One hundred and twenty years ago, H.G. Wells wrote a novel, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” about what happens when a scientist, in a mad pursuit for knowledge, creates human-animal hybrids. In a word—what happens is chaos. Wells called the book “an exercise in youthful blasphemy.” He may have said the same about the National Institutes of Health today.
The NIH, under the leadership of professing Christian Dr. Francis Collins, is proposing lifting a ban on taxpayer funding of experiments that splice human stem cells with animal embryos, creating human-animal chimeras.
Proponents, of course, downplay any ethical concerns related to creating new life forms using human genetic material—for either the humans or the animals involved. They’re committed to the practical benefits of this kind of research, hoping to create animal models of human diseases in order to prevent and treat illnesses. A more ambitious goal is the production of sheep, pigs, and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, and pancreases to use in transplants. Proponents assure us that additional restrictions and ethics panels will prevent hybrid horrors, or chimeras, with too-human brains or with the capacity to breed.
“It’s very, very welcome news that NIH will consider funding this type of research,” says Pablo Ross of the University of California, Davis. “We need funding to be able to answer some very important questions.”
However, if you think such research crosses a moral Rubicon, you wouldn’t be alone. Rod Dreher summarized what is happening in an article with the somewhat hyperbolic title, “Christian-Run Agency Embraces Pig-Man.” “It’s pretty clear,” Dreher wrote, “that this is just a prelude to something that’s a fait accompli. Besides, who is going to stand in the way of Science™ over a trivial matter like basic human dignity?”
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 