Chimeras

I have to admit that I am fascinated by the idea of chimeras. The very ghoulishness of it makes me want to read all I can about it -- the moral issues, the ethical issues, and the science issues. The USPTO's recent rejection of a patent on an animal-human hybrid caused me to want to do a bit of reading on the subject. Here's a sampling of some of the great articles out there about this topic:

Gods and Monsters:

ON APRIL FOOLS' DAY 1998, within hours of reading U.S. patent application No. 08/993,564, the Honorable Bruce Lehman did something no other commissioner of patents had done in the 200-year history of America's oldest government agency. He stepped before a cluster of microphones and announced that the patent would never be approved. No half-human "monsters" would be patented, Lehman declared angrily, or any other "immoral inventions."

Of Mice, Men, and In-Between:

In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.

In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.

In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls.

These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists, stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy:

But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?

There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.

What Is Too Human?:

Nevertheless, mixing human and animal genes and cells does pose some moral conundrums. First, consider the possibility of crossbreeding humans with other primates. There is some evidence that such mixing might succeed. Researcher J. Michael Bedford reported in 1977 that human sperm could penetrate the protective outer membranes of gibbon eggs. So far, from what we know, no one has attempted to create a human/chimpanzee hybrid. But would that be wrong?

Oliver The Mutant Chimp:

A chimpanzee named Oliver has stumped and astonished scientists for nearly twenty years. He is physiologically unusual, with a lack of hair on his chest and head, and a jawline and ears that are shaped differently from normal chimps. But more notably, Oliver very much acts human. Way too human.