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Part Human, Part Monkey

July 26, 2021

Summary

Recent Experiments on Human-monkey Embryonic Hybrids Are a Cause for Concern.

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, when you read this headline it is rather sensational and immediately you think, “Well, this is a cause for concern.” – “Scientists create early embryos that are part human and part monkey.”[1] We have some research on this from one of our Reasonable Faith chapter directors who sent us this and wanted us to take a look at it. This is apparently a recent thing. It is an attempt to farm human organs for transplant. In order to develop the means for human organs for transplant, scientists have successfully implanted human stem cells in monkeys. Bill, why does this immediately kind of make us a little concerned when we read a headline like that?

DR. CRAIG: I think that it just shows the absolute necessity of having ethical controls upon scientific experimentation. Not everything that scientists can do should be done. Not everything is ethical. This idea of creating embryos that are a mix of human and monkey cells is just frightening to think that they would be attempting to create this sort of teratological hybrid that they could then use to harvest organs from. And, you know, it's always done with such a noble purpose – the noble purpose is always there: “We're going to save lives. We're going to advance medical science. Wouldn't you want someone to get a liver transplant who desperately needed it? If we can achieve this by injecting monkeys with human cells to create these then doesn't that justify it?” And I want to say, “No.” The end does not necessarily justify the means.

KEVIN HARRIS: One way that we can kind of cut to the chase here is that the scientists who were interviewed for this article said, “We're not trying to create a monstrosity or any monster; we are doing this to try to understand how cells from different organisms communicate with one another.” Because they're trying to fix a major problem in medicine, and that is organ transplants. However, there are rogue scientists, the article says, that need to be controlled because there will be, based on research that may not want to go that far, rogue scientists who will go further. So therefore ethical grounds need to be set.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. Absolutely. And don't be fooled by their protestations that they're not trying to create monsters, that their efforts are inspired by noble motivations to help find transplant organs, and all of this sort of thing. Of course they're going to try to justify what they're doing by appealing to these great consequences. But that does not justify this kind of medical experimentation with human materials. In the course of my study of the historical Adam, I ran into a similar case that was reported in Science magazine, July 31st of 2020 – just last year. And what this team did was they took a different type of primate called a marmoset and they injected human genes into these marmoset embryos to see how this would stimulate brain development. And they reported that when they injected these human genes into these monkey brains, that the monkey brains underwent enormous advances and began to develop at unprecedented rates because these human genes were affecting the brain development in these marmosets. Listen to what the scientific team says in this article. I want to quote to you from the article.[2] They say,

In light of potential unforeseeable consequences with regard to postnatal brain function [in other words, if they were to allow this thing to be born with a part-human brain], we considered it a prerequisite – and mandatory from an ethical point of view – to first determine the effects of [the gene] expression on the development of fetal marmoset [brains].

To this end, we collected fetuses after Caesarian section at day 101 of the 150-day gestation, a stage . . . which corresponds to fetal human neocortical development at about 16 weeks after conception.

So they aborted these fetuses out of ethical concern for what would happen if they allowed them to develop and be born. This corresponded to abortions that would be done at 16 weeks on human babies (which is like four months – well into the development in the growth of the fetus). And it astonished me in reading this to think that they saw aborting these fetuses as the ethical thing to do rather than to allow them to develop. It's like trying to justify one evil by committing another. So I find these sorts of experiments to be extremely troubling, and we have got to have some kind of ethical oversight and controls on what these scientists are doing in studying fetal development.

KEVIN HARRIS: You've seen a couple of those articles in your research on the book as well.

DR. CRAIG: Certainly this one. There are lots of interesting experiments about the effects of these genes on brain development in humans. But it's quite another thing to take these genes and inject them into the embryos of lower primates like marmosets (or macaques I think in the article you were quoting) and see what happens to them, and what kind of brain development they have. This really is creating monsters.

KEVIN HARRIS: Kirstin Matthews is a fellow for science and technology at Rice University. She says, “My first question is: Why?” and “I think the public is going to be concerned, and I am as well, that we're just kind of pushing forward with science without having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do.” That's from the Baker Institute there at Rice University. Dr. Matthews. Another thing is that the Salk Institute has teamed with Chinese scientists in this experiment. Nothing against the Chinese people. We love you, but I'm not real thrilled with Chinese scientists right now!

DR. CRAIG: Boy, isn't that the truth. I mean, if there's ever a scientific community that exercises its experiments without proper ethical oversight and supervision, it would be in China. You're right. This is very, very disturbing.

KEVIN HARRIS: By the way, these mixed-species embryos are called chimeras, as in fire-breathing creatures from Greek mythology that are part-lion, part-goat, and part-snake. They've done that as just kind of a tongue-in-cheek labeling of it.

DR. CRAIG: And a chimera is a monster. It's a teratological combination of different sorts of animals, including humans.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Belmonte acknowledges the ethical concerns. But he stresses that his team has no intention of trying to create animals with the part-human, part-monkey embryos . . .

So they are worried about rogue scientists.

DR. CRAIG: Don't believe these protestations and these claims that this is not what we're trying to do. That is just irrelevant to what they are actually doing.

KEVIN HARRIS: Obviously this comes back down to theology and philosophy, ethical concerns, as to why we shouldn't do that. A couple of insights here. First of all, I wonder for anyone who may be a naturalistic scientist or community that doesn't believe that we are created in the image of God and that life is sacred – what would stop them from wanting to go ahead and do all these combinations and come up with these monstrosities?

DR. CRAIG: For the naturalist, he might say, “Look, all I'm doing is repeating the evolutionary process that brought us here in the first place.” Now, that's not exactly true, but nevertheless on naturalism it is hard to see why you're not free to just do whatever you want.

KEVIN HARRIS: Sure. And another question was brought up theologically is – suppose scientists are able to create a half-monkey, half-human hybrid and it turns out that this creature is actually superior to humans, and it's possible that this is part of God's plan foreordained so they could bring about the next step in human evolution? That's one of those dorm room debates at three o'clock in the morning that you have, but I don't know if I buy that.

DR. CRAIG: No. It's too dangerous to even contemplate doing such a thing. I think that we need to cut this off just right at the root before it gets out of hand.

KEVIN HARRIS: Yeah. There are certain things that this is not. There is legitimate stem cell research, and there are things like being able to maybe use the part of a baboon in order to craft some parts in surgery and things like that. That would not be the same thing, right?

DR. CRAIG: I would agree with you except with regard to stem cells. We would be talking about adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. Because embryonic stem cells would be destroying the life of these embryos in order to harvest their cells, and that's the most sinister and cynical view of human beings – that they are just sources of biomass that can be farmed and used in this way. So it's quite a difference between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. And from my understanding, there's no medical justification for using embryonic stem cells. Anything that can be achieved through them can be achieved through using adult stem cells.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we wrap up today, this is why we have – don't you think? – philosophy of science; that would consider the ethics of what the scientific method or the scientific enterprise would do. Am I correct?

DR. CRAIG: Absolutely. I myself am not an ethicist, much less someone working in scientific ethics. But there are those who do work in this field. These sorts of experiments just underline so emphatically the importance of their work as ethicists.[3]