[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*.

[nojokes]

Did you know that when you cut grass it sends out distress signal - the lovely smell of fresh cut grass. In principle it is the grass screaming out loud in horror. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/30573/what-causes-fresh-... Unfortunately we can't survive without hurting other species.

[scoopertrooper]

Humans are also great at personifying non-person things. The grass isn't 'screaming out in horror', rather it's emitting a chemical that its evolved to emit in response to certain stimuli.

[yesenadam]

> we can't survive without hurting other species.

I'm not sure about the purpose of your comment, but it sounds like your conclusion is "therefore can do whatever we want to other species." As if ethics doesn't apply. As if we shouldn't try to minimize that hurt. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Paragraph speculating about such arguments and why people use them:

Hopefully one day soon people aren't still offering "plant=animal" justifications of eating animals, like this. I find them very depressing. It's as if suffering is a joke to these people. Or something, I don't understand. Just repeating pro-meat arguments they've heard, I guess. Maybe it's a positive sign, and such comments try to bury unease from their growing sense of ethical responsibility to other species.

[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".