Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
‘The Dignity of the Human Form’
‘The Dignity of the Human Form’
Mar 17, 2025 6:16 AM

Spurred on by the specter of miraculous cures to horrible diseases, Irving Weissman, director of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, is working on bining human brains and mice. The Stanford Daily reports that Dr. Weissman “has worked with the transfer of human neurons to the brains of mice for several years now. He has already bred mice whose brains posed of 1 percent human neurons, finding that transplanted human brain cells could successfully connect to a mouse brain.” Such experiments yield what are known as “chimeras,” the creation of posed of material from multiple species.

But what a mere 1% can’t tell you, Dr. Weissman bets the other 99% will. Dr. Weissman “wants to initiate a new experiment by transplanting human brain-stem cells to an inbred strain of mice whose natural brain cells die before the mice’s birth. Human brain cells would then replace the mice’s own, creating a breed of mice whose brains posed entirely of human neurons.”

This kind of transplantation seems to be a rather different from other kinds of brain transplantation that has been discussed before, since the brain-stem cells would develop once they had been implanted in the mice. With respect to the possibility of the transplant of pletely developed brain, Dr. Ben Carson, who has been director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions for over 20 years and is a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, says, “As a brain surgeon, let me say we don’t have to worry about transplanting human brains into other animals because we’re already dealing with billions and billions of neurons and hundreds of billions of interconnections, and it’s not going to happen.”

But even this supposedly plex kind of transplant proposed by Dr. Weissman has been acknowledged by him that it “may not even work at all.” For the time being, Dr. Weissman’s proposals are on hold until a clear scientific consensus is reached on the ethical dimensions of the research.

Recent testimony given by members of the President’s Council on Bioethics attests to the diversity of opinion on these issues. Dr. William Hurlbut, himself a consulting professor in human biology at Stanford University and who was not quoted in the Stanford Daily article, says:

It is possible using certain technologies to transplant whole modules of developing portions of the embryo from one species to another. This has been done by Le Dourian and Balabon, where they actually transplanted a portion of the developing brain, early neurologic system at that stage, and got the crowing capacities of a quail put into a chick.

And so he actually transplanted a unit of behavior. Just to draw that a little farther, I think we should also be careful to not do that with elements of human form. In other words, it isn’t just a matter of cognition that we’re concerned about. The categories of our world, the conceptual categories that organize our world provide an intelligible world to us. These are not to be taken lightly.

The way we understand our world is by the separations within the world. For very serious purposes we might mix those, but I think we should be careful not just to see that as a matter of inner psychological or cognitive functions, but we need to preserve the human form, the dignity of the human form.

Diana J. Schaub, a professor of political science at Loyola College in Maryland, discusses a study on the subject and argues that “transplanting human neural stem cells into a mouse no more transforms the mouse than transplanting a pig heart valve into a person transforms the person. All of the rules that the authors mend seems to me sensible, and although they don’t acknowledge it, those rules are based on preserving species integrity. Transfer the smallest number of cells necessary; use dissociated human stem cells rather than larger tissue transplants; and select host animals carefully, preferring distant relations over our nearer primate cousins.”

When Dr. Alfonso Gómez-Lobo, professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University, discusses the possibility, he says:

Let me start with the most extreme and highly unlikely case. Suppose human neurological stem cells are transplanted into a primate so that the animal acquired some key human features. It seems to me that this would be morally troublesome in spite of the often heard argument that there’s nothing wrong with enhancing the capabilities of an animal.

In my opinion, this procedure should be viewed the other way around. It is not that an animal is thereby enhanced, but rather that what is essentially human is really debased. It is closer to the production of a human being in the wrong body.

And I often imagine what it would be like to wake up one day only to realize that I have the body of a chimpanzee. Luckily, we’re told that this is virtually impossible because the human body as we know it seems to be absolutely necessary for the development of the human mind, and I’m thinking about size of the brain, the cranial space, et cetera.

