Posted by
Karl Lembke on Wednesday, August 15, 2007 11:14:13 AM
Bouncing off Terence Jeffrey's latest piece...
The questions with inter-species embryos are two-fold, one scientific and one moral.
The scientific question asks what we can do. What are the mechanisms that govern growth and development? How flexible are they? How much can we tinker without breaking the mechanism?
The moral question asks what we should do. How much "human" can we mix with "other" and still have a human? Do we draw the line at some percentage? Do we calculate by number of genes or by the weight of the relevant tissues? Do we give, say, brain tissue, a higher weight factor than we give liver tissue, or hair?
Do we use a "one-drop" rule? If so, which way? Does "one drop" of non-human tissue make an embryo completely non-human, with no rights? Or if a fragment of human DNA is injected into a fruit fly embryo, do we have to give the resulting fly the right to vote? (On the plus side, it's very unlikely to live for 18 years.)
The British government has at least tried to come to grips with the issue, and quickly found out how thorny it is. We all need to come to some sort of agreement about these issues because I'm very sure about one thing:
Someone will produce inter-species embryos, and some of those embryos will eventually be allowed to grow to maturity.
The technology to accomplish this is getting cheaper and easier to use every year. What may take the resources of a US or British government lab today may be possible in a Chinese or North Korean government lab next year, and in an Iranian lab the year after. And not too long after that, it'll be cheap enough that a moderately well-to-do individual would be able to assemble it.
It's going to happen.
It would be useful to have some idea what we're going to do about it before it does.