One of the fundamental problems with this research is that it is creating entities that may or may not be human; their real status is unknown. Thus, the question arises, is it an animal or is it human? Which laws, therefore, should apply to it? Should these entities be regulated under laws that pertain to human embryos or laws that govern animal experimentation? The British government has chosen to regulate animal-human hybrids under laws that pertain to human embryos, stating that cytoplasmic hybrids are, for the most part, human. As such, they fall under the regulation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) and Human Fertilization and Embryology (Research Purpose) Regulations 2001 which allow the creation and then experimentation on human embryos until the 14th day, whereupon they must be destroyed.
It is worth noting that, if hybrids are human, then British researchers are falling foul of Article 18 of the Council of Europe’s ‘Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine’, an international document which the British government has pointedly failed to ratify.
But all of the above speculation is legal rather than moral, and does nothing to address the real question of how we ought to treat human-animal hybrids.
One way in which we might discover what these beings were like would be to bring them to term to see if they behaved like human beings. Yet implantation of animal-human hybrids is expressly forbidden by law, provoking an extremely pertinent question from Lord Alton of Liverpool, who asked:
“Why is it that we oppose that [implantation]? Why would we not want to see it created? If we do not want to see it implanted, is it so lacking in logic and is it so contradictory to argue that we should not be creating it in the first place?
Needless to say, no-one has truly answered this question.
In answering the fundamental question of what this entity really is, the mere possibility that it may be human is surely enough to justify the exercise of the precautionary principle, and so treat this entity with the respect and dignity that should be accorded to a human embryo. At the very least, therefore, we should be promoting and protecting that individual’s most fundamental right, the right to life.
If there is even a chance that a hybrid embryo may be human, this has a dramatic effect on our view of the debate. At LIFE we make no secret of the fact that we believe that it is morally wrong to create a human being solely for the purpose of research. Such an act instrumentalises a human being: that individual is no longer treated as a unique individual in his or her own right, but as a means to a particular end. The philosopher Kant coined the phrase “the kingdom of ends” to refer to an ideal society where no-one was exploited or used for the benefit of others, but valued for themselves.
After the Second World War, medical professionals formulated the Declaration of Helsinki, which states that ‘In research on man, the interest of science and society should never take precedence over considerations related to the wellbeing of the subject’ i.e. that you cannot experiment on individual human beings for “the greater good”.
Certain embryos created for research have also been made in such a way that they are not viable beyond a certain point in their development. This may lead some to deny their human status, arguing that they are inherently incapable of ever supporting rational life, but, it could also be argued that these human beings have been deliberately created to be disabled from the outset.
In this debate on the rights and wrongs of animal-human hybrids and the use of human embryos it is all too easy to fall into a kind of reductionism, in which the embryo is viewed simply as a biological material. Personhood has now become understood to belong only to those who can demonstrate their personhood through the performance of certain functions, such as rational thought, self-awareness etc. But, as stated by the philosopher, Ramon Lucas Lucas:
“On the basis of the data observed by the biologist, the logic of the philosopher testifies that there cannot be qualitative jumps nor passing from one essence to another. The human body can mature because it is already a human body. It will never end up being human if it was not so from the beginning… Consequently, the initial phase of the embryonic development cannot be purely biological, but rather it is already personal. If the embryo belonging to the biological human species were not a true human from the beginning, it could not end up being one later on without contradicting the identity of its own essence.”
Human beings are personal beings, and the respect due to all of us does not start at the point at which our personal functions can be demonstrated, but starts, rather, from the moment that individual begins to exist. This moment of the beginning of a new, genetically unique entity can be no other point than that of fertilisation, otherwise known as conception. As one philosopher, J. Teichman, has put it,
If human life itself is not an ultimate value, how can human beings give value to other things?”
Human beings are personal creatures, with a specific dignity and value. Hence their existence should be respected in the most fundamental way it can be, i.e. in their right to life, but also in the uniqueness of their life from the point of conception, that is fertilisation.
The creation of animal-human hybrids is ethically unsound, even more so when we remember that there exist realistic alternative means of achieving the same end. These experiments contravene the ‘Hunt Test’ - a provision in earlier legislation which allowed embryo experimentation and creation of embryos only if no other ways existed to achieve the same goal – and also Article 16 of the ‘Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine’ which states that:
Research on a person may only be undertaken if all the following conditions are met:
i. there is no alternative of comparable effectiveness to research on humans;
Animal-human hybrids perpetuate the utilitarian mentality that human life can be treated simply as research material if it benefits the common good. Most crucially, it violates the dignity of the human person.
These experiments fail to recognize that the ultimate aim of every research activity in this field must be the good of human beings. The means we must fully respect every person's inalienable dignity as a person, his or her right to life and his or her physical integrity.
The new law will not do this, and every effort ought to be made to amend it in ways that respect human life.