SCIENTISTS have been warned that their latest experiments may accidently produce monkeys with brains more human than animal.
In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.Critics argue that if these fetuses are allowed to develop into self-aware subjects, science will be thrown into an ethical nightmare.
An eminent committee of American scientists will call for restrictions into the research, saying the outcome of such studies cannot be predicted and may in fact produce subjects with a ’super-animal’ intelligence.
[...] The committee will also examine how detectable differences in the monkey’s brains, for example emotional or behavioural changes, or if the monkeys developed ’self awareness’, could be measured - and dealt with.
Shit! It’s not like science isn’t already an ethical nightmare anyway, right?
- END -
ASSOCIATED CONTENT @TMBCHR (Auto-Generated)
- No more lazy monkeys
- Monkeys on the rampage
- Mirror Neurons
- Stolen article
- Nova Spivak on Associative Search
9 Comments
Just science? Sometimes I think our species is just one big ethical nightmare, lol. This ties into some of your earlier posts on consciousness — if, in fact, you could produce a monkey with a human brain, I wonder what type of consciousness it might have. I would like to think that nature would just end its misery soon after its birth, but who knows.
Apparently these scientists never saw ‘Planet of the Apes’.
Everyone take a breath for a moment and just think…
Who doesn’t want a friendly monkey to drink beers and play GTA with?!
Hey, why NOT give monkeys a little more “oomp!” in the brains department? We might end up learning a little something about ourselves, like the scientific basis for our own species’ ongoing love affair with excreta-based humor.
we have enough shit flinging from politics and science and religion to warrant engineering competition. besides science wont have an ethical problem. oppenhiemer proved that.and the pope? ethical vacuum cleaner.
From Archaeology: The Science of Once and Future Things:
“Anthropologists have even reported seeing great apes dance in lines and circles [Damon, 1957:1]”
This and the ability to make/use basic tools and learn some sign language, I think is display enough of intelligence.
Where may I ask is the link to the full story? Where I reside (Madison, WI) there is a growing interest in what has been/is being done to primates, such as a talk I missed last night titled “UW Primate Vivisectors A to Z” to the Primate Research Museum. I would not be surprised if this was being done in my city.
I added in the link. Sorry!
Dude… it’s DEVO come to life!
HAHA. I love the fact that it says “may accidentally produce”… I’m pretty sure that the science community is secretly thinking “you mean, hopefully… because that’s why we were injecting them with human brain cells, wasn’t it, guys?”
And I agree with Alistair, It should be interesting when they start running for office.