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from
TheNationalHealthFederation Website
increasing humanization of animals with emergent human mental and psychological capacities is the risk no one is sure of...
While the United States operates with an opt-in system for organ donation, Spain, the undisputed World's transplant leader, has an opt-out system as does Belgium, which France also adopted in 2017.
The Netherlands passed a law February 2018, with two years to implement, that makes all adults organ donors by default, unless they specifically opt out.
China handles organ shortages differently; the Chinese government has been exposed in forced organ harvesting of living prisoners. Organs are Big Money. Science and market-greed progress while ethics lag, the victim of a myriad of undecided questions.
Shoot first; ask questions later
about actions that play Russian roulette with our lives as we have
known them.
Heart disease alone claims over 600,000 American lives a year, yet only 5,000 heart transplants are performed worldwide.
With 116,000 people on national waiting lists for transplant organs as of August 2017 and only 34,000 transplants performed in 2016, ill people and the market are poised for a solution.
While we wait for the first successful organ 3D/4D bio-printing, medicine's next big frontier, [i] the controversial chimera appears a viable solution for those who have irresponsibly failed their own organs or their organs have genetically failed them or succumbed to environmental manipulations.
Along with preventive
lifestyles, the ethical solution, however, is 3D or 4D organ
printing that is based not on aborted fetal cells but the body's own
cells.
Despite ocular, neurodegenerative, and other applications, fiery controversy surrounds chimera and rightfully so.
Humans and animals have mixed throughout the Ages in various ways.
Beyond an initial repulsion,
Foundations matter...
Arguments begin with taking one life to provide another's; an entire emerging industry based upon aborted human fetuses is suspect particularly when Planned Parenthood staff reveal financial incentivizing for meeting monthly corporate abortion quotas. [ii]
Dead babies are big business and an integral part of emerging tech where chimeras are concerned.
But there are other
concerns as well…
For transplant hopefuls, the big news out of Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte's Salk Institute Lab was the creation of human-pig chimeras, [iii] fetal pigs with human cells mixed in.
Yet,
Hopefully, bioethical issues will be decided by the time technical problems are solved, such as increasing the percentage of human cells in pigs by using the CRISPR gene technique.
For a viable transplant,
at least one percent of the embryo's cells must be human. Until
then, organ growth is a long way off, so 3D/4D printing still stands
a chance.
Kaku cited radical futuristic changes, advancements in technology, robotics, and the amalgamation of species including AI-enhanced humans.
I cited the need for a Bill of Rights for the Race of Mankind, fresh guidance, and intervention in a Brave New World, much the same as our founding fathers like Jefferson and Adams saw the need for a new set of standards and guidelines in the New World.
In our day, we need not merely the recommendations or proposals that Ethics Committees provide, which may or may not be adhered to, but a global standard and commitment to respect and protect the sanctity of life.
This is a war on humanity
- on what it means to be human.
Driving the international conversation is a need for China, North Korea, and Russia in particular to cooperate versus compete. Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in 2017 that the control of artificial intelligence (AI) will be crucial to global power noting that it would be strongly undesirable if someone wins a monopolist position.
The same can be said for the potential dangers of weaponized chimera.
For instance, concerning Russia's dominance in cyber-warfare, one could easily imagine one of their bot groups taking control of an on-going chimera lab and wreaking unimaginable havoc.
If new lifeforms with a strong resemblance to human beings, either emotionally or physically, begin to appear and even populate on Earth, life will be forever changed.
We are fast sailing into
uncharted territory without a safe harbor in sight.
When human stem cells are introduced into the animal, it is hoped that the human cells will assume formation of the missing organ, thus creating a human liver, kidney, heart, or other organ for harvest from the animal for use in a transplant operation.
In late 2015, at the same time I was researching material for my first article on this subject (which published in 2016), [vi] scientists had been gathering preliminary information, observing cell growth and cell fate, deducing how great the contribution of human cells is to the animals' bodies, and then presumably destroying research samples in 28 days.
Scientific progress has
since been rapid but fails to keep pace with ethical decision-making
on a global level.
Another three dozen pig transfers have taken place outside the U.S.
Yet, biological
humanization balances tenuously against the risk of moral
humanization; the great fear being creation of a novel sentient
being with human qualities...
Offering a disturbing analysis of potential outcomes, Nakauchi noted current contributions by human cells to the animals' bodies appear to be relatively small.
Michio Kaku notes,
This is never truer than for health-freedom advocates today.
We need an expanded definition of health freedom as prior delineations are obsolete in the face of novel life forms.
