Ragland,

Thanks for starting this thread, and thanks to Keith for extending
on it.

Hybridization techniques work both ways, of course -- such that, not
only can animals be hybridized through introduction of human genes
into their zygotes to make chimeras (as in the provision of current
laboratory mice with human immune systems) but, also, the same
technology is capable of producing primarily human chimeras with
characteristics of animals. Chimerization is much easier than
post-fertilization gene manipulations such as, say, inserting a
"missing gene" into a human, during gestation or post partally.

With the mouse-human chimeras being old hat now, the prospect
of our making a rabbit-human chimera doesn't seem quite so stark.
But those who consider part-human chimerizations a slippery slope
certainly have some real and valid issues, just as do those like you
and Keith and I, who perceive much good to be derivable from it.

Albert Schweitzer believed, as he put it, "The greatest good is to
preserve life, to promote life, to raise life to the highest value
which it is capable of. The greatest evil is to destroy life, to injure
life, to repress life which is capable of development" Add to that
John Stuart Mill's observation (to the effect that...) those who have
the "power" to do the greatest evil have, also, the power to do the
greatest good. Put these ideas together and the hybridization of
those could be stated thus: If you want to gain power over disease
and genetic deformities and cancers and crippling injuries to humans
then that same power is the power to do the opposite.

I for one -- and I am inclined to believe you and Keith might well
agree -- do not believe anyone is going to keep an anti-science
finger in the dyke of impending new knowledge indefinitely,
regardless. Just as the popular axiom called Murphy's law holds
that, if there is a way for something to go wrong then it is going to
go wrong... also, I believe that if there is a way for new knowledge
to be obtained, somebody is going to obtain it. Libraries and
universities and laboratories are so widely distributed around the
world nowadays that, even a calamity of global proportions --
unless it were to virtually wipe out mankind -- would not likely
deplete all the reservoirs of scientific knowledge.

Centralization under one world ruler might -- if that ruler were so
inclined -- accomplish another dark age. But somewhere, in some
heavily-built bunker, much knowledge would survive.

So much for the course of counter-epistemic progress; but there is
the issue of fear of change to be reckoned with. It is one thing to
contemplate a mere Luddistic resistance to new technology for fear
of the power it potentially places in the hands of a few to destroy
(or worse yet *subjugate*) the many. But even more ominous than
that is to contemplate change even the broad-based phenotype of
mankind itself. And, something like Murphy's Law seems to apply
there, as well... where we can well imagine that if there is a way to
modify a human, then sooner or later a human is going to be
modified in that way. Scary. But let us not shrink from thinking
further into it.

Not just a few, but MANY Olympic athletes have professed that
they definitely WOULD be willing to take performance enhancing
pharmaceuticals or under genetic modification in order to "win"
in athletic competition. Let us extend that willingness to what they
would be willing to do to enhance the prospects of "winning" by
their offspring. It does not stretch the imagination much to arrive
at a likelihood that somewhere a couple (or a single mother, willing
to have an egg fertilized) would be MORE than willing to have
her child be genetically programmed to become a multi-millionaire
basketball player, seven feet tall, and with sufficient dexterity to
put balls through a hoop from sixty feet away. Nor does it seem
too unlikely that if there were a thousand such offspring, and not
all of them could make the team, a couple might come along (or
a single wanna-be mother) who would be willing to have a child
with muscle fibers like those of, say, chimpanzee, or a deer...
which would enable the child to run fifteen miles per hour for
twenty miles, or jump over a house... (although finding some
genes to enable outrunning a speeding bullet or jump over a sky
scraper in a single bound might seem a little too remote to imagine).

Opportunity beckons. And where there is an opportunity, and enough
people and enough time, somebody is likely to take the plunge.

MEANTIME, right now, today, hybridization of cells human-to-human,
has been found to have occurred (per this layman's understanding)
in human transplant recipients, unexpectedly. That is, some patients
who have survived the grafting and have grossly diminished their
intake of anti-rejection pharmaceuticals, or withdrawn from them
entirely, have SURVIVED! Or, maybe we might should say
"prevailed." And, what is really provocative about those patients is
that, upon being examined to determine what was "different" about
them is that some of them, at least, (perhaps all...?) are found to
have in their bodies cells that are hybridizations between donor
(graft) and host (transplant patient).

AS ALWAYS, in research, we must avoid the logical fallacy of
Post hoc ergo proctor hoc. We must ascertain which of several
logical possibilities this entails, such as:
1. Whether the curtailment of immunological rejection is a
cause of cell hybridization; or,
2. Whether cell hybridization occurred only as a side-effect of
opportunity provided by interactions between host and graft,
in presence of anti-rejection pharmaceuticals; or,
3. Whether the hybridization is just a side-effect (which might be
beneficial, might be benign, or might impose increased risks of
some kind; or,
4. Whether the hybridization was occurring in the many hosts
who succumbed to opportunistic pathogens or mutagens, just as
it did in the survivors who got off the immuno-suppressants.

This old naive layman finds these real kinds of questions, and the
promise of answers, at the ends of research tunnels already
underway of waiting in the eaves... to be FAR more intriguing
than fiction.

Maybe this layman does not feel threatened by new knowledge
in view that there are so many, many risks to the future of
human life (or human quality of life) right now that -- hey, what
the heck. Unless a way is found to curtail population growth
the quality of life will gravitate toward an "ecological solution"
that may not be a or "human life quality conserving solution,"
or even a "human species conserving" solution.

This is not doomsday thinking. It's just "hey, open your eyes and
look around..." thinking. Call it what we may, the things that
are changing in this old world are doing what they are doing,
whether we wish to deny them, rationalize them, panic, get
depressed or... adopt a Dr. Strangelove attitude and "learn to
love the (you name it)."

Meantime, this old layman is thankful to have lived in less
fearful times and, also, in the current "knowledge explosion."

Que sera, sera. And this old f--t is like that guy in the movie
who slipped and fell onto the nuclear bomb as it was released
from a bomber, to start a worldwide nuclear war.

Yahhhhhh hoooo, you all. Might as well enjoy the ride!

(:>)

g

While further research into the unknown benefits of post-fertilization
genetic manipulations in humans promises to enable advantages in
preventing, treating, curing many human pathologies, it understandably
scares the hell out of non-scientists and some scientists (I suspect) alike.
Every step forward in human knowledge, while it is impelled by its
potential good, is a step backward in that it increases the power of
humans to create chimeras which could threaten mankind or which
have the potential to alter the evolution of humans into forms we
humans of today, and of the past, might hardly recognize as human.

My own preference of thinking is that research should go forward, but
that it could bring about the end of mankind or, at least, the end of
mankind as we now know it. This dilemma has been noted long before
today -- by such marvelous observers as John Stuart Mill,

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