Genetically Modified Animals PDF

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Genetically Modified Animals

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Subscriber: London School of Economics and Political Science; date: 28 January 2013
The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics
Tom L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey
Print publication date: 2011
Print ISBN-13: 9780195371963
Published to Oxford Handbooks Online: May-12
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195371963.001.0001
Julian Savulescu
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195371963.013.0024
Abstract and Keywords
This article considers the extraordinary ways in which it is now possible
to alter animals and to create new life forms by transgenesis and by the
creation of hybrids and chimeras. Transgenic animals are created by
transferring genes from one species to another. Hybrids are created by
mixing the sperm of one species with the ovum of another. Chimeras are
created by mixing cells from the embryo of one animal with those of a
different species. In each case, one source of an animal so engineered could
be a human being. The discussion uses the term genetically modified
animals (GMAs), to refer to these transgenic animals, hybrids, and chimeras.
It questions the adequacy of the ethics we currently have in place to exert
proper control over and evaluate the creation of GMAs.
transgenesis, hybrids, chimeras, gene transfer, human, GMAs
It is now possible to radically alter animals or create new life forms by
transgenesis or the creation of hybrids and chimeras. Transgenic animals
are created by transferring genes from one species to another. Hybrids
are created by mixing the sperm of one species with the ovum of another.
Chimeras are created by mixing cells from the embryo of one animal with
those of a different species. In each of these cases, the source of one animal
could be a human being, that is, the genes, gametes, or embryonic cells
could be from a human, thus creating an animal with human genes or a
human-animal hybrid or chimera, part-human and part-animal. Genetically
Modified Animals, or GMAs, is the term I will use throughout this chapter to
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refer to transgenic animals, hybrids, and chimeras. The creation of novel
life forms has been and continues to be one of the most profound human
achievements, though it has scarcely received commensurate critical ethical
scrutiny. As the biotechnological revolution relentlessly progresses, the power
to use the engine of life for human design will only increase, for both good
and ill. We need a new ethic for evaluating the creation of GMAs.
One central thesis of this chapter is that there should not be an overall
general normative evaluation of the acceptability or unacceptability of the
creation of GMAs. The ethics of creating a specific GMA must be evaluated on
a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, I will argue that there should be limits to
the creation of some forms of GMAs.
A second central thesis is that practical ethics requires developing richer
strategies of ethical evaluation of technology. I argue for a four-stage
evaluation process that establishes whether the creation of a GMA is
permissible. Firstly, we must develop a justified account of moral status. The
moral status of the GMA should be correctly determined and the GMA treated
appropriate to status. This may require specific research to determine moral
status prior to the use by humans. Secondly, the creation of GMAs should
be done for good reasons as assessed by the enhancement of the animal
itself or by the improvement of the lives of other animals, including humans.
Thirdly, research should conform to the basic principles of research ethics.
In particular, it should ensure that the risk of harm to which the animal is
exposed is reasonable and if the GMA has a high moral status, then consent
be obtained if possible and reasonable. Fourthly, creation of GMAs should
not unreasonably harm others, either now or in the future, by the dual use of
the technology (i.e., for both good and evil purposes), to create animals that
present an infectious or other risk.
The third central thesis of this chapter is that there are not good arguments
against the creation of GMAs tout court. I reject four arguments against the
creation of any GMAs: (1) creation of GMAs represents a threat to humanity;
(2) absolute deontological constraints preclude creation of GMAs; (3) creation
of GMAs is wrong because it is playing God; (4) to create GMAs is to descend
down a slippery slope to the radical genetic alteration of human beings and it
is precluded by the precautionary principle.
Humans can responsibly and ethically create new forms of animal life. They
have done so in various breeding programs. The challenge will be to use
vastly more powerful biotechnology responsibly and ethically by developing
more sophisticated and explicit strategies of ethical evaluation.
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Section 1. Scientific Possibilities, Utility, and Regulation
In section 1, I will review the extraordinary range that currently exists or
likely will soon exist of possibilities of creating GMAs through the construction
of new kinds of beings. I will review the social value of creating GMAs in
modern medical research. They potentially have great value in creating
products useful to humans, creating disease-resistant or other more resilient
species, and potentially providing organs and tissues for human medical
use. I will also review some policy and regulatory issues that need to be
addressed. Here we are at a primitive stage. Once the utility of these
creatures has been established in science, there will be pressure from
scientists and the public to create them, but our current regulatory and
ethical frameworks are ill prepared to evaluate such proposals.
1. Transgenic Animals
It has been possible since about the 1980s to transfer genes taken from one
species into another. This process, which produces transgenic organisms,
is responsible for the creation of what has sometimes been referred to as
genetic freaks. Two examples are ANDi, a rhesus monkey, and Alba, a
rabbit, both of whom have a fluorescent jellyfish gene incorporated into
their DNA. These animals are otherwise healthy and normal. But each has
a fluorescent green glow. Scientists recently introduced a similar jellyfish
gene into a human embryo, creating a fluorescent human embryo. It was
destroyed, but if brought to term, it would have created a fluorescent human
being.
1
The creation of transgenic animals has been an important tool of modern
science and technology. In this section, I will review four important uses in:
(1) medical research; (2) creation of disease-resistant species; (3) production
of useful biological substances; and (4) xenotransplantation research.
1. Medical Research. The use of transgenic animals as models
for research into human disease has greatly improved our
understanding of disease and the development of treatments.
For example, scientists have recently inserted most of the human
Chromosome 21 into mice to create a mouse model of Down
Syndrome.
2
A substantial proportion (roughly half) of U.S. National
Institutes of Health (NIH) research involves transgenic animals.
2. Creation of disease-resistant species. Genes can be transferred
from one species to another to confer disease resistance on the
receptive organism.
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3. Creation of species that produce products that are useful to
humans. Scientists successfully inserted spider genes in a herd
of goats, resulting in the extraction of silk-forming proteins and
fibers from the goat milk. The isolated fibers, which are those that
comprise spider webs, are the strongest existing elastic materials
and therefore have an extensive range of possible medical and
industrial applications.
3
This silk is known as BioSteel, and the
strands are used as sutures and materials to reconstruct tendons,
ligaments, and bones. Genzyme Transgenics
4
utilizes transgenic
animals to produce human therapeutic proteins (Anti-thrombin
III, a protein that can prevent blood from clotting) in the milk of
transgenic animals.
5
4. Xenotransplantation. Human genes have been introduced into
pig embryos to create organs that will not elicit immune responses
when transplanted into humans.
One kind of GMA would be a genetically modified human, created by
transferring genes from nonhuman animals into humans. I will not deal with
this possibility in detail. Genes from animals, or artificial copies of those
sequences,
6
could be used to confer resistance to diseases. Transgenesis
could be used to more radically enhance human beings.
7
For example, it has
been hypothesized that aging in human beings is related to the degradation
of telomeres, the regions on the end of our chromosomes.
8
It is possible that
animals with a significantly longer lifespan than humans, such as turtles
and rockfish,
9
are genetically programmed to live longer, and these genetic
programs could be inserted into the human genome. Transgenesis could also
be used to introduce genes coding for superior physical abilities from other
animals, for example transferring the gene responsible for enhanced night
vision in animals like rabbits and owls, or introducing those genes that code
for sonar in bats.
2. Animal Hybrids and Chimeras
For a long time, it has been possible to create cross-species hybrids through
mating. The mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey. It is infertile.
Other species hybrids include the Tigon, which was created from a female
tiger and a male lion. These hybrids require breeding programs.
Recently, animal chimeras have been createda development that seems
to take us to a new stage of cross-species biology. A chimera is a novel
organism made by combining embryonic cells from more than one species,
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sometimes by fusing embryos.
10
The Geep is a sheep/goat hybrid created
by the fusion of a sheep embryo with a goat embryo, first achieved over
twenty-five years ago.
11
Such animals are chimeric, meaning that the animal
consists of a mix of cells from both species. Such chimeras are not like
those of mythology, half one animal, half the other. They are a blend of
characteristics. For example, the geep looks like a goat or a lamb, and is
similar to any other newborn animal in that it has a blend of characteristics
of both parents.
Many other animal chimeras have been created. These include the chick-
mouse, quail-duck, quail-mouse and even the quail-alligator.
12
More recently,
human-animal chimeras have been created by combining cells of human and
nonhuman origin.
13
The creation of many forms of GMAs raises ethical issues
explored throughout this chapter. Some attempts have been made, largely
unsuccessfully, to address them through policy and regulatory processes, a
subject meriting brief consideration in its own right.
3. Regulation
The creation of human-animal chimeras, hybrids, and transgenic animals
raises important regulatory questions: Who should regulate their creation
and use? How should different ethical considerations be assessed and
balanced in ethical review? When should research using these be considered
preferable to use of nonhuman animals or human embryos? Where is
special regulation or prohibition required? These questions have not been
adequately addressed.
14
Voluntary codes, such as that of the National
Academy of Sciences in the United States,
15
have been criticized for a
weak ethical basis,
16
and there is widespread disagreement on many points
between scientists.
17
There is a danger that if the preceding questions
are left incompletely answered until the point at which applications for
specific research projects are evaluated by ethics committees, then these
evaluations will be reactive and knee-jerk, without timely, far-sighted, and
comprehensive evaluation of the issues involved.
