So there's this NY Times article: Ethicists Offer Advice for Testing Human Brain Cells in Primates
I guess we should be scared of this kind of thing, but why? Seriously, are our knee-jerk fears of monkeys with human brains based on anything other than a really kick-ass movie from the late 60s.
I mean, who's to say orangutans couldn't help us figure out this whole global warming thing? Imagine the impact a silver-back gorilla who could memorize a play-book would have on the NFL. At the very least, with a rapidly aging population, the world is desperately in need of a new underclass to clean our toilets, haul away our trash, and care for our children . . .
So I say don't bother testing for cures for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, just jam the monkeys brains full of human neurons and all that stem cell stuff (I admit I don't fully understand the science here), and see what happens.
Have some ethical reservations? Ask yourself this, do you like being a human? Are emotions a good thing or a bad thing? Logic--is that something you value? (And let's face it, don't you even kind of like being neurotic too?)
Well, if we got the goods and we got the power to share it, isn't the ethically irresponsible thing here really keeping all this consciousness to ourselves?
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2 comments:
Matt,
I think you may have the makings of a really interesting story in this posting, with your questions about how brain-enhanced primates might fit into our world. I'm picturing a sci-fi kind of thing with a lot of possibilities.
But I think the truth behind this ethical debate has little to do with how much consciousness or cognition human cells might impart to a primate brain. It's the fact that these higher primates already have a great deal of both that makes ethicists (and anyone who has worked with such primates) reluctant to subject them to experimentation we would be unwilling to perform on humans.
As for human consciousness and ethics, I'm sorry to say I see increasingly less evidence of both these days.
Thanks for the thoughts, Sharon.
It's interesting to think about the issue of whether or not "human consciousness" is superior to "monkey consciousness" or just different. After all, we know that apes are able to communicate, display emotion and apparently even barter and negotiate.
What we recognize we call evidence of "higher" thought, but whose to say all that "lower" thought is just another form of "higher" thought we're too primitive to recognize?
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