Stephen Hawking admits further progress in science and technology will create,
But there are scientific and social implications to be considered; namely the humanization of animals.
Chimerism concerns encompass crossing inviolable species borders. [x] These are real concerns leading to real questions; particularly if brought to term: do we put this new creation in a zoo or allow it to live among us?
Our days of being fully human and being fully animal are numbered, the distinction forever blurred and now compounded with AI/human amalgamation.
Elon Musk notes,
Progress must find its balance.
Stem-cell research was held up during the last Bush Administration due to fears it would encourage increased abortion rates. Criticism abounds, primed by that action, that the "religious right," which now includes Muslims due to the use of pigs in chimera research, will delay progress.
Yet science unchecked
against the moorings of ethics, human dignity, and sanctity is
unwise particularly in the face of the sheer magnitude of unknown
variables versus known benefits.
However, according to Ethics Committee publications, the "retaining human dignity" argument is flawed. The human is not diminished by an animal becoming more human.
Additional ethical challenges concern human-cell contribution to chimeric brains and any human contribution to germ cells.
Safety measures mandate sterilization at a minimum. The great unknown is animals starting to possess human characteristics and features. Others suggest that such characteristics as linguistic capacity, rationality, and a capacity for sufficiently social relationships are inherent only in human relationships.
Animal sciences such as,
...suggest otherwise. [xii]
Embryo complementation is
a concern because the human cells can multiply, specialize, and
potentially contribute at will to any part of the developing
animal's body.
Yet he asks the wise cautionary question,
In the "smart mouse" model, [xiv] researcher Steve Goldman cites,
Goldman continues,
Otherwise said, the mice became measurably smarter.
The team stopped short of putting human
cells into monkeys and great apes due to ethical concerns.
After suffering a massive stroke that left him with "locked-in syndrome," he blinks his way through the alphabet with the help of a friend to write his experiences of being fully cognizant and unable to "get out."
This is the great fear of the results of chimera research and is one reason why great apes have been excluded as candidates.
How would we know? Helen
Keller found a way out. Ethics demand a sufficient reason to pause.
Hiromitsu Nakauchi himself admits,
The California Institute
of Regenerative Medicine, a State agency instituted 10 years ago to
bypass political interference from Washington, provided a $6 million
grant for Nakauchi's work.
But when the military gets involved we must ask "why..."?
Dr. Daniel Garry, a cardiologist heading a chimera project at the University of Minnesota was awarded a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Army to attempt growing human hearts in pigs. Dr. Garry was one of 11 who co-authored a letter in November 2015 criticizing the NIH for creating,
Yet neither they, nor others, have weighed the ethics and come up with a universal agreement.
Instead, the NIH might be
commended for exercising wise caution until answers emerge regarding
animals that could possess human consciousness and inadvertently be
released into the wild or society.
The last thing we need is to turn over this vital and crucial decision-making process to government, the pharmaceutical sector, the medical sector, or the Pope.
Research must progress but within ethical bounds.
We need an expanded definition of health freedom as prior delineations, which apply to human-only models and human-only post-embryonic stage, are obsolete in the face of novel life forms.
The creation of an artificial embryo, [xvi] conceived without egg or sperm, raises more ethical implications.
The questions fall into a
seeming spiritual and intellectual vacuum as science marches on to
slake the market's thirst for problem-solving innovation.
These two laws have been the basis of the old British Common Law and are inherent in all main religions.
The first forms the basis
of contract law: to do what you say you will. The second: to not
encroach on humans or their property. The disregard of these laws
undermines civilizations and starts wars.
There is too much risk in contract-law violations for simple trust that the chimera will indeed be destroyed in 28 days.
In a theoretically lucrative and competitive climate or one fueled by,
...basic human need for innovation, more reliable, firmly accountable boundaries need to be set with strict penalties for their disregard.
This places a greater
responsibility and agreement among nations regarding chimera
development. The tenuous trust and shared vulnerability is too great
to assume without firm boundaries should these two principles of law
be violated; and if history serves, they will be.
Technology sweeps over us like a tsunami and yet we are making judgments as we go along integrating new research, data, and applications with scarcely time to consider their long-term impact.
Together, we must consider carefully the creation of this New World and demand respect for health, health freedom, and the basic laws of civilization as new life forms challenge current models and boundaries.
Critical thinking, of which I have written much in the past, must be applied here to prevent any disasters by government or business.
Just as countries lose
their unique flavor through mass immigration, so humans stand to
lose their sanctity, sacredness, and distinctiveness through fusion
for the sake of a science-driven market.
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