18
There have been calls for
a full ethical analysis of ethical issues in advance.
19
a. Regulation of Admixed Embryos
One illustrative example of attempted regulation is the United Kingdom's
approach to the creation of GMAs involving human embryonic cells. The
mixing of human and nonhuman embryonic material is highly controversial.
The U.K. legislation is an example of a strategy that aims to realize the
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potential of this avenue of research while adopting a practical strategy to
address ethical concerns by limiting the duration of embryo development. I
will examine the utility of this research, the objections to it, and how the U.K.
regulatory authorities attempted to assuage these. However, I will go on to
argue that this strategy will fail in the long term as it becomes desirable and
useful to allow embryos to develop to maturation.
In 2008, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which
regulates artificial reproduction in the United Kingdom, agreed to license for
research the creation of embryos using human and nonhuman embryonic
material, which they called admixed embryos. Scientists must apply
for a license to create an admixed embryo. Crucially, permission will only
be granted to allow development up to fourteen days, a point which has
been taken to be of moral significance since legislation regulating assisted
reproduction came into force in the 1980s,
20
and it is a criminal offence to
allow the embryo to develop beyond that point. So, the United Kingdom
has addressed the issue of the creation of GMAs involving human genes by
limiting the period of embryonic development. Other GMAs not involving
human embryonic material are not affected by these regulations.
Box 1. Human admixed embryos: formation
Cybrids (or cytoplasmic hybrids): formed by transferring human nuclear DNA
in the enucleated cytoplasm from the egg of an animal, such as a rabbit.
Transgenic embryos: formed by introducing animal DNA into one or more
cells of a human embryo.
Chimeras: formed by adding one or more animal cells to a human embryo.
Hybrid embryos: formed from a human egg and animal sperm or vice versa;
or from an animal pro-nucleus and a human pro-nucleus.
The definition of human admixed embryos given in the HFEA Bill includes
four different types of embryos that could be formed under license (see box
1).
Box 1. Human admixed embryos: formation
Cybrids (or cytoplasmic hybrids): formed by transferring human nuclear DNA
in the enucleated cytoplasm from the egg of an animal, such as a rabbit.
Transgenic embryos: formed by introducing animal DNA into one or more
cells of a human embryo.
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Chimeras: formed by adding one or more animal cells to a human embryo.
Hybrid embryos: formed from a human egg and animal sperm or vice versa;
or from an animal pro-nucleus and a human pro-nucleus.
Box 2. Differences between embryos
Cybrids: nuclear DNA is human, matched to the person from whom they
were cloned; very small amount of mitochondrial DNA from the animal's
cytoplasm.
Transgenic embryos: variable amount of animal DNA depending on how
many genes are transferred.
21
Chimeras: have both human and animal cells, because they are formed by
merging human and animal embryos.
Hybrid embryos: have both human and animal chromosomes, because they
are formed by fertilizing egg and sperm from different species.
Box 2. Differences between embryos
Cybrids: nuclear DNA is human, matched to the person from whom they
were cloned; very small amount of mitochondrial DNA from the animal's
cytoplasm.
Transgenic embryos: variable amount of animal DNA depending on how
many genes are transferred.
21
Chimeras: have both human and animal cells, because they are formed by
merging human and animal embryos.
Hybrid embryos: have both human and animal chromosomes, because they
are formed by fertilizing egg and sperm from different species.
The differences between these embryos are shown in box 2. In short, in
cybrids, the nuclear DNA (which confers nearly all phenotypic characteristics)
is human, while the mitochondrial DNA (which is mainly responsible for
energy metabolism) is nonhuman. However, the other embryos would have a
variable amount of human and animal DNA.
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b. Why Was Legislation Introduced? Utility
This legislation was introduced because scientists had applied for licenses
to the HFEA to create cybrids that could serve as a source of embryonic
stem cells. The legislation aimed to allow scientists to realize the utility of
this line of research by limiting the period of embryonic development to
that permissible for fully human embryos already permitted by existing
legislation. In the United Kingdom, human embryos can be created for
research purposes by cloning and IVF for up to fourteen days. This legislation
merely extended that permission to include transgenic reproductive
technologies involving nonhuman cells or genes.
Cybrids are useful for research because they reproduce indefinitely and are
pluripotent, that is, they can develop into other cell types, such as nerve
cells, muscle cells, and heart cells. One day, human embryonic stem cells
(hES cells) may serve as matched tissue for self-transplantation to treat
patients with disease. The hES cells could be derived by inserting the nucleus
from a person's body cell into an egg that has had its nucleus removed and
been stimulated to develop. This is known as nuclear transfer and is a type
of human cloning. These stem cells should not be rejected by the patient's
body, unlike donated tissue and cells from donated sperm-egg embryos,
which have genetic material from both the egg and sperm donors. Long-
term treatment with immunosuppressive drugs, with attendant serious
risks, could then be avoided. Stem cells could also be used for regenerative
medicine to replace dead or damaged tissue after stroke, heart attack, or
other disease or injury. While admixed embryos could not be used for this
purpose, the development of the technology using admixed embryos could
facilitate the use of human embryos for this purpose in the future.
Already hES cells are being used in research into a range of human diseases
that are caused by genetic mutations or that have a genetic element, such
as diabetes, cancer, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, and motor
neuron disease.
22
Some of these cells have come from patients with those
diseases, but it is not always convenient or possible to obtain hES cells that
carry mutations for genetic conditions (disease models) in this way. Scientists
therefore want to create hES cell lines with particular mutations to study
diseases and test new drugs. This opens up a new and potentially important
line of research to create cellular models of human disease that avoids some
of the ethical objections to embryonic stem cell research, and which in time
may lead to new treatments.
23
For example, the creation of cellular models
for human disease using hES cell lines could produce knowledge of disease
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and potential drug therapies that would be cheap to produce and could be
globally available, while also not facing oncogenic or infectious concerns that
confront the direct development of embryonic stem cell therapies.
The use of animal eggs, and creating GMAs, has several advantages over the
use of human eggs for this research. Far more eggs would be available, as
the number of potential donors of human embryos and eggs is likely to be
small. Women in reproductive technology programs often want to use their
eggs themselves, donate them to another couple, or have them removed
from storage. Other donors may be available, but obtaining eggs is invasive,
and there are risks in superovulation and the surgical removal of eggs.
Other sources of eggs, such as surgically removed ovarian tissue, cadavers,
aborted fetuses, and hES cell lines, even if available, have limitations. There
may be intuitive repugnance to these sources of eggs, and difficulties may
arise in artificially maturing the eggs before they can be used in research.
The eggs may be of poor quality, and they do not contain all the genetic
mutations that need to be studied. Also, the efficiency rate of cloning is likely
to be low (less than 1%), so vast numbers of human eggs would be required
for research.
Using cybrids overcomes a number of objections commonly raised to hES
cell research. These objections to traditional hES cell research are: (1)
the research requires large numbers of eggs that must be removed from
healthy young women at some small risk of life and health to them; (2)
the research is a Western luxury that will be exotic and expensive, only
benefiting the richest countries; (3) adult stem cell research shows great
potential and is preferable to hES research; (4) recent research shows there
may be infectious and other risks,
24
such as occurred with bovine spongiform
encephalitis, when transplanting tissue back to people after it is grown on
foreign culture material or uses animal eggs.
The creation of hybrids using nonhuman animal eggs to develop cellular
models of disease is immune to all of these moral objections. Firstly, it would
require no human eggs to produce vast amounts of tissue for the study of
disease. Secondly, such research may result in the development of drugs
for common conditions that afflict people all around the world, including
the developing world. Thirdly, it is not possible to use adult stem cells in
this way. Fourthly, there would be no risk of infection from drugs developed
by studying tissue in this way, as the drug molecules would be produced
pharmaceutically. These objections apply (if they apply) only to cloning for
self-transplantation or traditional hES cell research. They do not apply to
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cloning and to the creation of cybrids that will help us understand and treat
disease.
So, the introduction of legislation that limits cybrid (and other GMAs involving
human cells) development to fourteen days seems to allow an adequate
balance between utility and ethical concerns. Whatever ethical objections
are raised, if such GMAs are killed at fourteen days, they cannot be realized.
Let's call this the limitation in development approach. Such limitation
in development approaches must fail. The reason is that there will be
overwhelming reasons to create full-blown, live-born chimeras, including
human-animal chimeras.
c. The Utility of Live-born Chimeras
Full-blown chimeras are valuable for research. Chimeras (which have mainly
been mouse chimeras thus far) are already routinely used in laboratory
research, especially to create models to study human disease. Chimeras
such as the quail-duck chimera have been used to study embryonic
development, such as the development of the face. Primary chimeras
are produced by the injection of embryonic stem cells or neural stem cells
into an early embryo (blastocyst). They are of importance in embryology,
neurology, pathology, and the development of stem cell therapies.
Secondary chimeras are created by introducing embryonic cells at a later
stage. They are used to test the potentiality of stem cells to grow into fully
differentiated tissues.
25
There are strong scientific rationales for creating live-born human-animal
chimeras. Chimeras are especially useful in neurobiological research.
26
For
example, research on human development may be enhanced by producing
chimeras that have large populations of functional human neurons. Irving
Weissman, a pioneer of chimera research (as discussed by Henry Greely in
the present Handbook), anticipates producing mice with fully humanized
brain tissue.
