Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
A Case against Chimeras: Part I
A Case against Chimeras: Part I
Apr 4, 2025 12:10 PM

This week will feature a five part series, with one installment per day, putting forth my presentation of a biblical-theological case against the creation of certain kinds of chimeras, or human-animal hybrids. Part I follows below.

Advances in the sciences sometimes appear to occur overnight. Such appearances can often be deceiving, however. Rare is the technological or scientific advance that does not follow years upon years of research, trial and error, failure and experimentation.

The latest ing from the field of biology and genetics hasn’t happened “overnight,” but things are advancing quickly. Some of the more interesting, and indeed troubling, developments have to do with what are known as “chimeras.”

The Chimera, of course, is a fire-breathing creature from Greek mythology, with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. In the munity, however, chimeras are organisms most often created by the intermixing of species.

We are faced now with the possibility of new technological advances giving humans the ability to do radically new things. A scientific pragmatism is at work, which reduces elements of the material world to their practical uses, and ignores the basic structures of creation.

In the case of genetic manipulation, however, can certainly does not imply ought. The respect of limits on human activity, based on the theological recognition about the identity of humans and animals, is what will serve as a check on the tendency in modern science to “functionalize” the world.

For years chimeras have been relatively non-controversial. Animal-animal chimeras are nothing new, given the intermixing of breeds and species, of dogs and mules, for example. Some kinds of human-animal interaction have a long precedent as well.

For many years insulin for diabetics originated in the organs of cows or pigs (animal insulin is no longer available in the United States, having been replaced by synthetic insulin). The first documented transplant of animal organs or tissue into a human being occurred in 1668, when Dutchman Job van Meeneren used pieces of a dog’s skull to repair a human cranium.

The recipients of such “xenotransplants” technically e chimeras, because of the shared cross-species tissues or organs. While animal to human transplants remain outside the medical mainstream, innovations in genetics over past decades have upped the ante with regard to the legitimacy of chimera research.

What is new about the current state of interspecies research is that the scale of the mixtures has been miniaturized, often to sub-cellular or genetic level. For example, in 2003, Chinese bined human cells with the eggs of rabbits, creating human-rabbit embryos. In 2004, researchers in Minnesota created pigs with human blood running through their veins. Scientists at Stanford University in California have considered creating mice with partially human brains, and the proposal won initial endorsement from the university’s ethics board.

The rationale for all this research is that testing and experiments done on animals is much more useful and reliable the closer the animal’s physiology is to being human. That’s why primates like marmosets are used in later stages of research where possible negative human reactions must be discovered.

In 2005, the National Academies of Science issued guidelines that, in part, address the creation of human-animal chimeras. The academy said that such hybrids are important in understanding human disease and in testing new drugs and human embryonic stem cells. There are seemingly limitless possibilities for the future of such research.

Genetic research and even modification, especially with regard to plantlife, can not be rejected out of hand as always immoral. Certain kinds of animal-animal chimeras may also be morally acceptable. But it is the permanence of fundamental changes to the human person that raise genetic manipulation to a level of concern above that of organ or tissue “xenotransplantion.”

Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, put it this way at a hearing on human-animal chimeras: “I think it’s very important as a Council that we make sure that we distinguish between using human or animal parts across species, such as insulin, heart valves, things of that nature, and mixing the genetic material that has proliferative capacity … there’s a huge difference between those two things.”

Indeed, as we will see in the remaining parts of the series, there are excellent biblical-theological reasons why the genetic intermixing of human and animal species is morally impermissible.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Fab labbing, Fu-Fu, and the ovine entrepreneur
The BBC reports today a great illustration of human creativity and the intersection of technology and subsidiarity. MIT has set up what they called Fab Labs (Fabrication Labs) in what many might consider the least likely places for technological invention. These Labs consist of basic tools and software than enable people in sometimes remote and rural locations to invent and fabricate the technology they need in their daily work. MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld: In a world of Fab Labs, you...
The right pass at the right time
If you haven’t heard of this story yet, read about what Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis did this past weekend. His expression passion for a dying boy, 10-year-old Montana Mazurkiewicz, transcends sports. Weis honored a promise to Montana despite the fact that he is a first-year coach in the big business of college football, in what might be the most scrutinized and storied programs in the country. In a personal visit to the boy last week, in addition...
CAFTA, prudence, and volleyball
After receiving some responses to a previous post (CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?), I thought I would post the the exchange with my most recent dissatisfied critic. Here’s to volleying! (I have edited the emails for confidentiality.) Mr. Phelps, It was with great interest that I recently read your blog entry “CAFTA/Culture of Life: Enemies?” as for some strange reason it recently appeared on the Google Alerts. I found it amusing how you worked John Paul’s teachings in without actually quoting...
Journalism professor calls for Helter Skelter
In 1969 Charles Manson and his gang set out to ignite a race war that pitted the wealthy white establishment against underprivileged blacks. The apocalyptic battle would be called “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles’ song written by Paul McCartney. The white Manson reasoned that America’s angry black population would eventually win this war; at which time he and his group would emerge from their Mojave Desert hideout to assume leadership over what he perceived to be an inferior race. es...
Spendthrift republicans
A wonderful piece by Deroy Murdock today on NRO. Though most fiscal conservatives understandably vote Republican, the record substantiates the theory that spending is less responsible when Congress is dominated by one party—either party—than when each party has enough votes to frustrate the other. Others have drawn attention to the problem of Republican pork, but Murdock does so in an especially devastating way. ...
Submerged subsidiarity
Because too much has already been said about the recent gulf hurricanes, I won’t put in my two cents. I will, however, direct the reader to the most insightful take on this situation that I have yet to stumble across. As you read it, think again about the importance of the definitions of the words we use, such as ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ as are discussed in the mentioned article. ...
Hurricane relief – Small organizations to the rescue
In the wake of overwhelming need of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thankfully a number of us are voicing irritation with the inquiry, “How important do you think that faith-based organizations are to helping people”? Before ANY organization — government agency of any kind or national nonprofit — made a move, faith organizations had already moved. In San Antonio, where several Russian students were among New Orleans evacuees, Victory Fellowship, a faith-based, privately funded substance abuse treatment program, simply did the...
Questions about the Red Cross
The Remedy, the Claremont Institute‘s blog, links to an article in the Los Angeles Times by Richard M. Walden, head of Operation USA, that raises concerns about how the Red Cross spends the money it receives for specific disasters. Walden levels some important and serious charges against the Red Cross, and may or may not be convincing depending on if you approve of the Red Cross’ fund-raising precedents and other activities. But Walden is undeniably right is when he raises...
The nose of a camel: The federal government and education
Federal involvement in education has grown steadily throughout the nation’s history, encroaching on what is still viewed by American’s as mostly a state and local responsibility. Kevin Schmiesing looks at a new book that examines U.S. education policy, the red tape and bureaucracy that has resulted, and the opposition to federal control that arose from parochial school administrators. Read the full text here. ...
Breathing with one lung?
Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna and Austria, the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative to the European Union, is once again urging a Roman Catholic-Orthodox alliance bat secularism, liberalism and relativism in Europe — and lands outside it. “The social and ethical teachings of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are extremely close, in many cases practically identical,” Bishop Hilarion said. “Why, then, should we not be able to reveal our unity on all these major issues urbi et orbi?” Since the election...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved