Elior asks: Is it possible to take a woman's egg and fertilize it with another animal's sperm? (For example, a monkey or a tiger..)
With tiger sperm, probably not, we are far enough away from tigers that the human sperm does not recognize the tiger egg and vice versa. The monkey, however, is a different matter.
The question is which monkey. The gibbon, the most primitive of the apes, is close enough to us that a human sperm can attach itself to an egg and penetrate its protective shell. On the other hand, the sperm will not stick to the egg of a baboon or other monkeys at all. There is no theoretical prevention, therefore, that mating between a human and a chimpanzee or gorilla would result in a fertilized egg. But will a fetus or even a living creature be created from such a connection? For obvious reasons there is no experimental answer to the question. If we believe Pope Alexander II, then in the 11th century, the wife of an Italian nobleman gave birth to a son for the family's pet monkey, and the Holy Father saw with his own eyes the fruit of this sin, which was named Maimo.
The rules of ethics prohibit such hybridization
Creatures of closely related species can be paired: this is how a mule is created from a meeting between a donkey and a mare, and an orange from the hybridization of a pomelo and a mandarin. The creature closest to man is the chimpanzee, and if there is a chance for a human-animal hybrid, the Humanzee is a human-chimpanzee hybrid.. Humans have 46 chromosomes and chimpanzees have 48, such a numerical difference also exists between a horse and a donkey and it does not prevent hybridization but makes the offspring sterile. The closest thing to a scientific examination of the question was carried out in the twenties of the last century by the Soviet scientist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov, a biologist who bought his publication by opening a method of artificial insemination for horses. Ivanov sought to apply his experiment to fertilize a female chimpanzee with human sperm, he received the blessing of the Soviet scientific establishment and cooperation from the French who provided him with logistical assistance in their Guinea colony in West Africa. Ivanov managed to inject sperm doses into 3 female chimpanzees before the experiment was stopped and the researcher returned to his homeland where he continued to plan hybrids that did not come to fruition due to a lack of monkeys. The rules of ethics for animal and human experiments will unfortunately not allow experiments like those of Ivanov and we will have to look for indirect ways to answer the question.
Our last window of opportunity to find a creature close enough to have offspring with opened about 50,000 years ago when humans migrated out of Africa and found their Neanderthal relatives in Europe and the Middle East: a branch that split from us only half a million years earlier. For about 12,000 years, humans and Neanderthals lived side by side - and successfully performed the experiment you are asking about. 1-4% of the genome of non-Africans is of Neanderthal origin. So this is not only possible but each of us is to some extent the product of such a hybrid.
Can biology produce such a hybrid?
The answer is simple: yes. There is a technology that allows combining genetic material from humans and animals. The question is not what can be done, but whether it is appropriate or moral to conduct such studies. In 1997, biologist Stuart Newman filed a patent application for a creation of an embryo containing cells of human and animal origin. Newman's goal, an ideological opponent of biotechnology, was not to produce hybrids but to the contrary: to block the way for others to benefit from such research. No fewer than 36 options for manipulating embryos were specified by Newman in the first patent application and in 9 later versions the number reached more than 100. The Patent Office has consistently rejected all patent applications using every factual and formal reasoning that the law allows except for the reasoning that the patent applicant wishes to hear: that the invention is immoral.
What is there to be afraid of?
An actual hybrid between a human and a chimpanzee is not on the agenda, apart from the ethical problem, there is not much scientific or applied value for such an experiment. The transfer of genetic material from humans to other creatures is already done in practice and human proteins such as growth hormone are created by unicellular organisms that express human DNA that was inserted into them without provoking public opposition.
The type of creatures that some seriously plan for and some seriously fear their appearance are not hybrids but chimeras. The name does not bode well, in mythology the chimera is a particularly loathsome monster
"Her head is the head of a lion, her back is a dragon, in the middle is a goat
And a blade that came out of her mouth, and devoured those around him" (Homer, Iliad)
The difference between a chimera and a hybrid is that each tissue in the chimera retains distinct features of a known species. The success in identifying and growing cultures of embryonic stem cells, i.e. cells that retain the ability to differentiate into any tissue in the body, makes it possible to create a pool of embryonic stem cells (blastula) mixed from two species. For example, he creates GEEP (combination of GOAT (goat) SHEEP (sheep)) which consists of tissues that come from sheep cells and those that come from goats. The creature appears to be a random mosaic of patches covered with sheep's wool and areas of goat hair. If GEEP was allowed to breed, its offspring would be either normal sheep or normal goats depending on the embryonic cell from which the testicle developed.
Chimeras are important because this is how you can test function and conduct experiments on human tissue in the environment of a functioning body. For example, there are those who are planning a pig whose liver is human and can be studied and even used for transplantation.
The main moral and religious problem is the insertion of human nerve tissue into an animal fetus. The motivation for such an action is, for example, to check if a "tribe" of stem cells will function when transplanted into the brain of a person suffering from a degenerative brain disease.
The opponents of creating such chimeras give several types of reasons.
The first type of resistance to breaking the boundaries between the species is the one that relies on nature. According to this concept, there is a limit to the degree of intervention we are allowed in creation and the creation of chimeras is crossing this limit. This concept has a basis in the Holy Scriptures, "And God made the beast of the earth according to his kind, and the cattle according to their kind..." That is, every creature belongs to "its own" kind and the Torah even expressly forbids hybrids "You shall not breed hybrids with your animal" (Leviticus XNUMX).
But what to do and nature itself does not obey the rules: not only does genetic material pass between different species through viruses, chimeras also exist in nature and among humans. There are cases where non-identical twins unite at an early stage and the result is a person carrying 2 different cell populations in his body. The argument of "naturalness" and the prohibition on man to fulfill the role of God invites the counter-argument: He who created us in His image also created scientific curiosity in us;
The boundaries between the species in nature are not clear and rigid, the difference between "species" that must not be exceeded and just varieties that can be hybridized is not clear at all. It is difficult to impossible to formulate a general principle according to which it is permissible to develop new agricultural varieties, while the creation of chimeras in the laboratory is prohibited.
The housing claim
Some argue that even if the boundaries are blurred and even if there is no logically valid wording, the gut feeling of distaste for "monsters" is enough to disqualify this technology. Intuition cannot be dismissed outright: a healthy and unreasoned reluctance often saves us from infections and dangers. The problem is that a similar argument was used, for example, by those who opposed interracial marriage. In order to establish laws, one has to translate the feeling into a binding rule and the feeling of disgust, however real and powerful it may be, does not satisfy such a rule.
Human Dignity
For many generations, human society has built rules of behavior towards humans and a separate set of rules in relation to animals. According to Kant, an action is moral only if it arises from treating a person as an end in itself and not as a mere means. Towards animals, even if it is appropriate to prevent them from unnecessary suffering, we are allowed to act as instruments for our benefit. The concept of human dignity - recognition of the basic value that a person has by virtue of being a person and the duty imposed on other people and society to treat him morally is the basis of the concept of human rights and the democratic system. The justification for giving respect specifically to humans stems from the fact that humans have abilities of thought and emotion that are unique to them, such as the use of language, complex thinking, free choice of goals and empathy. And what about a person who does not have such thinking abilities as, for example, babies born with Anencephalus Or people whose brains have been severely damaged in an accident or illness? Such people are entitled to "human dignity" by virtue of their biological belonging to the Homo sapiens species, which these abilities are characteristic of. That is, the conceptual justification for preserving the human dignity of those who most need protection is the existence of a biologically well-defined group to which it is absolutely clear who belongs to it. Creating an intermediate group of laboratory animals that are "somewhat human" meaning that there is no solid theoretical basis for attributing full "human dignity" to them would undermine the axiomatic foundation of human rights and the social institutions designed to protect them.
But is every chimera containing human brain tissue "half-human"? Those in favor of the research that the basis for separating man from animal is in the set of special abilities of the human brain which originates not in the single nerve cell (which is very similar to the nerve cell of monkeys and other mammals) but in the size of the brain, in its architecture and its unique development path. Human nerve cells in the brains of rodents do not change anything in the animal's intelligence or behavior because they function as "building blocks" of a completely different structure and the threat to the definition of humanity is no greater than in the case of a human being implanted with a pig's heart valve. There are those who go even further and claim that the purpose of science is actually to examine and challenge accepted definitions and that the blurring of the artificial boundary between man and animal will allow us, for example, to treat the fate of animals in the agricultural economy in a more "humane" and logical manner.
So how far can the limit of legitimate research be stretched? In the opinion of the philosopher Robert Streiffer (Robert Streiffer) the criterion should be the interest of the creature we created. If indeed we give a monkey mental abilities similar to a human's, then his moral status will change, and experiments are judged as experiments on humans that require informed consent. The problem, of course, is that such a requirement makes the entire study unnecessary: nothing will be learned from a chimera that is not a laboratory animal. In addition, as other researchers point out, "human abilities" can be imparted to monkeys by learning, and perhaps they are entitled to human rights even without human brain cells in their skulls.
Probably in the coming years we will not see human brains imprisoned in an animal body, but the very theoretical preoccupation with this possibility illustrates how artificial and fragile the definitions and basic assumptions on which human culture is built are.
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More of the topic in Hayadan:
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I would gladly make it very difficult for me during the experiment to live as a human being, but I would like a dna tag from my dog
Seriously Yoram - get out of the lab and go to many places here in Israel - the Sachnah, the Yarkon Park, the Jerusalem beach and you will see a lot of hybrids of monkeys and humans.
And the worst is that they multiply. Much!!
Surely there is a hybrid creature of man and monkey. This is my neighbor!
One look at Oren Hazan and you realize that the experiment has already been done.
What is the question?!?!? It is called a government of national reconciliation and its descendants are attributed miraculous virtues of super-intelligence, absolute honesty, social justice and economic efficiency. There is even a retired president who received an Israeli patent for the original invention and is nominated for the Nobel Prize for naivety.
In the name of religion and fear, we avoid a constant and stubborn pursuit of technological achievements. It's a shame that in the name of philosophical ideas and peppery platitudes we prevent the curiosity of scientists from bearing fruit. The rule of not causing suffering is enough. Don't be mean. Act in favor of building knowledge and minimize any possible damage or suffering to both animals and humans.