27
Such animals would be ideal models for human disease, and
chimeras with mature and functional human brain cells have been recently
created.
28
Moreover, research into cognitive or behavioral development may benefit
from creating chimeras that have human capacities. This would likely involve
keeping chimeras beyond fourteen days, especially during later times of
neurogenesis (between day 4 and 18)
29
and/or using nonhuman primates.
30
The HFEA limitation of development approach of imposing a fourteen-day
limit on embryo development will likely represent an obstacle to scientific
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research and so be challenged. The strategy of imposing a fourteen-day limit
on development, employed by the HFEA, may deal effectively with ethical
objections, but it is likely this limit will be challenged and ethical objections
raised to allowing the further development of GMAs.
Several properties of chimeras are potentially morally relevant. Firstly,
human-nonhuman chimeras do not have only genetically human
chromosomes. They have a variable mixture of cells with and without
human DNA. For example, in 2007, Esmail Zanjani created a sheep-
human chimera (85% sheep; 15% human).
31
They could be created with
predominantly human non-neural cells but nonhuman neurons, vice versa,
or with mixed human and nonhuman neurons. Such chimeras may have
cognitive capacities comparable to normal adult humans, to humans in other
stages of development (or degeneration), or to normal nonhuman animals.
Their capacities may be enhanced or diminished relative to nonhuman
animals, insofar as such terms are appropriate. Such chimeras could then
be subject to different procedures including modification, implantation
into different species, environmental systems, painful procedures, and
destruction. An example would be to create a mouse with neural stem cells
from a human with some genetic disorder, such as Huntington's disease or
inherited Alzheimer's disease. The mouse, with a small human brain, could
be used as disease model for that disease in the full-blown human. One
of the most provocative examples of a chimera would be a human-chimp
chimera, created by fusing a chimp embryo with a human embryo. Such a
chimera might well survive and could be used to study the development of
language.
Secondly, it is currently unclear which species chimeras belong to and
so which regulations and laws pertain, which potentially morally-relevant
capacities they possess, and how these are relevant in given uses.
Thirdly, chimeras could be modified to experience less pain, boredom, or
other negative mental states during research or farming. That is, chimeras
could be created with altered sentience. In 2004, scientists in University
College London made a small genetic modification to a group of mice to
remove one of the nine types of sodium channels that are present in all
mammalian muscle and nerve tissue. Mice who had the channel, Nav7,
removed entirely from all tissue died as pups due to an apparent inability
to feed. But mice who only had the channel removed from their sensory
neurons were apparently normal in every way (life expectancy, weight,
motor ability) except in one area. Although their ability to experience
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normal variations in heat and pressure was unchanged, they were much
less vulnerable to pain both from external stimuli and from inflammation-
induced sensitivity. Engineered mice exposed to painful levels of heat on
a Hargreaves Apparatus, a kind of hotplate, were 20% less sensitive to
painful levels of heat than their control-group counterparts. Likewise, mice
missing the Nav7 channel displayed less pain on the application of paw
pressure than control-group mice. In addition to these behavioral differences,
the mice were much less susceptible to inflammation and to related pain.
Mice were injected with a water and oil emulsion with mycrobacteria that
causes inflammation leading to hyper-sensitivity to heat and pressure pain.
Mice missing the Nav7 channel had no increase in sensitivity, although the
swelling recorded was similar to control groups.
32
The creation of GMAs with
significantly different behavioral characteristics and responses, such as to
pain and boredom, and even perhaps those typical of human beings such as
language and higher cognitive abilities, raises new and significant challenges
in animal ethics.
4. Conclusion
In section 1, I have reviewed the scientific possibilities of creating GMAs
either through the construction of transgenic animals or chimeras. I have
reviewed the utility of creating GMAs. They have been a mainstay of modern
medical research and represent an important way of genetically modifying
animals to make them more useful to humans in other ways, such as by
creating products useful to humans, creating disease-resistant or other more
resilient species, and potentially providing organs and tissues for human
medical use. I have argued that there are good scientific reasons to believe
that more widespread genetic modification of animals using either human
genes or human embryonic material is on the horizon. I have reviewed
current regulatory issues and provided one example of legislation, that of
the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority's approach to regulate
the creation of human admixed embryos. While that legislation has been
satisfactory in dealing with the issue of cybrids, I have argued that it will be
inadequate to address the creation of full-blown, live-born human-nonhuman
chimeras. I have argued that these will be useful for research and there
will be pressure from scientists to create them. Our current regulatory and
ethical frameworks are ill prepared to evaluate such proposals, and I turn
attention now to that issue.
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Section 2. A Four-stage Ethical Evaluation of the Creation of GMAs
We need a new, more comprehensive approach to evaluating the creation of
live-born human-animal chimeras and radically modified GMAs. In section 2,
I offer a four-stage process of ethically permissible evaluation of the creation
of GMAs. In the final section, I go on to reject four commonly employed
objections.
Stage 1. Determination of and Respect for Moral Status
The most important ethical constraint on creating GMAs should be should be
the correct determination of their moral status and appropriate treatment.
Moral status is the standing or position of a being within a hierarchical
framework of moral obligations. The moral status of a GMA entails relevant
obligations to treat it in certain ways while it is alive, in virtue of its nature,
and whether it is wrong to kill it. Determination of the moral status of a being
is based upon its intrinsic nature and its relationship to other beings, which
themselves may determine its interests and rights. For example, how would
we determine the status of a mouse with a small predominantly humanized
brain that has similar interests to a human being? Is it a mouse, a human, or
something in between? If it has intermediate moral status, how should it be
treated by human beings? Is it permissible to kill it in research? What would
the moral status of a human-chimp chimera be?
33
One line of attack is to follow the U.K. strategy and, until such questions
can be answered, require not letting such new life forms grow beyond early
gestation. These entities could not have a higher moral status than human
embryos and they would be destroyed before fourteen days of gestation, as
required by law. However, such an approach can only stave off the issue for
a limited time. At some point, there will be strong reasons based on utility for
allowing the development of GMA embryos to full gestation.
We will, then, need to develop: (1) an ontological account of moral status; (2)
an epistemological account of how we should decide the moral category into
which a particular animal falls.
a. Ontology: What Are the Criteria of Moral Status?
What sorts of beings or entities have moral status? This complex question
involves an understanding of the nature of a being or entity and placing
that being within a normative framework of moral obligations. For example,
it is not thought to be wrong to smash a rock because it does not have
Page 14 of 42
interests that would generate obligations toward it. It is not hurt by
the act of smashing it. (The situation is even here complicated, as some
environmentalists have noted in discussing the destruction of inanimate
objects in nature.) It is wrong to smash the skull of a baboon with a high-
impact mechanism in a laboratory, because a baboon can feel pain and has
an interest in not experiencing pain. Two important issues relating to the
treatment of GMAs are how we treat them while they are alive and whether
it is wrong to kill them. What are the criteria for this kind of moral status?
Answers to this question comprise a large literature (see for example, the
contributions in Part III of this Handbook). In the following section, I consider
three possible criteria for moral status. My aim is not to endorse or justify
them (though I will reject the commonest one) but to describe them and to
follow the implications of accepting two of them as criteria of moral status.
My purpose will be to show that it is critical to establish an account of moral
status and to be able to evaluate whether a GMA has a level of moral status
before we proceed to create it.
1. Species Membership. A GMA's moral status might be thought to depend
on its species,
34
notably the human species. This criterion of moral status
seems to capture something like commonsense moral views, including how
we think of human rights. However, there are two problems with this
approach. In some cases, it may be clear to which species a GMA belongs.
For example, the SCID-hu mouse, which has a human immune system, is
usually considered to be a mouse.
35
But in other cases it may be less clear
whether an individual comes under the description of an animal with human
cells, a human with animal cells, or some other description. Does a human-
chimp chimera with 50% cells of each belong to the species Homo sapiens
or Pan troglodytes (the technical term for the species of a chimp)? In this
way, GMAs present a potentially revolutionary challenge to commonsense
approaches to moral status.
Of great importance here is the relevance, if any, of biological species
membership. It is a well-worn point now that species membership,
even membership of the species Homo sapiens, is of no intrinsic moral
significance. I will not repeat the arguments here.
36
Suffice it to say that
species membership will not solve the question of moral status.
2. Sentience. Moral status is most plausibly analyzed in terms of a being's
capacities and functionings. One theory of moral status relies on sentience
that is, the capacity for conscious experience, including painful mental
states. Sentience provides moral reasons to avoid inflicting painful stimuli
Page 15 of 42
on and depriving of pleasurable experiences, animals with a cortex. A
moral status based on an interest not to experience pain and deprivation
is dependent upon having the capacities for nociception,
37
phenomenal
conscious experiences,
38
and negative attitudes to pain.
39
As an example
of possible use of this criterion of moral status, future variants of the Nav7
mouse might not experience pain.
3. Higher Cognitive Functioning. Another theory erects status on cognitive
capacity and functioning.
40
Moral status has been related to rationality,
41
acting on the basis of normative reasons, autonomy, consciousness,
42
and
self-consciousness.
43
Some accord instrumental value to capacities that
affect an animal's welfare
44
or ability to flourish.