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
Asia’s war on poverty
Asia is home to about 2/3 of the world’s poorest people. Underdeveloped nations in Asia (the same is true elsewhere) struggle to maintain a foothold in an ever-globalizing world economy. An approach to helping solve some of these problems was explained in The Japan Times today. Lennart Bage, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development for the United Nations, writes that since 1990 the per capita e of the entire Asian region has increased by 75 percent. What was...
Surviving socialism
In this month’s issue of Esquire, Ken Kurson extols the virtues of Sanofi-Aventis, the world’s third largest pany. “A Drugmaker reborn” (subscription required) essentially describes why Kurson thinks Sanofi is a great investment, but between his praises of pany sits this tidbit: And yet controlling costs is one of the things I like best about Sanofi. It’s why I believe in its strategy of growth through acquisition. And it’s why I think the merger with Aventis will be so effective....
‘Monkey Business’
In the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, the article “Monkey Business,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt examines economist Keith Chen’s research with capuchin monkeys and money. Here’s another case of science, in this case economics, being used to “prove” the continuity between (and therefore equivalency of) humans and animals. The implicit message is that we are really not all that different from our fellow creatures, nor that special. This seems almost absurd, but it’s...
Fear of the European Union
With France voting NO for the ratification of the EU Constitution, a spotlight now follows the current voting on the same issue in the Netherlands. The world is expecting the Dutch to follow suit with the French, although not necessarily for all the same reasons. The constitution of the EU grants more power to the developing centralized EU government in Brussels. Many fear that this will lead to a diminishing role of their own “state” governments and in turn cause...
Good question
Edward Southerland wonders, “Does the job description for school administrators require that you leave mon sense at home when you go to work?” One of the reasons he asks the question: In Tennessee, the student giving the valedictory speech started with a joke. “You have given us the minimum required attention span to master any station at any McDonald’s anywhere.” The next line was “Of course, I’m only kidding. Eagleville is a fine institution of higher learning with a superb...
Bono: aid or trade?
Bono: Heart in the right place, head not quite there yet For those PowerBlog readers who don’t follow the world of rock and roll, the man in the photo on the left is Bono (aka Paul Hewson), the lead singer of the biggest rock and roll band in the world – U2. (I pelled to mention that I am Acton’s resident U2 Superfan: the proud owner of The Complete U2, regular attender of U2 concerts – I took that photo...
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary Spring Banquet
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary’s Spring Banquet. Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, spoke at Calvin Theological Seminary’s Spring Banquet, endorsing the school’s Dutch neo-Calvinist heritage. “Calvin Theological Seminary is an underappreciated asset in the evangelical world. There’s nothing the evangelical world needs more than a bracing dose of Kuyperian theology,” he said. The speech also marked the announcement of the establishment of the Charles W. Colson Presidential Chair at the seminary. Thanks to a major gift from the Richard...
Christian hostility to capitalism
I read an interesting article by Dan Griswold today in Cato’s Letter, a quarterly publication of the Cato Institute where Griswold is Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies. Griswold’s article, “Faith, Commerce, and Freedom,” traces the history of the distrust that many Christians feel towards capitalism — and the resulting push for big government to regulate. Griswold points out that William Blake, a British Christian poet (1757–1827) wrote a poem titled “Jerusalem” which, in turn, was turned into...
‘God Makes No Mistakes’
‘God Makes No Mistakes’ You may not know it, but Loretta Lynn is a pretty good theologian. She’s so good, in fact, that some contemporary theologians, open theists like Clark Pinnock, for example, could take some lessons in orthodoxy. The lyrics to a song off her most recent record, Van Lear Rose, that illustrates her high view of God. Here are the words to “God Makes No Mistakes”: Why, I’ve heard people say Why is this tree bent Why they...
Corporate blogging
The AP passes along this story about the use of blogs by corporations and executives. Some of the good advice includes: “Don’t go toward fake blogs. Don’t launch character blogs. Use a blog for what it’s for, transparency,” said Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at CooperKatz & Co., a New York PR firm. … He and other PR professionals can rattle off blogs gone wrong — usually “fake blogs” that stir up the ire of bloggers by hiding...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved