Week 8 Post 2-Animal Human Hybrids

 Animal human hybrids seem like something out of science fiction, but they exist in reality right now in many forms. However these hybrids also have a basis in mythology of animal that was a lion, snake and dragon combined, and was called a Chimera, which has become an interchangeable term for animal human hybrids today. There are varying levels of mixing between species in chimeras, with some examples being a pig hear valve tissue being using to help a person's heart, and a mouse that has a human brain. There are also some more aggressive and harder to parse hypotheticals that could become possible, such as an ape with a human face, and apes with the same abilities as humans, like in Planet of the Apes. There are three main ways of taxonomy with chimeras-defining them by the specific action that is happening, like an non-human cell being inserted into a human embryo, defining them by what actions humanity broadly sees as okay v. the ones that are uncomfortable, and defining them by the methods by which they were created, such as xenotransplantation which is transplanting one species to another. There are many ethical arguments against why animal human hybrids should not be allowed, but the main, most broad one is that humans with these creations are making unnatural organisms and could violate the lines between personhood and non-personhood, by blurring the line between what is and is not a human. The distinction between personhood and non-personhood is important because it dictates the moral obligation humans have to the organism, like how it is largely seen as wrong to kill a human, but is rarely seen as wrong to kill a pig. The common belief is that this distinction exists in both society and in science, because species is very important, and that the distinctions are drawn by nature rather than fluid social constructions, so they cannot be changed.  However some bioethics scholars argue that this is untrue because while humans share over 90% of their DNA with chimpanzees, the primates are not seen as having the same factors that make them essentially human. Humans also do change the dynamics of moral obligation often with animals, as having a chicken as pet and having one for food both have different expectations of treatment. So, in this argument the line distinguishing persons and nonpersons is not as thick as is normally thought, and animal human hybrids bring out the fear that this social order will crumble and will also create confusion because the idea a human being is not necessarily the condition for having the rights of people will be introduced broadly. The mainstream reasoning against chimeras has a hidden secondary truth to it which is preventing the creation of animal human hybrids is necessary to maintain the belief that being a human is a requirement to being a person, which is a weak line of reasoning in many ethical scholars view. The advent of animal human hybrids brings along questions about what makes qualifies a person as a person, and there are many different routes to go down, such as having a particular set of characteristics, or simply just being alive and being human, but all the options are problematic in some way. However, the distinction of personhood is a very important one because along with personhood comes a set of rights, particularly the right of inviolability, or the right to not be killed, which is currently only granted to humans and some pets. Another argument against chimeras is that the creation of them is humans "playing God" which can have two interpretations secular, which raises moral question about why humans have the right to decide the fate of so many other organisms, and a theocratic or religious meaning. The religious meaning is more problematic because it based of the idea that the person's God created the Earth to be how it is and human intervention is blasphemous, which is contradiction with the Theory of Public Reason, which says that public policy cannot be dictated by religious or moral beliefs that are not held by the majority of members of a society. Other people argue that the conversation around chimeras needs to be more nuanced because, while there definitely is the possibility of immoral creations being made just to be laughed at there is also potential absolute good that could be done, if for example animal DNA could be inserted into a human and would give them immunity to a disease. More scholars further argue that humanity might have the moral obligation to create animal human hybrids if it is for the betterment of the organism. For example if a bird could be smarter, and happier with a hybrid advancement, humanity would have a moral obligation to help it achieve that because otherwise humanity is depriving the bird of that. 

    Learning about the moral objections or support for the creation of animal human hybrids is important when discussing bioethics because it reveals the mutability of human ideals. There are fairly staunch ideals, that are mostly unspoken about who is a person and what rights they have because of that, but the different line of thinking which was presented this week about what a human is really shifts that perception. The holes poked in the tradition argument for what humanity is show that often the standards humans have set are random and not of the quintessential nature society likes to believe they are. The ethical concerns behind hybrids are important when understanding the ethics of CRISPR are important because often CRISPR does involve some level of hybrids, as it is usually taking an enzyme or DNA code from another organism that has a specific trait and applying it to the genetic code of another organism.