45
One influential theory of moral status is that of being a person. Persons
are sentient beings that are also rational and self-conscious, conceiving
of themselves as existing over time and capable of forming preferences
for various of their possible future existences. Michael Tooley, John Harris,
and Peter Singer (at least in some of his early works) argue that what
matters morally is not being a member of the species Homo sapiens but the
mental properties that characterize persons, or beings capable of playing a
planned and chosen role in liferationality and self-consciousness. These
characteristics capture humans as persons.
46
According to this theory, it is
wrong to kill persons because they can conceive of themselves as existing
across time and have preferences for their continued existence into the
future. Nonpersons do not have such preferences. The frustration of these
preferences is wrong. Just as sentience grounds a right not to have pain
inflicted, so being a person grounds a right to life. However, for illustrative
purposes in this chapter, I will refer to higher cognitive functioning as
the relevant property related to the moral status of having a right to life,
not persons and associated theories of persons.
47
It is possible that higher
cognitive capacities ground other interests, but for simplicity, I will limit
discussion to the simple interests and rights that derive from sentience and
higher cognitive capacities: interest in positive mental states and continued
life.
b. Epistemology: Determining Moral Status
Once we are clear on the ontologywhat moral status consists in, for
example, sentience, higher cognitive capacity, and the likeit will be
necessary to determine whether a novel GMA has the requisite properties
(for example, capacity to experience pain or self-consciousness, moral
Page 16 of 42
agency, ability to use a language, etc.). This is an epistemological question
about how we determine a being's capacities. Clearly such determinations
have been enormously difficult in contemporary psychology and cognitive
science, as several essays in this Handbook (by Kristin Andrews, Bryce
Huebner, Peter Carruthers, Jos Luis Bermdez, Sahar Akhtar, and Mark
Rowlands) show.
Consider two examples. Synthetic biology or nanotechnology could be
employed to create or modify complex neural networks in vitro. Could such
networks become conscious? How would we determine this?
In 2001, scientists devised an experiment to test the effect of the anterior
cingulate cortex (ACC) on the experience of pain.
48
Anecdotal evidence
in humans has already suggested that surgical removal of the ACC alters
the experience of pain so that although the patient is still able to identify
its location and intensity, the experience is not unpleasant or dysphoric.
In one experiment, lesions were surgically induced in the ACC of rats. Rats
with the lesions displayed normal behavioral responses to pain stimuli, such
as flinching and licking the affected area. Although they did not develop a
conditioned avoidance response to the pain stimuli as did the control-group
mice, this state did not affect their ability to develop a conditioned response
to non-pain-related but still aversive stimuli (a dysphoric opioid agonist), nor
did it affect the ability to learn conditioned pleasure responses.
Do such rats experience pain? It is not easy to say. Based on human
reports, the answer may be no. While these are ordinary rats modified
surgically, it is easy to imagine genetic modification that could bring about
the same effect. Would it be permissible to inflict ordinarily painful stimuli
on such rats? In many cases, it may not be possible to predict, based on
biological data, the nature of the moral status of a GMA. Rather, we would
require behavioral and other evidence that an animal has the relevant
property that confers moral status.
Behavioral investigation may need to be sophisticated and diverse, including
evaluation of social functioning. Consider a human-chimp chimera. Would
it be best, in terms of pleasurable mental states and other markers of well-
being, for such a GMA to socialize with chimps, humans, or other human-
chimp chimeras? Getting answers may require complex field experiments
involving different social arrangements.
Page 17 of 42
c. Treatment Relevant to Moral Status
The moral status of GMAs may well be far from obvious. What then should be
done? Could GMAs be farmed or experimented upon? Under what conditions
should they live or be killed?
Two sub-constraints should be observed if GMAs are to be treated ethically.
Firstly, GMA-centered research to determine the being's nature and moral
status should be performed before use by humans, especially regarding
what would make the GMA's life go well. So we need a robust account of
moral status, and second, we will require empirical research to identify
whether a GMA has the qualities which bestow that status. Secondly, where
research is not done or fails to yield useful results, the GMA should be
accorded the highest moral status consistent with its likely nature, based on
available evidence and prediction. We should err on the side of sympathy
and generosity. If there is a chance a GMA could experience pain or might not
be able to interact socially, and we dont know, it should be treated as if it
experiences pain and will have problems of social adaptation. Likewise, if it
could plausibly have higher cognitive functions, it should be treated as if it
had them.
Stage 2. Reasons in Favor of Animal Enhancement
The second major ethical constraint on the creation of GMAs is that genetic
modification of animals should be done for a good reason. Perhaps the
animal should be modified to enhance it for the benefit of itself, other
members of its species, or members of other species, such as human beings.
Enhancement can be broadly defined as follows: X is an enhancement for
A if X makes it more likely that A will lead a better life in circumstances C,
a given set of natural and social circumstances.
49
If A is the GMA itself,
modified by changing its biology or psychology, then it will be an example
of what I call enhancement-for-self. If A is a human being, or other animal,
then the GMA would provide enhancement benefits to others. The main
problems arise in enhancement-for-others, but enhancement-for-self can be
problematic as well.
a. Enhancing of Self
While the ethics of human enhancement has been widely discussed,
50
the ethics of animal enhancement has not. According to the definition of
enhancement, to evaluate whether a modification is enhancing-for-self, we
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require an account of animal welfare,
51
which is itself problematic in the case
of GMAs because that life has never been encountered before. We cannot
refer to vague concepts such as the pigness of a pig.
52
An evaluation of
whether a modification is good for an animal will require an evaluation of
broad and long-term effects. However, as the definition makes clear and
I have argued elsewhere,
53
whether a given change in the biology of an
animal constitutes an enhancement will depend on the context. For example,
is a modification that reduces sensitivity to pain good for an animal? It will
depend on whether the modification might render an animal more prone
to injury that harms the animal in other ways, which will depend on the
environment the animal is in.
54
In sum, whether some change in biology or psychology of an animal
constitutes enhancement or infliction of a disability will depend on at least
three things: (1) the account of animal welfare; (2) the short- and long-
term biological and psychological consequences of the intervention; and (3)
accurate prediction of the likely natural and social environment in which the
animal will exist.
It is arguable that (3) should be revised. As it stands, it opens the door
to biological modification to compensate for exploitation. For example, if
the Nav7 modification could be performed on cows, pigs, or chickens to
render them less susceptible to pain, this could be employed to press higher
numbers of animals into confined conditions to increase yield. It could be
argued that such conditions are unjust and that (3) should be modified to
(3*): accurate prediction of the likely natural and social environment in which
the animal would exist from among those in which it is just to exist.
Evaluation of an intervention as an enhancement or not will thus require an
account of the environment in which it is just for animals to live.
b. Enhancement for Human Benefit
How should we evaluate the genetic modification of an animal to make it
more useful to human beings? This is the basic issue associated with animal
experimentation. One matter needing discussion is the moral problem of
how to assess the harm it is reasonable to inflict on animals for the benefit
of human beings. Strict equality in consideration of interests would require
that animal pain/life be treated equally to human pain/life. This proposal is
implausible. Even if it is wrong to kill an animal with a right to life, it seems
as if it is less wrong than killing a human being. There seems to be a good
reason (perhaps based on the greater richness and depth of human life to
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give greater [though not absolutely overriding] weight to human life) and
suffering. Assuming that there is such a good reason, we can give priority
to humans rather than other animals, but if there is no such good reason,
then it would be unjustified. How a balance is to be struck is a complicated
question, but one that must be answered. It is considered in further depth in
the chapters in this Handbook by R. G. Frey, Elizabeth Harman, David Copp,
Mark Rowlands, and David Schmidtz. A similar question is how we should
weigh the lives of humans that are of different value.
55
An extreme case of genetic modification of animals for human purposes
would be xenogestation: the genetic modification (or other biological
modification, such as creation of a weak predominantly nonhuman chimera)
of a nonhuman animal to carry a human embryo and fetus to termfor
example, genetic modification of a pig to carry a human baby. The baby
could be delivered by natural vaginal delivery or by Caesarean section. I
will consider this as an example of the extreme modification of animals for
human use.
Could there be a good reason for such a modification? Firstly, it could allow
women to avoid the risks of pregnancy and delivery, which can be not
merely inconvenient but lethal and are frequently associated with major
chronic health problems, such as fecal and urinary incontinence, pain during
sexual intercourse, and so on. Secondly, the fetal uterine environment
could be genetically or otherwise manipulated to maximize the nutritional
and otherwise supportive environment for the baby. The pregnancy could
be extensively monitored and externally controlled. Thirdly, it could be
used to carry embryos and fetuses destined for abortion, alleviating the
burden to women of carrying pregnancies that would never produce a
live-born baby. Fourthly, embryos or fetuses could also deliberately be
created for either experimental or treatment purposes. There are, of course,
objections to using human cloning as a source of cells, tissues, or organs
for transplantation, including these: (1) cloning has been very inefficient,
requiring hundreds of embryos to be created; (2) stem cells have not been
successfully manipulated to produce transplantable tissues; and (3) there
has been little real progress toward the development of organs.
One way to address these problems is to avoid stem cell technology
entirely and allow nature to create the tissues and organs in a human fetus
undergoing normal development. A cloned fetus could be aborted and
tissues and organs used for medical purposes. Tissues have been used for
these purposes from social abortions. The practice of abortion is premised
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on the fetus lacking moral status. If it is permissible to create and destroy
an embryo for medical purposes, it is arguably permissible to create and
destroy a fetus. A fetus could be cloned as a source of tissue or organs for
transplantation and transferred to a genetically modified pig to gestate it
until the organs and tissues were ready for transplantation. Such proposals
may appear shocking, but they can be ethically defended, based on current
practices, values, and public policies (or lack thereof).
56
In summary, there will be some strong reasons in favor of the creation of
radical GMAs based on utility to others, especially humans. Whether these
reasons outweigh the reasons against the creation of the particular GMA
needs ethical analysis. One significant factor in this balancing is how the
GMAs own life goes. The balance of these reasons for and against will be
reflected by the outcome of the four-stage evaluation process. What I have
sought to establish is that there can be very strong reasons for the creation
of full-blown GMAs.
c. Identity Determining versus Identity Preserving Interventions
When evaluating the strength of reasons in favor or against biological
modification of animals, one important but difficult consideration is whether
the intervention determines identity or preserves an existing identity. Genetic
modification can occur prior to the establishment of individual identity or
after an individual identity has been established. For example, in the case
of human beings, many people believe that our identity is established at
conception. However, this belief is disputed; other candidates include the
point at which tissues such as the neural streak begin to develop.
57
It is not
the purpose of this chapter to establish exactly when an animal begins to
exist and is individuated. Let's call that point identity origination.
Interventions prior to identity origination can be identity determining.
Genetic selection is an obvious example. The selection of one embryo to
implant, based on genetic profiling, from among several embryos determines
the identity of the future animal. Interventions performed after identity
origination can be identity altering. For example, genetic engineering of a
chimp embryo to give it the mental capabilities of a human being would
be identity altering. It would be like killing the chimp and replacing it with
a human being. This would not be an enhancement of one chimp but its
replacement by another different chimp or even an animal of a different
species. These replacement cases are equivalent to killing and would be
wrong if the original had sufficient moral status conferring a right to life.
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Interventions that are neither identity determining nor altering are identity
preserving. For brevity, I will refer to both identity determining and identity
altering interventions as identity determining.
Identity determining interventions raise what Derek Parfit has called the
non-identity problem.
58
Imagine we were to create a human-chimp chimera
by fusing human embryonic cells with chimp embryonic cells. How should
we evaluate this act in terms of the kind of life that the resultant chimera
would lead? Should its life be compared with that of a human, or a chimp,
or both? Imagine that the biology of a human-chimp chimera causes it to
become depressed, or to experience some other persistent negative mental
state such as that manifest in stereotypical behaviors, compared to either a
typical chimp or human. Is this experience bad for the chimera in the same
way a headache is bad for me? In virtue of the badness of the mental state,
was the act of creating such a chimera wrong? If the adverse experiences
were sufficiently profound, say constant terror from hallucinations (as occur
with ketamine use) or severe pain, the biological conditions might render the
GMA's life so bad that it is not worth living. It clearly would be unethical to
create such animals.
What if the biology is such that it strongly predisposes to a life of diminished
well-being, but the life has many pleasures and is still worth living? Suppose,
for example, the animal suffers mild persistent depression. Here we
encounter the non-identity problem. If the life is worth living because it
has good food and social companions, and the intervention that causes the
negative welfare property is a part of the identity determining intervention,
the intervention is not so bad from that GMA's perspective. The depressed
human-chimp chimera can have no complaint, even if mildly depressed,
regarding the act of creating it, because without the act of fusing human and
chimp embryonic cells, it would not have existed and its life is not all bad.
It is still possible to argue that there is something like an impersonal
wrong
59
that makes it less desirable to create this life form, rather than a
different life form with a better life. However, the strength of such reasons
is unresolved, and certain arguments do not work well if the alternative
is to create no animal at all. Identity determining interventions seem only
seriously wrong when they create animals with lives that are not worth living
or if the alternative had been to create an animal with a better life.
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d. Social Construction of Well-being
A final consideration that bears on evaluating the reasons for or against
animal enhancement is the social construction of well-being.
60
How well
an animal's life goes is not merely a function of its inherent biology and
psychology, but also of its social environment. Consider the introduction
of a gene from a fluorescent jellyfish into a monkey embryo, which causes
a fluorescent monkey. Whether this intervention is permissible turns in
part on the quality of the monkey's life and how it would have gone in the
counterfactual world in which the gene was not inserted. If the monkey is
more easily seen by its mate or other members of group at night, and this
benefits the monkey, then it is an enhancement. If it makes it more likely
to be killed by predators, then a risk of harm has been caused. But these
factors are determined by the environment in which the animal lives. What
if the monkey enjoys a fabulous life because attention and love are heaped
upon it because of its different and valued characteristic? Or what if, because
it is fluorescent, it is forced to work and perform in endless circus shows,
exhausted and isolated? The attitudes and practices of others make the life
go well or badly in virtue of the biological modification, not the biological
modification itself. The social construction determines the animal's quality of
life.
Consider the example of xenogestation. Would a genetically modified pig
created to serve human reproductive needs be happy? This will turn in large
part on how it is treated. Is it compelled to experience painful delivery or
Caesarean section? Would it have a social group, freedom, opportunity
to exercise, eat tasty food, have its own family, and so on? In part, we
must predict what the likely natural and social environment of a GMA
will be in order to evaluate the effects of a biological modification.
61
In
some cases, the social environment involving human choices is infected
with prejudice and injustice. For example, it might be an enhancement to
lighten the skin color of a mixed-race human embryo in a racist society.
In such cases a biological modification that resulted in darker skin would
not be inherently wrong; but what are wrong, however, are racist attitudes
that cause the resultant harm. Unjust discrimination on the basis of some
morally neutral biological characteristic, such as fluorescence, is a form
of arbitrary discrimination like sexism, racism, and speciesism. It could be
called biologismthe discrimination against a being on the basis of some
arbitrary biological feature.
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Stage 3. Reasonable Risk and Consent
The third stage to evaluating creation of GMAs is whether it conforms to
the two basic principles of the review of protocols in research ethics, in
particular, establishing whether the GMA is exposed to reasonable risk and
whether consent is obtained if the animal is competent. These principles
apply whether or not the GMA is created as a part of a research project.
a. Reasonable Risk
All research involving living beings involves risk of harm, and research ethics
review assesses whether risks are minimized and reasonable relative to
the benefit to the participant (and perhaps others).
62
This approach can be
generalized to the creation of GMAs outside research: are the risks to the
GMA reasonable relative to the benefit provided to others. I have elsewhere
identified a procedure for evaluating the reasonableness of risk that starts
with a series of questions that can be modified for considering GMAs.
63
1. Is there a known risk prior to commencing the intervention to the
animal and what is its magnitude, based on evidence available at
the time?
2. Should any non-living or epidemiological research, systematic
overview, or computer modeling have been performed prior to
modifying the animal to better estimate the risk to the animal or
obviate the need for genetic modification?
3. Could the risk be reduced in any other way? Is it as small as
possible?
4. Are the potential benefits (in terms of knowledge and
improvement of welfare of the participating animal or other animals
or people) of this intervention worth the risks?
5. Could this intervention generate knowledge or technology likely
to significantly harm other beings with moral status, now or in the
future?
b. Consent
The second principle of research ethics review is to obtain valid consent
from competent participants. This principle is of use in evaluating the
ethics of creating GMAs both inside and outside of research contexts. In
the case of GMAs with relevant higher cognitive capacities, should they be
created and brought to maturityfor example, a human-chimp chimera
that is predominantly humanthe question arises whether it is appropriate
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to obtain the consent of the GMA for participation as a research subject,
and consent would be needed for any further biological modification. The
capacity to consent is related to whether an individual is autonomous.
64
Study of animal autonomy in the sense relevant to consent is an entirely
undeveloped field. It will require further conceptual normative work to
elucidate how animals could be autonomous in a morally relevant sense.
Stage 4. Prevention of Harm to Others
An important stage of evaluation of the creation of GMAs is evaluation of the
risks that their creation poses to others, now and in the future.
a. Direct Harm
One issue is direct harm that might result to humans from creating a GMA.
For example, concerns have been expressed about the infectious risks of
transferring ES cells from cybrids, or xenotransplants.
65
A related objection is
that ES cells from cybrids may stimulate the development of teratomas.
While these concerns need to be taken seriously, the appropriate response
is to use research to establish whether such problems exist. Conceptual
analysis is also necessary to separate different kinds of research and
intervention. For example, the benefits of ES research are not merely
tailored regenerative transplants from ES cells. Basic ES cell research
employing cybrids can help us to understand and treat disease and to
develop pharmaceutical and other treatments. These objections apply only to
applications such as transferring ES cells to patients and not to these other
benefits.
b. Dual Use
66
A profoundly important moral issue is the potential dual use of powerful
biotechnologymeaning use for both good and evil purposes. Nuclear
technology is an example of a dual-use technology. Significant dual-use
problems are raised by GMAs. I will here illustrate these problems and then
suggest potential solutions.
Recently, the J. Craig Venter Institute produced the first synthetic bacterium.
