposes (if crime it be) has been, since the beginning of humankind and continuing right through the current day, an ineradicable element of the development of human civilization, the sine qua non of our rise from being wild beasts ourselves. In this view, we would inescapably be the product of a vast (moral) criminal enterprise… which I think is a materially different assertion than suggesting (for instance) that the great-granddaughter of a butcher has his “victims'” blood on her hands.
But wait, there’s more!! Second, because I’m not constitutionally capable of species self-loathing to accept the above conclusion as anything other than an absurdity, I reject it, and with it the predicate assumption that using animals for our own purposes was ever a crime in the first place. As I said in the very post you quote from, just a couple paragraphs farther on…
errr… @65, the phrase “…not constitutionally capable of species self-loathing to accept…” should, of course, be “…not constitutionally capable of sufficient species self-loathing to accept….”
[sigh] When you’re trying to clarify previous remarks, it’s a bad idea to just leave words out!
Thanks Dianne, I didn’t know that.
Thanks Dianne, I didn’t know that.
“because I’m not constitutionally capable of sufficient species self-loathing to accept the above conclusion as anything other than an absurdity, I reject it, and with it the predicate assumption that using animals for our own purposes was ever a crime in the first place.” – Bill Dauphin
I get it – you don’t like the conclusion, so you deduce that any claim which supports it must be false. Now, who does that remind me of?
On the photosynth human, a nice solution could be borrow a large foldable sailfin from some animal genomes, and then put here the photosyntetic cells(could be so fashionable)…
Well, I suppose you could see it that way… if you consider “I don’t like this conclusion” to be semantically identical to “I judge this conclusion to be absurd.” Personally, I do not.
But there’s more to this: Unless you believe in some external (i.e., divine) Giver of Moral Truth (and I grok that a large number, if not a majority, of posters here do not), then the statements we mortals make about what is and is not moral are matters of judgment, rather than objective fact. It’s not clear to me that it’s possible for moral declarations to be True, in any absolute sense; what’s critical is that they be useful in guiding us to a better civilization (note also the inherent subjectivity of “better”). So let me present my argument (the same argument, not a new one) in somewhat different language:
If we start with the moral assertion that nonhuman animal species should have the same rights that we recognize as human rights, then we must conclude that owning animals for their labor or our pleasure is the moral equivalent of slavery; that killing animals is the moral equivalent of murder and eradicating whole populations (or appropriating the habitat of same) is the moral equivalent of genocide; that eating animals is the moral equivalent of cannibalism; that using animal skins in clothing and construction is the moral equivalent of the most sensational excesses of any of several infamous genocidal maniacs. All of these are things we judge to be deepest evil.
Now, it’s also true that these activities — domesticating, killing, eating, skinning, eradicating, and taking over the homes of animals — have been part and parcel of the history of human civilization. They have not been merely casual byproducts of human development; they have been at the very fundamental core of our story… on what my engineer and program manager friends would call the critical path. I find it hard to imagine we will ever reach a point where the human race will be able to live on Earth without depending on some sort of “immoral” domination and use of nonhuman animals (think of habitat destruction, if nothing else), no matter what dizzying heights our technologies reach… but even if we could, we could never have reached that point without millennia of “animal abuse.”
So, if we choose to view nonhuman animals as morally equivalent to humans, we are inescapably led to the conclusion that the entire human enterprise inherently and unavoidably has at its very core the blackest evil. I have previously said such a conclusion is “absurd,” and I stand by that assertion, but I also assert that this conclusion is not useful, by which I mean that a world in which every thinking, morally engaged person condemned him/herself as a participant in moral depravity of epic proportions would not be a better world.
Since choosing to hold nonhuman animals morally equivalent to humans would lead us to nothing good, I suggest that we should not so choose.
If you, or anyone, can provide some proof that the premise is objectively true, and not a matter of human choice and judgment, I’m prepared to modify my position.
(PS: Thanks for pressing me on this. Being forced to explain myself has helped me better define, in my own mind, my previously soemwhat inchoate ideas.)
Re #70 [Bill Dauphin] Well, you did say “I’m not constitutionally capable of sufficient species self-loathing to accept the above conclusion as anything other than an absurdity” – which sounds a lot like rejecting the conclusion for emotional reasons to me. However, thanks for taking my comments in good part, and I think your new formulation is much better. I agree that we should not consider non-human animals morally equivalent to humans, but would add that we should also not consider them morally equivalent to inanimate objects, or in general to other organisms (exceptions would those clearly without the capacity to suffer e.g. sponges, and early embryos – including human ones), or to each other – a chimpanzee has more moral claim on us than a beetle. This still leaves many practices, both past and present, that I would consider extremely immoral; without doubt, livestock farming is the area in which such things now take place on the largest scale. There are also excellent moral reasons other than animal welfare for considerable reductions in the amounts of meat and other animal products eaten: growing grains and soya to feed cattle, to take the clearest example, requires vast amounts of land, water and other resources, and produces large amounts of greenhouse gases. On the other hand, we certainly cannot avoid all exploitation of other species in the foreseeable future.
Nick: Thanks for a fascinating conversation. I hope we’re not boring the other Pharyngulites.
To be fair, there is an aspect of my position that’s related to emotion. If I were to abstract a generalized principle from the particular argument I’m making here, it might be something like this:
Any moral formulation that leaves well intentioned people no option other than despair is functionally useless, and should be discarded.
I’m not suggesting that we should casually ignore inconvenient truths (although I can see why it might seem that I am, at first glance); I am suggesting that when supposed “truths” are both irremediable and emotionally intolerable to decent people, observing them has no positive value to us as a species.
Shorter me: Species-wide self-loathing is counter-survival.
I agree that asserting the moral nonequivalence of animals with humans is not the same thing as asserting the moral equivalence of animals with everything nonhuman.
I agree here, too. But this and many other similar considerations fall under the general heading of stewardship, which has more to do with humans’ duty to each other, and to our shared future as a species, than it does with any abstract moral duty to animals, or to the environment per se.
I got roasted once before in this thread for saying something similar, but I’ll (perhaps incautiously) reiterate: Like avoiding cruelty to animals, taking care of the environment is good because it’s good for us.
On the BBC this morning, I hear that the good Cardinal is recovering in hospital after having a pacemake fitted to deal with his heart murmur.
Apparently hybrid cells are bad but cyborg cardinals are fine. The irony is strong in this one!
Brown has now caved in to the cardinals, offering a “free vote” on three “controversial” aspects of the bill:
An extension in the research into IVF treatment, to give childless couples a better chance of conceiving;
The creation of hybrid embryos;
The creation of so-called ‘saviour siblings’ – to give birth to a baby with cells or organs which are a match for sick brother or sister.