Last week the UK government came up with a formula for the acceptable mix of human and animal DNA in hybrid embryos developed for scientific research. The mix is 99.9% human and 0.1% animal DNA.
The way it works is that an animal ovum would have its genetic material removed and replaced with human DNA so that it is possible to develop stem cell lines which contain the same genetic information as the human DNA implanted. That offers the prospect of researching on unlimited amounts of stem cells compatible with sufferers of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and Alzheimers. The cells used for research would be indistinguishable from those of the donor DNA. But, there's a catch...
Despite the UK government backing down on banning human-animal hybrids for stem cell research, their draft legislation does not positively assert its legality. It explicitly bans the creation of embryos based on a human egg cell fertilised by animal sperm, and vice versa.
Even the claim that stem-cell research is made possible is debatable. Sir Richard Gardner, chair of the Royal Society's stem cell working group, thinks that the proposed legislation would put a shelf-life on the techniques and that as soon as newer and better techniques were developed, the legislation would quickly become restrictive.
But what exactly is the objection? Clearly the creation of hybrid animals with a mixture of human and animal features would make us feel uncomfortable and many would argue the line that it goes against nature. But we do such things with plant species all the time. We have an ethical sensitivity to larger moving animals which we don't typically extend to smaller animals or plants. No-one would think twice about eradicating smallpox, or creating a cross between disparate plants which can be encouraged to produce something useful.
We have a belief that the biological ecosystem is static and needs preserving. Certainly it needs protection from the rabid exploitation of commercial industry and it has always been true that the intricate interactions and equilibria are too little understood for us to safely control them. But we operate double standards when we partition off some species in this way, and especially when we consider humans.
Partly, we consider humans to be privileged and at the top of the tree, clearly able to impose our will on the rest of nature (to a point). That means we have a different ethics for humans compared to our treatment of animals and plants. It's our exploitation of nature that has produced the technical and scientific progress that we see around us. So we're not likely to stop farming any time soon.
But the other side of the coin is that in order to understand our own biology better and to cure illnesses, we illustrate just how close our biology is to our animal relatives. And if we give ourselves rights based on our biology, we feel hypocritical not to do the same for other animals.
In fact, rights for animals only make sense if we afford them the status of honorary people. If we consider people as animals and treat them as such, we have taken away what rights they have. Rights are claimed and exercised in human society. The ethical arguments about stem cell research are side-stepping the very real exploitative nature of the human relationship with the natural world. And just as the idea of using an animal to grow replacement human tissue seems grotesque to some people today, a hundred years ago the idea of using animal insulin, or even the possibility of a skin graft would have seemed awful.
The routine use of bacteria in generating pharmaceutical products is little different ethically from using hybrid tissues to produce stem cell lines. Both are exploiting the understanding of nature to benefit humans.