The group read the DNA genome, or genetic blueprint, for a bacterium,
Mycoplasma mycoides. They transferred this code to a computer, which
assembled chemicals to produce an artificial copy of the natural DNAa
synthetic copy. They transplanted that copy into a different Mycoplasma
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species, whose natural genome had been removed. The new life was
controlled by the synthetic genome.
Synthetic biology is a relatively new and potentially powerful form of genetic
modification. Venter has taken a leap toward the holy grail of artificially
creating life. Synthetic biology could be used to create life forms that could
not, or at least would not, naturally exist. Until now, genetic engineers
shuffled genes around the animal and plant kingdoms. Synthetic biology
opens the door to not merely copying existing blueprints, as Venter did, but
constructing novel ones, according to human design. This creation would be
to play God or at least to seize control of evolutionary developments.
The potential benefits of synthetic biology are huge. Synthetic organisms
could be programmed to perform an almost unimaginable range of useful
functions: agents that would search and destroy cancer or HIV, produce clean
biofuels or other useful chemicals, and act as bioremediators that break
down environmental toxins. Biological computing could use human neurons
created artificially (instead of chips). Synthetic agents might even turn on
and off parts of the human brain, treating mental illness and addiction, or
augmenting cognitive capacity. The final chapter in human evolution might
be to rationally design life itself and keep all life on earth under such control.
The biorevolution has the potential to be as powerful as the physics
revolution. Like nuclear power, it could threaten the existence of humanity
and of many species. In 2001, scientists genetically modified the virus,
mousepox, and created a strain that killed 100% of mice. They published on
the internet. A significant feature of this discovery lay in the recognition that
similar changes could be made to human smallpox, the greatest infectious
killer in human history, killing approximately one-third of people infected.
The dangers here are at least as prominent as the potential benefits.
Fanatics, ideologues, and psychopaths will no longer have to get their hands
on military caches of virus held in the former Soviet Union. It will be possible
to cheaply and easily synthesize pathogens, like smallpox, in the backyard,
modifying them to make them perfectly lethal and superinfectious. Spread in
a few airports, shopping malls, or stadiums, they would spread unrecognized
and kill tens of millions of people and other creatures, as portrayed in the
film, Twelve Monkeys.
In the 1950s and 60s, only a handful of people had the capacity to destroy
the world. Soon, that power could be in the hands of hundreds of thousands.
Given the existential cost of an adverse event, there is a moral imperative
to strategically augment and revise our regulatory structures, international
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oversight, rules for publication, access to reagents and technology, and the
like. The biorevolution will certainly bring a new chapter in our history. We
should monitor and help lead it ethically to ensure it is not the final chapter
in human history.
Section 3. Four Objections to the Creation of GMAs
Several objections are often registered to the creation of genetic alterations.
These objections, which I find unwarranted, are that that genetic alteration
is: (1) a threat to our humanity; (2) forbidden by absolute deontological
constraints; (3) playing God; (4) a dangerous slippery slope leading to
genetic manipulation.
1. Threat to Humanity
67
One common objection to creating GMAs, especially those involving
substantial amounts of human genetic material such as a human-chimp
chimera or a humanized mouse, is that it represents a threat to our
humanity. By humanity, I mean our special moral status as human beings.
Whatever account one adopts of the special moral status of human beings,
genetic modification threatens to erode it. Among the several candidate
properties for differentiating us from other animals and capturing our special
moral status as human beings, let us assume, for the sake of the argument,
that one necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) condition of humanity is the
capacity to act on the basis of normative reasons, a capacity of practical
rationality. Animals have desires and wants about what to do, but humans
alone have higher order beliefs about their own beliefs and what they should
do.
Consider an example. Animals respond to biological urges, such as to
reproduce. They display some forms of practical rationality when they hunt,
adapt to new environments, use tools, play games, mate, and plan ahead for
some short distance in time. However, humans display a richer and deeper
practical rationality. They make decisions about when to have children,
how many children to have, and even what kind to have through prenatal
diagnosis or prenatal testing. If our humanity is located, at least in part,
in our practical rationality (in our capacity to make normative judgments,
including moral judgments, and act on these), then there are two ways in
which our humanity can either be promoted or threatened:
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a. Actions that are an Expression of Our Humanity
When we act according to our judgments of what we have good reasons
to do, we express our humanity. So whether creating transgenic humans
or chimeras is an expression of our humanity or not turns on whether we
judge that we have good reason to alter our genome. Some radical genetic
alterations are an expression of our humanity, while others are not. For
example, the introduction of animal DNA into humans or even embryonic
cells to create weak human-animal chimeras to protect them from an
uncontrollable HIV pandemic would be an expression of our humanity
we believe we have good reason to prevent HIV. The creation of human-
chimp chimeras for entertainment, or to be slaves or pets, would not be an
expression of our humanitywe may doubt that we have good reasons to
create chimeras for these purposes.
Radical genetic alteration of humans or animals is not necessarily a threat
to our humanity. Whether it is an expression or threat depends on whether
there are good reasons for or against the alteration in question. Simply the
fact that such alterations are judged by some to be unnatural or to cross the
human-animal divide does not imply they are a threat to our humanity.
b. Effects on the Capacity for Practical Reasoning of the GMA
If practical rationality is central to our humanity as members of the species
Homo sapiens, then there is a second way in which radical genetic alteration
could threaten our humanity. It could do so by undermining the capacity of
the being altered to engage in practical reasoningreasoning about what it
should do. For example, the introduction of genes from ferocious animals that
contribute to aggression might make for better boxers or soldiers, but might
also inhibit that human being's capacity to reason and reflect about what
he or she should do. He or she could turn out to be more nonhuman than
human. In other cases, introduction of animal genes might have no effect
on the capacity to reasonfor example, introduction of genes to protect
against disease or improve our sensory faculties. These improvements do not
threaten humanity, though a human person with bat sonar would be a very
different kind of human. More optimistically, the introduction of animal genes
might promote our capacity to reason and act on our value judgments. For
example, a man who searches for hikers lost in the night on trails would be
more likely to find them if he had acute night vision.
Page 28 of 42
Similarly, radical prolongation of human life or memory by introduction
of genes from elephants might improve opportunities for learning and for
making more informed judgments, as well as increasing the efficiency of
transmission from judgment to action. Improvement of our cognitive abilities
may improve our capacity to reason. Improvement in empathy may improve
our moral reflection. Whether transgenesis and the creation of human-animal
chimeras threaten humanity depends on the effects of these changes, if any,
on the essential features of humanity.
2. Absolute Deontological Constraints
While the creation of GMAs may have obvious utility, there are some so-
called absolute deontological objections, that is, objections based on rules
that should never be broken. These objections proscribe such research
whatever its utility, just as, according to this objection, we should not use
data from Nazi hypothermia experiments, regardless of its benefits, because
of the evil involved. While it is obvious that torturing human beings is evil, in
the case of GMAs we must ask what precisely is harmful and perhaps evil to
the point that it makes such creating of GMAs unacceptable.
3. Playing God and Against Nature
Concerns about humans playing God can be understood in at least two
different ways. On a religious interpretation, the concern is that humans are
literally usurping the role of a higher being. On secular interpretations, the
concern is typically with humans failing to recognize their own limitations, for
example, by overestimating their ability to control complex ecosystems.
68
Humans wishing to exert some influence on the genetic make-up of future
beings have until now been constrained to working within the timescales and
genetic possibilities dictated by evolution. Genetic engineering has partially
freed us from this constraint. Synthetic biology promises to free us from a
further constraint: the need for a natural template on which future organisms
must be based. It will allow us to design and create life, not merely to tinker
with or modify it.
69
It is also possible that synthetic biology will enable us to
create life from non-living, inorganic matter. Indeed, this is arguably the most
distinctive role of synthetic biology.
However, the history of humanity has been one of modifying the world and
life for good reasons. The natural state of humans would be a life nasty,
brutish, and short, as Hobbes saw it, without many improvements that
Page 29 of 42
involved modifying the world. Vaccination, antibiotics, and nearly all of
medicine involve powerful interventions. The objection that we would be
playing God is only valid as a caution against premature or ill-informed
action, to which no doubt humans are prone.
4. Slippery Slopes and the Precautionary Principle
Many people fear that the creation of GMAs is a descent down the slope
to creating live-born, radically new human-animal life forms, ultimately
modifying human beings themselves. The techniques developed here could
be used to create human-chimp chimeras, reminiscent of Planet of the Apes.
However, four responses can be made to this argument. The first three
responses question how likely a descent down the slope is. The last questions
whether the bottom of the slope is really that bad.
Firstly, the techniques for the creation of these life forms are not new.
Interestingly, no live-born fluorescent humans have been created despite
our ability to create fluorescent rabbits and monkeys. Despite having the
technical ability for over twenty years, scientists have only recently produced
a fluorescent human embryo.
70
Secondly, it can be argued that there is no slippery slope, only a set of steps.
Laws exist to prevent the development of such life forms. For example, in
the United Kingdom, it is a serious criminal offence to allow them to develop
beyond the specified time limit of fourteen days. This has been effective in
regulating research and practice in that society. Of course, legislation can
never entirely deal with such a problem, but it is an important instrument to
reduce harm and risk.
Thirdly, it is a mistake to prevent some valuable course of action because of
the mere risk of adverse consequences. One must give some consideration
to the potential benefits, harms, and their relative likelihoods. The potential
benefits are in some cases very significant, while the harms are of
unestablished severity and small likelihood. It is hard to see any plausible
principle of precaution favoring the prohibition of this kind of research.
Lastly, I question whether the bottom of the slope is really bad. Would it be
wrong to modify humans to include animal genes or cells? As I have argued,
the answer depends on the reasons, the benefit to the resulting humans,
the risk to other humans and animals, the appropriateness of ethical review,
and the like. In some cases, we might have good reason to genetically
Page 30 of 42
modify even humansfor example, to confer disease resistance to a novel
pathogen.
Section 4. Conclusion
We are undergoing a great biological revolution. It is now possible to move
genes around the animal and plant kingdoms, designing genetically modified
animals by transgenesis or the creation of chimeras. Synthetic biology
affords the possibility of designing life from the ground up, using inorganic
chemicals, according to human design. These life forms have not and could
not naturally exist. At present, we have only scratched the surface of this
biorevolution, which will likely dwarf the industrial revolution. Biological life
will become the powerhouse of innovation, creativity, and productivity. The
biological engine could replace the mechanical engine in many contexts, and
nanotechnology and computing technology may be integrated with genetic
modification.
We will need a well-developed ethics to govern the creation of novel life. In
this chapter, I have argued that we need case-by-case evaluation of new
interventions and technologies, rather than blanket or global evaluations.
I have argued that we need to develop richer, deeper, and more practical
strategies of evaluation of this kind of technology. I have tried to set an
agenda of problems to be addressed and to offer one very preliminary
attempt at a four-stage evaluative approach. The four stages of evaluation
of interventions to create GMAs are: (1) we need to use conceptual analysis
to develop a justified, coherent, explicit account of moral status; (2) the
creation of GMAs should be done for good reasons as assessed by the
enhancement of the animals themselves or of other animals, including
humans; (3) the creation of GMAs should conform to two basic principles
in research ethics review, namely, ensuring that risks are reasonable and
that appropriate consent is obtained; and (4) creation of GMAs should not be
allowed to unreasonably harm others, either now or in the future.
I have argued in this chapter that four common objections to the creation of
GMAs are not valid: (1) creation of GMAs represents a threat to humanity; (2)
absolute deontological constraints preclude creation of GMAs; (3) creation of
GMAs is wrong because it is playing God; (4) creation of GMAs is to descend
down a slippery slope to the radical genetic alteration of human beings and
is precluded by the precautionary principle.
This is the beginning, not the end. One of the most urgent tasks for modern
bioethics is to elaborate on and develop a full-blooded normative framework
Page 31 of 42
for evaluating the creation of radically genetically modified animals. Science
is progressing exponentially, but this vital issue has to date received scant
ethical scrutiny.
71
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(1.) Lan Kang, Jianle Wang, Yu Zhang, et al., iPS Cells Can Support Full-Term
Development of Tetraploid Blastocyst-Complemented Embryos, Cell Stem
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(3.) GM Goat Spins Web Based Future, BBC News Online, August 21, 2005.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/889951.stm (accessed July 4, 2010).
(4.) Genzyme Homepage, July 4, 2010, at www.genzyme.com.
(5.) Sarah Sue Goldsmith, World's First Cloned Transgenic Goats Born,
Science Daily Magazine, May 12, 1999.
(6.) Julian Savulescu and Loane Skene, The Kingdom of Genes: Why Genes
from Animals and Plants Will Make Better Humans: Open Peer Commentary
on Franoise Baylis Animal Eggs for Stem Cell Research: A Path Not Worth
Taking, American Journal of Bioethics 8 (2008): 35.
(7.) Savulescu and Skene, Kingdom of Genes; Julian Savulescu, Human-
Animal Transgenesis and Chimeras Might Be an Expression of Our Humanity,
American Journal of Bioethics 3 (2003): 2225.
(8.) Karl Lenhard Rudolph, Sandy Chang, Han-Woong Lee, et al., Longevity,
Stress Response, and Cancer in Aging Telomerase-Deficient Mice, Cell 96
(1999): 70112; Maria A. Blasco, Telomeres and Human Disease: Ageing,
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(9.) John C. Guerin, Emerging Area of Aging Research Long-Lived Animals
with Negligible Senescence, Annals of the New York Academy of Science
1019 (2004): 51820.
(10.) House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Government
Proposals for the Regulation of Hybrid and Chimera Embryos, Fifth Report of
Sessions 20067 (HCP 2721).
(11.) Carole B. Fehilly, S. M. Willadsen, and Elizabeth M. Tucker, Interspecific
Chimaerism between Sheep and Goat, Nature 307 (1984): 63436.
(12.) Anon., The Bills of Qucks and Duails, Science, www.scienecmag.org/
cgi/content/full/299/5606/523 (accessed January 24, 2003).
(13.) Fehilly et al., Interspecific Chimaerism between Sheep and Goat;
Evan Balaban, Marie-Aime Teillet, and Nicole Le Douarin, Application
of the Quail-Chick Chimera System to the Study of Brain Development
Page 36 of 42
and Behavior, Science 241 (1998): 133942; Anon., Bills of Qucks and
Duails; Sylvia Pagn Westphal, Growing Human Organs on the Farm, New
Scientist 180 (2003): 45; Graa Almeida-Porada, Christopher D. Porada,
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Hematopoietic Stem Cells in Sheep, Blood 104 (2004): 258290; Graa
Almeida-Porada, Christopher Porada, Nicole Gupta, et al., The Human-Sheep
Chimeras as a Model for Human Stem Cell Mobilization and Evaluation of
Hematopoietic Grafts Potential, Experimental Hematology 35 (2007): 1594
600.
(14.) Linda MacDonald Glenn, A Legal Perspective on Humanity, Personhood,
and Species Boundaries, American Journal of Bioethics 3 (2003): 2728.
(15.) National Research Council (NRC), Committee on Guidelines for Human
Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell
Research (Washington, D.C: National Research Council, National Academy of
Sciences, 2005).
(16.) Jason Scott Robert, The Science and Ethics of Making Part-Human
Animals in Stem Cell Biology, FASEB Journal 20 (2006): 83845.
(17.) Natalie DeWitt, Biologists Divided over Proposal to Create Human-
Mouse Embryos, Nature 420 (2002): 255.
(18.) E.g., Franoise Baylis, The HFEA Public Consultation Process on Hybrids
and Chimeras: Informed, Effective, and Meaningful? Kennedy Institute of
Ethics Journal 19 (2009): 4162.
(19.) Franoise Baylis and Andrew Fenton, Chimera Research and Stem Cell
Therapies for Human Neurodegenerative Disorders, Cambridge Quarterly of
Healthcare Ethics 16 (2007): 195208.
(20.) At this point, twinning is no longer possible and organ systems,
including the nervous system, have begun to develop, marking a time of
higher level cellular co-ordination and the more obvious emergence of an
organism.
(71.) I would like to thank Dr. James Yeates for incredible and invaluable
help and directions to the literature. I have learnt much from his work and
benefitted significantly from his research. I would also like to thank Professor
Loane Skene for her many valuable discussions and our joint work on this
topic.
Page 37 of 42
(21.) In theory, the majority of the organism could be animal if enough
genes were transferred into the one-cell embryo. However, this is not on the
horizon at present.
(22.) Nigel Hawkes, Nobel Scientists Urge Fertility Watchdog to Back Hybrid
Embryos, The Times January 10, 2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/
news/article1291238.ece (accessed April 3, 2008).
(23.) Julian Savulescu, The Case for Creating Human-Nonhuman Cell Lines,
Bioethics Forum, January 24, 2007, http://www.bioethicsforum.org/research-
cloning-hybrid-embryos.asp.
(24.) Peter Braude, Stephen L. Minger, and Ruth M. Warwick, Stem Cell
Therapy: Hope or Hype? BMJ 330 (2005): 115960.
(25.) James A. Thomson, Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived From Human
Blastocysts, Science 282 (1998): 114547; M. William Lensch, Thorsten M.
Schlaeger, Leonard I. Zon, et al., Teratoma Formation Assays with Human
Embryonic Stem Cells: A Rationale for One Type of Human-Animal Chimera,
Cell Stem Cell 1 (2007): 25358.
(26.) Oliver Brstle, Building Brains: Neural Chimeras in the Study of
Nervous System Development and Repair, Brain Pathology 9 (1999):
52745; Nicole M. Le Douarin, The Avian Embryo as a Model to Study
the Development of the Neural Crest: A Long and Still Ongoing Story,
Mechanisms of Development 121 (2004): 10891102.
(27.) John Rennie, Human-Animal Chimeras: Some Experiments Can
Disquietingly Blur the Line between Species, Scientific American, June 27,
2005, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=human-animal-
chimeras.
