Half man, half chimp - should we beware the apeman's coming?

Half man, half chimp - should we beware the apeman's coming?

thescotsman.scotsman.com

In an interview with The Scotsman, Dr Calum MacKellar, director of research at the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, warned the controversial draft Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill did not prevent human sperm being inseminated into animals.

He said if a female chimpanzee was inseminated with human sperm the two species would be closely enough related that a hybrid could be born.

He said scientists could possibly try to develop the new species to fill the demand for organ donors.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I am really in two minds over this article; firstly, should we be playing God and creating this 'half breed'? I guess we play God too much already to really be bothered if we stop or go ahead with this.

Secondly, it may be, as the article suggests, brilliant for the world of organ donors. What does this new species be known as though? If they are being created from human sperm and having their organs harvested for humans, what part of them would we consider 'not human' in order for us to justify the killing?

thescotsman.scotsman.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I knew that one day they would be ble to make an army of monkies!

This planet will end up doing like they did in LOTR, dishing out hybrids like Orcs built specifically for a purpose. Imagine the ability to breed whatever you want when theres a troop shortage.

Not sure i agree with this though. Theres the whole "playing God" thing that seems a bit odd, but then again theres pros and cons to much of what the world does.

Chimp/human hybrid though......would make a great contender for the gymastics world would'nt it?

CX.

reply to post by SilentShadow

should we beware the apeman's coming?

Actually they're already here. Bush, Cheney, just to name a few.

Mod Note: One Line / Off Topic Post – Please Review This Link.


[edit on 30-4-2008 by elevatedone]

reply to post by SilentShadow


This would be a disgraceful approach to organ sourcing! Tissue culturing organs in a lab is one thing, but to kill a potential human-ape hybrid strikes me as somewhat unethical.

Would the hybrid be conferred human rights by virtue of 50% of its genes being human?

My personal instinct as a scientist is that the chap who made those comments is wrong. I doubt a hybrid could be created by insemination methods. While our genomes are close, they are not close enough to facilitate inter-special breeding.

I must admit though..... Im incredibly curious about what this hybrid would look like, how intelligent it would be etc. If it had the manual dexterity of a human; if it could learn both human and ape communication etc etc.

Morally I'm against it. Scientifically, I'm hoping a mad scientist in a lair somewhere will try it.

reply to post by 44soulslayer


In my personal viewpoint, it would be wrong, but that has seldom stopped humans from actions in the past, and I doubt it will here. On the whole, we don't consider as much about what we should do as what we can do. Your stance against it on moral grounds, yet support on the level of curiosity, is what I have come to expect in life.

I'm not saying that such feelings are wrong, as curiosity is valued asset to humans, and something we all share, to some degree. I too have this same sense of wondering at what would happen. But I doubt anything truly good could come of it. I wish we could learn to override the need to do certain things just because we think we can.

One thing that just botherd me is. This is how AIDS started humans mateing with chimps! Thats if I was told right? So if a chimp is fertalized with human sperm would the side effect of the donar organs be infected with the aids virus thus renduring them useless to say 90% of the humman population?

It's certainly a controversial topic. I remember watching something on the History Channel referring to this; something to the effect that the Russians were at one time experimenting with human-ape or human-chimp hybrids.

I did find this article on wiki:

en.wikipedia.org...

Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov's studies was his attempt to create a human-ape hybrid. As early as 1910 he had given a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists in Graz in which he described the possibility of obtaining such a hybrid through artificial insemination.

In 1924, while working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Ivanov obtained permission from the Institute's directors to use its experimental primate station in Kindia, French Guinea, for such an experiment. Ivanov attempted to gain backing for his project from the Soviet government. He dispatched letters to the People's Commissar on Education and Science Anatoliy Vasilievich Lunacharsky and to other officials. Ivanov's proposal finally sparked the interest of Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov, the head of the Department of Scientific Institutions. In September 1925 Gorbunov helped allocate US$10,000 to the Academy of Sciences for Ivanov's human-ape hybridization experiments in Africa.

Originally posted by SE7EN
One thing that just botherd me is. This is how AIDS started humans mateing with chimps! Thats if I was told right?

No, scientists created the virus in a laboratory.

This is absurd... they are not THAT close as to produce a hybrid.

Monsters in our own time. Chimeras created through transgenic breeding. Who is to say that this isn't already being done secretly on military bases or other installations?

I have to wonder just how much the Nazi's did with this type of genetic research. Since that time, many advances have probably been done. To assume that this isn't going on somewhere is naive.

Researchers are now regrowing organs in labs so why would they bother with a monkey for organ transplants? I seriously doubt the public would ever accept this because we don't eat monkeys. They might do this with some cloned animal hybrid that's never conscious though. I've heard of using pigs though.

www.time.com...

Originally posted by 44soulslayer
reply to post by SilentShadow

 

I must admit though..... Im incredibly curious about what this hybrid would look like, how intelligent it would be etc. If it had the manual dexterity of a human; if it could learn both human and ape communication etc etc.

Morally I'm against it. Scientifically, I'm hoping a mad scientist in a lair somewhere will try it.

I know exactly how you feel. If you check out the link in my signature:

-Human nature and The Forbidden Experiment-

It goes a little into similar such subjects.

For those that have any knowledge, is it possible for this to actually happen? I know close enough species can do it, but can humans and chimps? I know it has been suggested not, but do we REALLY know?

[edit on 1/5/2008 by SilentShadow]

How odd, I posted this story the day prior to this thread.
Here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

This is like the third time this has happened. I post a story a day or more earlier and get no reaction. Someone else posts the same story later and gets comments.

I don't know if its somekind of bias against me personally. Not by ATS itself, but the members. Maybe I'm not conspiracy oriented enough, too far right, too Pro American, Jewish, or even considered somekind of Agent of (Insert Conspiracy Organization Here).

I find my self less and less likely to post threads or even comments.


Anyway, Here's my stance on Humanzees. I think they would be wrong but not impossible. There's research that already shows some kind of hybridization occured in the past and that humanity itself almost diverted into two distinct types.

Here's a story from the BBC,
"Human line 'nearly split in two'"
news.bbc.co.uk...

and on past hybridization
"Chimps are human, gene study implies"
www.newscientist.com...

"Human Ancestors May Have Interbred With Chimpanzees"
www.washingtonpost.com...


The scary part about all of this, is that White Supremacists or non Africans could use all of the above to promote hate and racism. The other scary part is that proper research may never be done due to oversensitivity and political correctness.







[edit on 1/5/08 by MikeboydUS]

reply to post by MikeboydUS


Many apologies about the duplicate thread. I am sure there is no conspiracy regarding your threads, however, i could offer advice to ensure that people don't duplicate your thread by accident.

1. Post the correct heading.

* Copy the exact headline of the story into the headline field, don't make one up or sensationalise it.
*Revised* - Instructions for the Breaking News Forums

2. Create better tags for your thread. I noticed the thread tag you used on your thread was 'crazy'.

Tagging helps when people search for keywords, without the correct title with the word 'crazy' as your tag, there was no way i was going to find your thread in any search (which i did do).

BACK ON TOPIC:

You are correct on the misuse from White Supremacists, i do hope this information is not used for that purpose. I guess scientists suggesting that there is a split in our DNA then it may indeed be possible through normal insemination.


[edit on 1/5/2008 by SilentShadow]

I dont think we need to explain how its wrong. We just know it is. It would depend on how self aware the thing that came out would be i thnik.

Originally posted by MarktheSkepticUK
I dont think we need to explain how its wrong. We just know it is. It would depend on how self aware the thing that came out would be i thnik.

Apes are self-aware to the extent that their slaughter is not tolerated by most people. A hybrid would be even more self aware.

As often in science, I think we do need to weigh the benefits of research versus the moral responsibilities.

For example, HIV is non-fatal in apes but is fatal in humans. Would a hybrid be able to show sufficient resistance to the HIV virus? And could the research be utilized to cure AIDS?

As I said though, this is mainly conjecture. A hybrid isn't possible in my opinion, but of course I could be wrong.

They will probably have spy animals, with human intelligence that do spying work. Imagine a cat that was able to talk, and could remember what you said in your living room and hand it to someone else. You would not suspect the cat. lol

Those nba teams are probably going to invest in monkey human research, lol. Remember teen wolf the movie.

On a serious note, if science does not believe in god, then they do not give a crap about doing stuff like this. They have no higher authority so they will just do what they want.

[edit on 5/1/2008 by andy1033]

Just a thought but could this have been done to us? Some where in our history there's that missing link we can't seem to find. Will this be the missing link to the Chimps or Apes? Like a said, "just a thought". I think it's wrong and right. Wrong to do this and raise our population to an ever higher level. Right because we can?, And one more thing to think about. Do monkeys and apes have souls and will they get one with the human ingredients added?

reply to post by SilentShadow


Personaly I think its really wrong to do things like this.... playing God trying to make creation different. It might be good for the whole organ doner thing but if you are creating a person in the process of mixing the monkey/human what rights do they have? How are we going to govern this type of thing? Creating them for the purpose of organs esp if they are conscious would be wrong for us to do in the fact that we are creating life and they treating it as a throw away object.

Just my 2c...

-fm