🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <548@bucket.UUCP>, leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) writes:
> In article <1248@bsu-cs.UUCP> dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) writes:
> <In article <894@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> elturner@phoenix.Princeton.EDU 
> <(Edwin L Turner) writes:
> <
> <     All living people (or at least ~99% of them) have a single common
> <     female ancestor on their purely maternal line....
> 
> As I recall, human DNA is similar enough to gorilla that a hybrid would
> quite likely be viable! Of course, no one is going to try it. It is a real
> can of worms ethically....
> 
> -- 
> Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
> CIS: [70465,203]


Amazingly,  I read a short article in the newspaper some time ago
(which I'm trying to recall from memory, so please bear with some vagueness)
about some researchers in Italy who had been experimenting with fertilization
of human eggs with either gorila or chimp sperm (or the other way around).

They were able to cause fertilization, as evidenced by the start of cell
division,  but only for a very short time (on the order of days), so there
was never anything resembling an embryo.  After someone revealed to the press
the nature of the experimentation,  it was called off.  However,  this does
raise some very critical ethical questions.  At the present rate of advances
in genetic engineering, many of the ethical questions need answers quickly.

The scariest part of the article was a quote from one of the researchers
who said something to the effect of:  (paraphrasing) "Just think!
We could create a race of human/ape hybrids that we could use for manual
labor!"

The article concluded with the following food for thought (perhaps far-fetched;
perhaps not):  To what extent would/should human civil rights be "granted"
to such a human/ape hybrid?  As of now,  there is a relatively clear distinctionmade between
humans (with rights, at least ideally), and all other animal forms, who have
essentially no rights.    As we learn more about ape and porpoise intelligence,
we may decide we are in need of animal rights in some cases.    Even if apes
never have rights,  what about a half-ape/half human?  Do they get a sub-set
of human rights?  What about the inevitable combinations like 3/4 human-1/4 ape
or other mixes of human/ape genes.  How about voting rights (1/2 vote for
a half-human?)  What about the exceptional half-human that's more intelligent
than some full-human?

The cans of worms that this would create are incredible.  Barring some sort
of control or legislation over genetic experimentation,  we are bound to see
something shocking occur within 10 years. Of course,  how to control
things (ie., legislate ethics) is also a difficult question.  Frankly,
I don't expect to see anything happen in this area until something dramatic
happens, causing some amount of public outcry.

Bob Schleicher
ihlpl!rs55611

(Perhaps someone who remembers the article more clearly can elaborate.
The article I read was in the Chicago Tribune quite a few months ago.)