The Ethics of Enhancing Animals, Specifically the Great Apes
Guido David Núñez-Mujica
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Paths to Enhancing
Image 4 shows Oliver, the “humanzee”. Oliver was a chimpanzee that exhibited a number of striking similarties to humans.
Image 4
For example, Oliver almost always walked on two legs. He also had less corporal hair and his jaw had a different shape than other chimpanzees. Oliver was screened to see if he was a hybrid or something like that, but it turned out that he had the same karyotype as a standard chimpanzee. This tells us that the striking mutations that we see in Oliver must be due to regulatory genes. Recently, the chimpanzee genome was sequenced and it was found that we cannot distinguish what is genetically different between human beings and chimpanzees.
The next project is to understand the interaction or regulation of the chimpanzee genome with the environment in order to discover what makes us different. If we do this, we could use that information for many applictions, including human fetal neural grafts; artificial chromosomes with genes that change the expression of other genes; RNA interference (iRNA); artificial implants (which would be far and away from our current capacity); and direct modification of developmental genes (such as room-for-thought mutation[1]).
I think an analogy can be made between how the genome works and how an orchestra works that allows us to understand why we can look very different from a chimpanzee, yet have the same genes. An orchestra can play very different pieces of music just by changing the time when an instrument is played. It is the same with genes. Changing what happens when genes activate or deactivate can yield striking results.
Ethics of Enhancing from Two Points of View
Let’s return to the opposing points of view on how apes should be treated as we examine the ethical questions surrounding this topic. Enhancing apes raises many questions. If one thinks that apes have no human rights, we do not have to worry whether they, as a species, are suffering or not. If one believes, as many people do, that humanity is sacred and should not be touched, then it would not be ethical to merge humanity with "lesser beings". However, if apes and humans are merged, the result would be half-human. In that case, would it be ethical to enslave the resulting animal in the same way that apes are currently enslaved?
On the other hand, if one believes that apes should have complete human rights, then we should not manipulate them just for our sake. If we do manipulate them for their own welfare, we must be sure that we are not hurting them. The enhancing must not be painful or performed with any prejudice.
We could also adopt the position that apes are happy the way they are and do not need enhancing. Enhancing would be for our own curiosity, not for their welfare.
Let’s address whether or not enhanced apes would end up being enslaved. Currently, there are laws and regulations that dictate what is possible in the treatment of chimpanzees. If we create chimpanzees that are even closer to us genetically, we will heighten their status under these regulations and we may have to give them more rights because they will be more similar to us. Even with a man-centered point of view, we simply could not enslave these creatures because they would be part-human, with even more intelligence and self-awareness than they already have. They will have a sort of biological artificial intelligence.
Footnote(back to top)
1. A room-for-thought mutation is one that inactivates a protein involved in developing jaw muscles in humans. Apes do not have this mutation. It is believed that the occurrence of this mutation added plasticity to the cranial vault and allowed the brain to grow, because screening shows that the mutation arose approximately at the same time our ancestors began to develop bigger brains.
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