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Researchers add human genes to monkey brains
#1
Researchers in China have been able to add a human gene for brain development to Rhesus Macaques. Only five of the monkeys survived. It was a limited experiment and only a small amount of genetic material was used. The changes in the monkeys were slight.

https://nationalpost.com/health/chinese-...experiment

So now we know it can be done. The real issue is whether it should it be done. This goes beyond the usual issue of the ethics of animals being used in experiments. This involves hybridizing animals with humans. Is there any possible benefit to doing this. Can we learn something valuable? What are the possibilities of something going very wrong. You don't have to be against DNA editing and genetic modification to see that this has possible negative consequences.

One thought on the ethics of the matter has to do with the amount of Human DNA  in each monkey. Primates and monkeys already have very similar DNA  to humans. At what point do the monkeys have so much actual human DNA that technically human medical ethics rules should apply to them. In particular they are using brain DNA so that will make the problems even more likely. When we have Rhesus Macaques that can talk and reason like humans we will have to make a lot of changes in how we treat animals. We already need to make changes, but it would be better not to have to act because we have a real emergency.
I can't see this line of research ending well and it certainly isn't fair to the monkeys.
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Catherine

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#2
(04-13-2019, 03:44 PM)Catherine Wrote: Only five of the monkeys survived....

So now we know it can be done. The real issue is whether it should it be done....

Primates and monkeys already have very similar DNA  to humans. At what point do the monkeys have so much actual human DNA that technically human medical ethics rules should apply to them....

I can't see this line of research ending well and it certainly isn't fair to the monkeys.

This raises complex and serious moral issues, as you correctly point out, Catherine. The fact that only five monkeys survived shows that the procedure was dangerous. Leaving aside the issue of whether we have the moral right to use these monkeys as "guinea pigs" (I don't think we do, but some humans might argue for it), I think the "hidden agenda" here is probably this:

Experimenters in China, a country with almost no laws whatsoever against animal cruelty, want to research human diseases using live, sentient, intelligent animals rather the modern methods increasingly used in the west (tissue cultures). Chinese laws won't allow humans to be used on untried medical treatments or procedures - so their response is to convert monkeys into DNA near-copies of humans, so that they can then legally carry out all sort of cruel experiments (pain thresholds, injecting cancers, psychological torture, etc.) by claiming that these hybrid creatures still look like monkeys, even though their brains and emotions will be human-like. The Nazis used people in concentration camps for incredibly cruel medical research, arguing that extreme experiments on humans could advance medical research. This sort of hybrid-DNA research opens the door to similar treatment of monkeys with human DNA.

The thalidomide experiments, which went horribly wrong after assuming that animal results made a treatment safe for humans, is no doubt in their minds, too. Because animal results are not automatically transferable to humans, they want to genetically modify monkeys into humans - to allegedly "make it OK".

Well, it isn't and never will be OK - whether the monkeys are genetically human or not.
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#3
It is diabolical
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#4
Horrible I'm actually reading a sci/fi book right now about this very thing it's called Gene six.
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#5
This is definitely not a good thing. On all levels it is bad. I feel sad for the monkeys that are caught up in this research because whatever happens the researchers will kill them. There is no good outcome for lab animals. 

I think you may have hit on the right answer about why they are doing this. Animal /human hybrids would allow for medical research on a whole new level. It is an unethical level and it is something we need to reject if we are going to maintain ethical standards in our research.
Medical ethics is a new idea and we struggle with it. The Nazis were not the first to use humans as lab animals. The small pox vaccine was tested on work house children. They were deliberately infected and some children died. We are barely beyond that point. We still use animals with total disregard for their suffering. Having a human/monkey hybrid is going to cross the line back towards  human experimentation. It is something we can't have happen again. We need to fight this before things go too far.


Gene Six sounds interesting. Who wrote it? I can't find it under the name alone.
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Catherine

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#6
Any "healing" method or research that seeks knowledge through horror and cruelty, whether towards humans or any living thing, is truly wrong and evil. There are no rationales for the existence of anything brought from the pit of hell and suffering, deliberately into this world.
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#7
I agree with you. I don't think any good can come from this. It leads us towards unethical standards in research. We are already struggling with the fact that we use animals in research. It does put a shadow on anything we learn. This experiment puts a big shadow on any research results. 

There was and still is a real struggle over Nazi research data. It was obtained from work done on unconsenting live humans, many of whom died. I found a good article about the subject.

http://theconversation.com/is-it-ethical...ents-39928

There is no easy answer here. It is not right to use the data obtained, but it is tempting to want to use it. It can seem like a benefit and a good thing. Can we use the data without harming ourselves ethically? I don't think we can use it without harming ourselves.

This monkey/human hybrid research creates an ethical dilemma. I don't think it is a direction we should go. Any seeming benefits are over shadowed by the way the information is obtained. It does matter where we learn things and how.
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Catherine

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#8
(04-15-2019, 03:26 PM)Catherine Wrote: I don't think it is a direction we should go. Any seeming benefits are over shadowed by the way the information is obtained. It does matter where we learn things and how.

That sums it up very well. Bold stress in the quotation above is mine.
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#9
I.G. Farben never died with the Nazis:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196...d-good-int

Instead Farben gave birth to many companies we take for granted today.

This was the company famous for Zyklon gas, and deeply horrifc experiments. It is said the company went into liquidation in 1952, but there are other companies, from which I G Farben originated, which still flourish today, such as Bayer, etc.
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#10
Quote:That sums it up very well. Bold stress in the quotation above is mine.
You captured my thoughts when you used bold stress. How we do research does matter. We know this, but we haven't really embraced it.

I didn't realize some of the company links to I.G. Farben. That is disturbing. The movie sounds good. I hope they are able to make it. I.G. Farben's mindset would have been passed on to  its offspring companies.

I am sure we can find more about the subsidiary companies, but Bayer and BASF are involved in producing Neonicotinoids. So they would be responsible for bee deaths.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/agribusin...ee-killers

So ethically questionable research and unethical practices spawn further questionable results. The company who gave the Nazis Zyklon gas are the "parents" of the companies that give us Neonicotinoids. 


So I don't want to know what would be born from research that involves adding human genes to live monkeys.
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Catherine

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