In an age when many are pursuing human-animal chimeras, a “less stringent” definition is sought:
The pace of biotechnology research is blurring the bounds of humanity so rapidly that two US scholars are calling for a rethink on what it means to be legally human.
Writing in the journal Science biomedical law experts Bartha Knoppers, from McGill University in Canada, and Henry Greely, from Stanford University in the US, say technologies that mix non-human and human cells, such as CRISPR, xenotransplantation and chimeras, mean a less stringent definition of “human” will be needed going forward.
For the purposes of ascribing all-important human rights, set out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we should only require the organism to be “substantially” human, they argue.
One biotech prompting the taxonomy shift is the human-animal chimera.
Paul Biegler, “What does it mean to be human?” at Cosmos Magazine
Many jurisdictions now allow abortion up to the moment of birth and some allow infant euthanasia of children who are obviously human. So “legally human” means they can’t just legally kill you because someone has the power to end your life.
Perhaps we will morph into a civilization where a turtle with some human cells is legally human and therefore has security of the person but vast swathes of humanity are not. If you vote for people who think that’s cool, at least you will get something you voted for. Happy New Year.
Human chimeras only come into existence when humans make them, but we need to make a definition of what it’s like to be human so we can differentiate the difference between the two because our technology is blurring the lines of what it means to be human
I just want to get that straight that because the technology that humans created and humans create human chimera’s using technology that humans both discovered and I emphasize CREATED, we need to create a new definition of what it is to be human
This is painfully stupid and maybe we should put the brakes on these types of technologies pretty damn quick less something stupid happens
It’s like being worried about a robot apocalypse but the only reason why robots would kill us all is because we programmed them to do that
I hate this age
Yes it’s OK to do monstrous things because we can’t stop the progress of science that’s just immoral
AaronS1978
I’m interested in why you would hate this age. Every age has had to deal with how to apply new discoveries. Why is this age any different?
AaronS1978
Can science be immoral, or just amoral? I agree that scientific discoveries can be used immorally. And that the motivations for some research might be immoral. But science as a process is just science.
I am sure you have heard the thought experiment about whether we should make use of scientific discoveries obtained in an immoral fashion. The common example is, ‘if Nazi concentration experiments conducted on Jewish prisoners resulted in a cure or treatment for some disease, should we use it?’ .
“UnNatural Selection” is a show on Netflix. It proves that, thanks to biotechnology, individuals can indeed evolve by means of intelligent design. “The Island of Dr. Moreau” may be right around the corner.
EG, FYI, 40 years ago, lessons derived from said atrocities were embedded in medicine and it was said that more lives were saved than had been unjustly taken through mass murder. In parallel with that, a programme of ethical research was undertaken to recreate the same knowledge soundly and succeeded in the end some years ago. The evil did not justify needless further sacrifice of lives but the wound on the soul of medicine had to be healed. And again, this illustrates the reality of the mixed character of a civilisation. If we disqualify what is good because the vessel that carried it is imperfect or even evil, we would disqualify almost every step of progress or knowledge. In fact, what is done is that cultural marxists target those they oppose through the oppression thesis to poison the well we need to drink from, in a variety of selective hyperskepticism. They want us to throw the baby out with the bath water, the better to introduce a deadly asp that we are expected to coddle. This shows them to be misanthropes. It is time to turn from such ruthless manipulation and suicidal folly. KF
If Darwinists want to be able to define what it means to be “Legally Human” it might greatly help them to first be able to define what it means to be “Scientifically Human”. But alas, Darwinists can’t even define what a species is in a scientifically rigorous manner, much less can they ever define what it means to be “Legally Human” . As the following article makes clear, “What is a species? The most important concept in all of biology is a complete mystery”,,,
And there you go, yet another insane consequence of Darwinian materialism, in all its full blown absurdity stated clearly for all to see, “there is no such thing as “the human species” at all.”,,,
You just can’t make this stuff up. Nobody would believe it.
Darwinists are driven to this insane conclusion of “there is no such thing as “the human species” at all” because of their reductive materialistic foundation which does not allow for the ‘permanence of essences” and/or for the ‘permanence of forms”.
Logan Paul Gage explains the irresolvable dilemma for Darwinian materialists as such, “For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes:
“I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.””
Needless to say, if your supposedly scientific theory of Darwinian materialism is at a complete loss to define what a species actually is, so as to differentiate humans from other species, then it is completely absurd for you to presuppose that you, via Darwinian materialism, will ever come up with a coherent definition of what it means to be “Legally Human”.
Shoot, Darwinian materialists are even at a complete loss to scientifically, (and to therefore legally), define what a ‘person’ is in the first place. Which is, (i.e. that we really exist as real persons), the most certain thing we can possibly know about reality, (i.e. Descartes “I think think therefore I am!”).
As well, besides humanity and personhood themselves finding no basis within Darwinian materialism, morality itself can find no basis within Darwinian materialism. For one example out of many,
As should be obvious , when the amoral metaphysics of Darwinian materialism, (metaphysics which explicitly deny any special moral status to humanity in general and to persons in particular), are applied to societies at large, the moral and ‘legal’ consequences for those societies have been unimaginably horrible.
As Aleksander Solzhenitsyn explains, “The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century.”,,,
Bottom line, Darwinian materialists, since their theory, besides denying the existence of God, explicitly denies the existence of morality, humanity, and personhood, (and since the consequences of that denial have been unimaginably horrible), Darwinian materialists should not be allowed anywhere near the legal definition of humanity and/or personhood.
It simply is suicidal for any society to allow as such.
Mine is not the problem with discovery it is the problem with the lack of restraint and the motivation behind the discoveries and are they truly beneficial. For example human monkey hybrids would not produce organs capable of transplant for humans because of their size, the only benefit that it might have is discovering a possible way to fight certain neurological diseases and that’s actually kind of up in the air
And then you have loud voiced atheists screaming to create a humanzee to prove that humans don’t have a soul and we’re nothing more than a animal.
Obviously I’m not against the former but the ladder I am entirely against
Now as for the comment about Dr. Moreau’s Island being right around the corner
It’s honestly not, even though they’re capable of creating a fetus chimera both human monkey or human mouse what they’ve discovered is most of the time the vast majority of humans cells are wiped out and there is only a small amount of human cells left
The efficiency to produce a rat mouse chimera is incredibly low and they are only separated by 10 million years of evolution. The human monkey hybrid is separated by 40 million years of evolution which is proving to be an issue
The recent hybrid macaque in China actually only had a success rate of five monkeys out of 11 that were capable of being brought the term and now the results are being scrutinized and they aren’t as prolific is one might’ve thought
So I would not say it is around the corner at all
The problem still resides in the actual cells behaving and not becoming the animal cells and then those animal cells wiping out all the human cells
I’m not saying that this should not be a worry,?it definitely is a worry, but there are many complications that are starting to arise and trying to accomplish this
But again my overall problem with this is the human inability to exercise restraint in the face of discovery that might not even be beneficial at all
Now I am not generalizing all of science there are many people that hold my point of view and they’re the one standing in the way and I hope they continue to stay strong
And comically China is starting to get annoyed with rogue scientists using their country to do their experiments