Should tax dollars support creating animal human embryos?

Inherent Rights of Human Beings

Last month, I wrote about how the United States was founded on the principle that human rights are inherent on Creation, as stated by the Declaration of Independence. It is the duty of Government to preserve and protect inherent rights.

Animal Being Rights

Animals are created beings too, but not human beings. Animals, unlike humans are considered property of the State or the private owner. Animals, much to the chagrin of many animal rights activists, are used to be of service to humans. Animals are experimented on in medical research. For example, new drugs are usually tested on animals before they are offered for human consumption.

Advocacy groups have developed to protect the rights of animals. Government has passed laws protecting even unborn animals, such as the eggs of the Bald Eagle. State law in Illinois and Alaska provide that in divorce proceedings a judge can consider the well-being of a companion animal in deciding who gets custody. Despite the plain language in the Declaration of Independence, born animals in Illinois and Alaska have more rights than unborn humans in divorce proceedings.

Creation of Animal Human Beings

Despite interest in expanding animal rights, animal experimentation for scientific purposes proceeds. Recently it was reported by NPR that scientists claiming to be concerned about a lack of human organs available for donation collaborated and succeeded in creating 132 embryos with cells from monkeys and humans.

Recall that an embryo is the youngest form of a being. An embryo grows and develops. As the embryo grows and develops the visible observations such as the size, number, location, movement, and interaction of the cells within the embryo or the developing organism are noted, so that a stage of development can be defined. The development of the embryo, a unique living organism, a unique living being, does not stop until death.

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In choosing to create a living embryo with both animal and human cells, scientists from China and elsewhere have teamed up with Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla California to inject human induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells into monkey embryos. The scientists watched 132 monkey embryos grow and develop for the first 19 days and were able to study how the human cells in the embryo communicated with the monkey cells.

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Professor Belmonte denies he is trying to generate a “new organism” and claims he just wants to understand how cells from different organisms (here monkey and human) communicate. Yet, note he is really studying not how organisms communicate, but how cells within each of the 132 single developing chimera or mixed species beings communicated for nineteen days. According to this article by Rob Stein of NPR, some ethicists and scientists are concerned that other scientists may let mixed species, or chimera embryos develop with human brain cells. Scientists question if a chimera animal/human with human brain cells should have their cells or our organs harvested for other human beings use. See here.

Tax Dollars and the Protection of the Right to Life

Currently the Dickey Wicker Amendment forbids federal funds from being used to create or destroy a human embryo for research. Will animal/human chimera embryos be a different class of being than human embryos? Will your tax dollars be requested to support creating animal/ human embryos for research? Or will America realize the duty of Government is to protect the inherent human right to life and not allow creation of sub or part humans?

Prediction

Our national government has some protections for human life but has failed to recognize but the unborn are also created human beings with the inherent right to life. If unborn humans are not legally protected and recognized as developing humans, how can we expect a being that is part animal and part human to have any dignity? If the unborn are treated like property, so will any chimaeras be treated like property. Without laws being passed forbidding the making of human/animal chimeras we can expect human/animal chimaeras to have a birthday. Someday there may be more birthdays for human/animal chimeras than there are for human beings. I hope this prediction does not come true.