[brbsix]

Research is already performed using human fetal tissue obtained from aborted fetuses. How is this significantly different?

"A majority of people would find it unethical to continue to develop viable embryos" seems contradictory to the current legal status of abortion in the US. Perhaps it is unethical but worth doing regardless?

[warent]

Just how many women create a fetus and abort it in the name of science? Human embryos are not manufactured for experimentation. What you're talking about is completely orthogonal.

Now, breeding/manufacturing animals for experiments is awful and morally complex--ethically unclear (at least to me). But the line must be drawn somewhere, and we can very easily draw it at manufacturing human-monkeys, human-pigs, or human-anythings.

[scoopertrooper]

At what point does a thing become a human-thing? Imagine there was a way to copy a few human genes over to a mouse so that its immune system more closely resembled a human, but it was still, in every other respect, a mouse. Would it be a human-mouse?

[warent]

It's a great discussion to have when the matter at hand is that subtle. Frankensteining together human stem cells and monkey blastocysts until something works is pretty far from surgically selecting specific genes.

From the article:

The announcement of the new chimeras will no doubt be labelled “unnatural” or “playing God” by some people – but the same could be said about many scientific breakthroughs. An iPhone is unnatural.

When lifeforms are compared to iPhones, we've reached a pretty clear David Mitchell moment of saying "Are we the baddies?" Something reeks here of amoral science.

We need a better understanding of consciousness and awareness before trying such things, or it's only a matter of time before realizing a catastrophic error that joins the many permanent stains of humanity, as we accidentally become the monster "AM" in "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream"

[kaba0]

I agree that we should be maximally wary of ethical considerations here, but a uniform mass of cells is a uniform mass of cells. We do know when important structures develop.

For example, one of the most important cell line in research is called HeLa, which was harvested from a woman with the same initials without consent from a cancerous growth. Since then, it was grown to a huge biomass (couldn’t find exact number). Other than the lack of consent which is obviously amoral, would you consider research on this human cell line bad?

[fighterpilot]

  "We need a better understanding of consciousness"

I disagree. A small lump of cells is not more conscious or capable of suffering than a cow which most of us accept being killed for a steak.

[7373737373]

[citation needed] No one has any idea what consciousness is, how it arises, what its physical correlates and boundaries are, what perceived valence corresponds to, whether small systems can experience pleasure or suffering beyond what humans are used to...

[fighterpilot]

> No one has any idea what ... its physical correlates ... are

We do know a fair bit about the neural (physical) correlates of consciousness in humans, and the evolutionary purpose of those facets of consciousness, such as fear or pain.

This understanding can help us to make a reasoned guess that cows are more capable of suffering than a small lump of cells in a blastocyst:

(1) We can see that cows have similar brain structures to humans[1], where those brain structures (amygdala, etc) are known to be a necessary condition for pain or fear perception in humans, and those same brain structures are absent in a blastocyst.

(2) We know that pain and fear is an adaptation that all/most mammals likely have, because (i) it confers significant fitness, and because (ii) it manifests below our cortex (e.g. in the amygdala) which suggests it evolved fairly early.

My claim isn't that a blastocyst doesn't have consciousness. My claim is that its consciousness and capability to suffer is likely to be less than that of a cow (based on the above reasoning), and so society should make sure it is being ethically consistent in the way it treats both.

My first question to you would be - if your position is correct, i.e. that we should be extremely ethically cautious with blastocysts because they may suffer and have conscious states - how can society then ethically justify abortion?

My second question would be - how can a meat eater (which you might not be) express such ethical caution pertaining to blastocysts but willingly eat meat? [I am a meat eater].

[1] This is pertaining to sheeps' (not cows') amygdala, but the point is the same - https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.2...

[ganafagol]

Things can't be further detached from reality. Once you ever spend a few days with a herd of cows, you get a feeling for their personalities, their joy, their pain. Comparing to a group of humans, be it kids on a playground or some factory worker, you really start to wonder why in one case we allow ownership, life-long suffering and death under excruciating pain, while in the other case those things are punished by lifelong imprisonment or even the death penalty.

You can't claim "but we don't know what conciousness is" to justify how we treat animals while at the same time have the strongest protections for fellow human beings. Well, usually only those of your own backyard, since we westerners also tend to treat third world country populations like sh*.

[ganafagol]

> We need a better understanding of consciousness and awareness before trying such things,

We do have quite a good understanding of those things in animals. Yet, nobody cares and people make fun of the "animal welfare" concept. Even in this thread. But suddenly a few human cells are involved for a few days and people start screaming.

There are vegetarians who eat fish "because they don't have feelings". As long as society accepts this nonsensical hypocrisy, your line of reasoning goes nowhere.

[halfjoking]

Good question. Ear-mouse wants to hear the answer:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1945000/images/_1949073_mouse_...

[scoopertrooper]

Ear mouse cant hear the answer because its additional ear is just some cow cartliage that's been molded to resemble an ear.

[7373737373]

Very much unlike Michael Levin's tadpole gut-eyes: https://youtu.be/XheAMrS8Q1c?t=743

[samuli]

At no single point, the brains, central nervous system, etc develop little by little.

When the baby gets out of womb, their eyes start to gain sight. They're practically unable to focus their vision after birth.

So, we have a quite good understanding on what happens at what week of pregnancy and when it is just biomass, and when it starts to have "structure".

[alexanderdmitri]

Here are some numbers from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm#T9_down

Stats don't say what the abortions were in the name of though (that I see on first review at least).

[iamoverworked]

Morally complex please, as if God is real or the universe or whatever cares, what a quaint sentiment.

[willmadden]

Legality is irrelevant. Degrading the sanctity of human life enables those in power to normalize atrocities.

[xwolfi]

Abortions are not a desired action, by society, doctors, women, families, anyone really.

They are a compromise to help women who made a mistake, were victims of assault, are too young to take care of a child. It's a bit less about "taking ownership of your body", than it is about "being tolerant and understanding about facts of life we can't change".

That's where it's less unethical: it's not like people support terminating a potential human life, they support instead lifting one up that took a wrong step.

Now these chimera experiments are fine to me, but I'd be okay to wait, go slow, debate in society about them rather than point at 16 yo rape victims and say "see she killed her baby and we used it to test a vaccine, why can't I mix a monkey with a human and see what grows before terminating it when I dont need it anymore"? Again, I m anti religious but I wouldnt want street riots and Trump 2.0 because scientists felt it was boring to explain to the idiots.