(28.) Vclav Ourednik, Jitka Ourednik, Jonathan D. Flax, et al., Segregation
of Human Neural Stem Cells in the Developing Primate Forebrain, Science
293 (2001): 182024; Alysson R. Muotri, Kinichi Nakashima, Nicolas Toni,
et al., Development of Functional Human Embryonic Stem CellDerived
Neurons in Mouse Brain, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
USA 102 (2005): 1864448; Richard R. Behringer, Human-Animal Chimeras
in Biomedical Research, Cell Stem Cell 1 (2007): 25962; Gabsang Lee,
Hyesoo Kim, Yechiel Elkabetz, et al., Isolation and Directed Differentiation of
Neural Crest Stem Cells Derived from Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Nature
Biotechnology 25 (2007): 146875; Yechiel Elkabetz, Georgia Panagiotakos,
Page 38 of 42
George Al Shamy, et al., Human ES CellDerived Neural Rosettes Reveal a
Functionally Distinct Early Neural Stem Cell Stage, Genes & Development 22
(2008): 15265.
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Migration Allows Targeted Introduction of Neurons into the Embryonic Brain,
Neuron 15 (1995): 127585; Kenneth Campbell, Martin Olsson, and Anders
Bjrklund, Regional Incorporation and Site-Specific Differentiation of Striatal
Precursors Transplanted to the Embryonic Forebrain Ventricle, Neuron 15
(1995): 125973; Gord Fishell, Striatal Precursors Adopt Cortical Identities in
Response to Local Cues, Development 121 (1995): 80312.
(30.) Ourednik et al., Segregation of Human Neural Stem Cells in the
Developing Primate Forebrain.
(31.) Almeida-Porada et al., Human-Sheep Chimeras as a Model for Human
Stem Cell Mobilization and Evaluation of Hematopoietic Grafts Potential.
(32.) Mohammed A. Nassar, L. Caroline Stirling, Greta Forlani, et al.,
Nociceptor-Specific Gene Deletion Reveals a Major Role for Nav1.7 (PN1) in
Acute and Inflammatory Pain, PNAS 101 (2004): 1270611.
(33.) Savulescu, Human-Animal Transgenesis and Chimeras Might Be an
Expression of our Humanity, 2225.
(34.) I have rejected this position at length in Julian Savulescu, The
Human Prejudice and the Moral Status of Enhanced Beings, in Human
Enhancement, ed. Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 21150.
(35.) Henry T. Greely, Mildred K. Cho, Linda F. Hogle, et al., Thinking About
the Human Neuron Mouse, American Journal of Bioethics 7 (2007): 2740.
(36.) Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (London: Pimlico, 1999); Jeff
McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002); Savulescu, Human Prejudice and the
Moral Status of Enhanced Beings, 21150; Ingmar Persson and Julian
Savulescu, Moral Transhumanism, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
0: 114 (posted Nov. 12, 2010), doi:10.1093/jmp/jhq052, available
online at http://www.bep.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/18137/
Savulescu_Persson_Moral_Transhumanism.pdf (accessed April 2, 2011).
Page 39 of 42
(37.) Donald M. Broom, Welfare Assessment and Relevant Ethical Decisions:
Key Concepts, Annual Review of Biomedical Sciences 10 (2008): T79T90.
(38.) Dominic Wilkinson, Guy Kahane, and Julian Savulescu, Neglected
Personhood and Neglected Questions: Remarks on the Moral Significance
of Consciousness, American Journal of Bioethics 8 (2008): 3133; Guy
Kahane and Julian Savulescu, Brain Damage and the Moral Significance of
Consciousness, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 34 (2009): 626.
(39.) Fred Feldman, On the Intrinsic Value of Pleasures, Ethics 107 (1997):
44866; cf. Irwin Goldstein, Pleasure and Pain: Unconditional, Intrinsic
Values, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (1999): 25576.
(40.) S. L. Davis and P. R. Cheek, Do Domestic Animals Have Minds and the
Ability to Think? A Provisional Sample of Opinions on the Question, Journal
of Animal Science76 (1998): 202279; James A. Serpell, Factors Influencing
Human Attitudes to Animals and Their Welfare, Animal Welfare 13 (2004):
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Animal Use: A Qualitative Study of People's Views and Beliefs, Anthrozos
21 (2008): 3142; Sarah Knight, Aldert Vrij, Kim Bard, et al., Science versus
Human Welfare? Understanding Attitudes toward Animal Use, Journal of
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(41.) Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, trans. L. Infield (New York: Harper &
Row, [1930] 1963); Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1978); Alan Gewirth, On Rational Agency as the Basis of
Moral Equity: Reply to Ben-Zeev, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 12 (1982):
66771.
(42.) Ned Block, Some Concepts of Consciousness, in Philosophy of Mind:
Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. David J. Chalmers (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 20618.
(43.) Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds., The Great Ape Project (London:
Fourth Estate, 1993); David DeGrazia, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life
and Moral Status (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Antonio
R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of
Consciousness (London: Vintage Press, 2000).
(44.) I. J. H. Duncan and J. C. Petherick, The Implications of Cognitive
Processes for Animal Welfare Journal of Animal Science 69 (1991): 501722;
Marc Bekoff, Cognitive Ethology and the Treatment of Nonhuman Animals:
Page 40 of 42
How Matters of Mind Inform Matters of Welfare, Animal Welfare 3 (1994):
7596.
(45.) Bernard E. Rollin, Animal Rights and Human Morality (Buffalo, N.Y.:
Prometheus Books, 1981); Bernard E. Rollin, The Frankenstein Syndrome:
Ethical and Social Issues in the Genetic Engineering of Animals (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995); Robert Heeger and Frans W. A. Brom,
Intrinsic Value and Direct Duties: From Animal Ethics Towards Environmental
Ethics? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 14 (2000): 24152.
(46.) Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993); Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our
Traditional Ethics (Oxford: University Press, 1995); Michael Tooley, Abortion
and Infanticide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).
(47.) See further the essays in this Handbook by Michael Tooley as well as by
Sarah Chan and John Harris.
(48.) Joshua P. Johansen, Howard L. Fields, and Barton H. Manning, The
Affective Component of Pain in Rodents: Direct Evidence for a Contribution of
the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, PNAS 98 (2001): 807782.
(49.) Adapted from Julian Savulescu, Anders Sandberg, and Guy Kahane,
What is Enhancement and Why We Should Enhance Cognition, in
Enhancing Human Capacities, ed. Ruud ter Meulen, Guy Kahane, and Julian
Savulescu (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
(50.) Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom, eds., Human Enhancement (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009); Julian Savulescu, Genetic Interventions
and the Ethics of Enhancement of Human Beings, The Oxford Handbook
of Bioethics, ed. Bonnie Steinbock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
51635; John Harris, Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better
People (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007); Ruud Ter Meulen,
Julian Savulescu, and Guy Kahane, eds., Enhancing Human Capacities
(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); Julian Savulescu, Genetic Enhancement,
in A Companion to Bioethics, 2nd ed., ed. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer
(Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
(51.) Martha C. Nussbaum, Beyond Compassion and Humanity: Justice for
Animals? in Animal Rights, ed. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha C. Nussbaum
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 299320; Bernard E. Rollin, The
Page 41 of 42
Unheeded Cry: Animal Consciousness, Animal Pain and Science (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989).
(52.) Rollin, Unheeded Cry.
(53.) Savulescu et al., What is Enhancement and Why We Should Enhance
Cognition?; Julian Savulescu and Guy Kahane, Disability: A Welfarist
Approach. Clinical Ethics 6 (2011): 4551.
(54.) Savulescu and Kahane, Disability: A Welfarist Approach; and
Savulescu and Kahane, The Moral Obligation to Create Children with the
Best Chance of the Best Life. Bioethics 23 (2009): 27490.
(55.) For a comprehensive treatment of this kind of problem, see John
Broome, Weighing Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
(56.) Savulescu, Should We Clone Human Beings? Cloning as a Source of
Tissue Transplantion, Journal of Medical Ethics 25 (1999): 8795.
(57.) McMahan, Ethics of Killing.
(58.) Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
(59.) Savulescu and Kahane, Moral Obligation to Create Children with the
Best Chance of the Best Life.
Best Chance of the Best Life; and Kahane and Savulescu, Welfarist Account
of Disability.
Best Chance of the Best Life; Savulescu and Kahane, Welfarist Account of
Disability.
(62.) Julian Savulescu and Tony Hope, Ethics of Research, in The Routledge
Companion to Ethics, ed. John Skorupski (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010).
(63.) Savulescu, Genetic Interventions and the Ethics of Enhancement of
Human Beings; Savulescu and Hope, Ethics of Research.
(64.) Ruth R. Faden and Tom L. Beauchamp, A History and Theory of Informed
Consent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
(65.) Braude et al., Stem Cell Therapy.
Page 42 of 42
(66.) Thomas Douglas and Julian Savulescu, Synthetic Biology and the Ethics
of Knowledge, Journal of Medical Ethics 36 (2010): 68793.
(67.) Much of this section is taken from Savulescu, Human-Animal
Transgenesis and Chimeras Might be an Expression of Our Humanity, 2225.
(68.) Cecil Anthony J. Coady, Playing God, in Human Enhancement, ed.
Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009),
15580.
(69.) Douglas and Savulescu, Synthetic Biology and the Ethics of
Knowledge.
(70.) Julian Savulescu, The New Law on Admixed Embryos and the Genetic
Heritage of the Living Kingdom, http://www.practicalethicsnews.com/
practicalethics/2008/05/the-new-law-on.html (accessed May 28,
2008); Julian Savulescu, Looking for Biopolitical Trouble, http://
www.practicalethicsnews.com/practicalethics/2008/05/looking-for-bio.html
(accessed May 14, 2008).

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