Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Petition: Hybrids


As you may know a Bill shortly due to come before Parliament would permit experiments that much of the world would like to see outlawed.

Scientists will be permitted to create ‘true hybrids’, embryos that would have a human parent and a nonhuman parent. These embryos would be destroyed at 14 days but the question remains: what kind of creatures would they be? In every country law and ethics distinguishes human embryos from pig embryos.

What then should be said of a half human half pig embryo? I believe that we are in danger of following Dr Moreau in the novel by HG Wells, who says of his animal-human creations, ‘I went on with this research just the way it led me… I have never troubled about the ethics of the matter.’ If you like me are opposed to the creation of human nonhuman hybrids (and perhaps like me more than a little sceptical of the supposed necessity for the research) then please sign the following petitions and also pass on this information.




from Professor David A JonesProfessor of Bioethics St Mary's University College, Twickenham

2 comments:

gemoftheocean said...

Dante needed a 10th circle of hell for these people.

Physiocrat said...

The advocates of this sort of thing always try to claim it will cure a terrible disease. If all the terrible diseases could be cured we could live for ever (at least those could who were able to afford the treatment).

It is not difficult to see where this one leads. You allow it for a limited period eg ten days's development. Then someone thinks it would be a good idea to keep the THING a bit longer to see what would happen. And a bit longer... until you have a viable little monster.

I expect at this very moment "scientists" somewhere are trying to fiddle around with bird genes to breed a little dinosaur, when they succeed, which they will, it will escape and mate with a pigeon and all hell is let loose. They can't even keep foot and mouth disease contained in their laboratories.

This is what science without morality (or common sense) leads to.

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