{"id":3049339,"date":"2024-01-05T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-01-05T15:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platoaistream.com\/plato-data\/pigs-with-human-brain-cells-and-biological-chips-how-lab-grown-hybrid-life-forms-are-bamboozling-scientific-ethics\/"},"modified":"2024-01-05T10:00:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-05T15:00:41","slug":"pigs-with-human-brain-cells-and-biological-chips-how-lab-grown-hybrid-life-forms-are-bamboozling-scientific-ethics","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platoaistream.com\/plato-data\/pigs-with-human-brain-cells-and-biological-chips-how-lab-grown-hybrid-life-forms-are-bamboozling-scientific-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pigs With Human Brain Cells and Biological Chips: How Lab-Grown Hybrid Life Forms Are Bamboozling Scientific\u00a0Ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September, scientists at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health announced<\/a> they had successfully grown \u201chumanized\u201d kidneys inside pig embryos.<\/p>\n

The scientists genetically altered the embryos to remove their ability to grow a kidney, then injected them with human stem cells. The embryos were then implanted into a sow and allowed to develop for up to 28 days.<\/p>\n

The resulting embryos were made up mostly of pig cells (although some human cells were found throughout their bodies, including in the brain). However, the embryonic kidneys were largely human.<\/p>\n

This breakthrough suggests it may soon be possible to generate human organs inside part-human \u201cchimeric\u201d animals. Such animals could be used for medical research or to grow organs for transplant, which could save many human lives.<\/p>\n

But the research is ethically fraught. We might want to do things to these creatures we would never do to a human, like kill them for body parts. The problem is, these chimeric pigs aren\u2019t just<\/em> pigs\u2014they are also partly human.<\/p>\n

If a human\u2013pig chimera were brought to term, should we treat it like a pig, like a human, or like something else altogether?<\/p>\n

Maybe this question seems too easy. But what about the idea<\/a> of creating monkeys with humanized brains<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Chimeras Are Only One Challenge Among Many<\/h2>\n

Other areas of stem cell science raise similarly difficult questions.<\/p>\n

In June, scientists created \u201csynthetic embryos<\/a>\u201d\u2014lab-grown embryo models<\/a> that closely resemble normal human embryos. Despite the similarities, they fell outside the scope of legal definitions of a human embryo in the United Kingdom (where the study took place).<\/p>\n

Like human\u2013pig chimeras, synthetic embryos straddle two distinct categories: in this case, stem cell model and human embryo. It is not obvious how they should be treated.<\/p>\n

In the past decade, we have also seen the development of increasingly sophisticated human cerebral organoids<\/a> (or \u201clab-grown mini-brains<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Unlike synthetic embryos, cerebral organoids<\/a> don\u2019t mimic the development of a whole person. But they do mimic the development of the part that stores our memories, thinks our thoughts, and makes conscious experience possible.<\/p>\n

\n
\"A<\/a>
A network of neural cells grown on an array of electrodes to produce a \u2018biological computer chip\u2019. Image Credit: Cortical Labs<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n

Most scientists think current \u201cmini-brains\u201d are not conscious<\/a>, but the field is developing rapidly. It is not far-fetched to think a cerebral organoid will one day \u201cwake up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Complicating the picture even further are entities that combine human neurons with technology\u2014like DishBrain<\/a>, a biological computer chip made by Cortical Labs<\/a> in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

How should we treat these in vitro<\/em> brains? Like any other human tissue culture, or like a human person? Or perhaps something in between<\/a>, like a research animal?<\/p>\n

A New Moral Framework<\/h2>\n

It might be tempting to think we should settle these questions by slotting<\/a> these<\/a> entities<\/a> into one category or another: human or animal, embryo or model, human person or mere human tissue.<\/p>\n

This approach would be a mistake. The confusion sparked by chimeras, embryo models, and in vitro<\/em> brains shows these underlying categories no longer make sense.<\/p>\n

We are creating entities that are neither one thing nor the other. We cannot solve the problem by pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

We would also need good reasons to classify an entity one way or another.<\/p>\n

Should we count the proportion of human cells to determine whether a chimera counts as an animal or a human? Or should it matter where the cells are located? What matters more, brain or buttocks? And how can we work this out?<\/p>\n

Moral Status<\/h2>\n

Philosophers would say these are questions about \u201cmoral status<\/a>,\u201d and they have spent decades deliberating on what kinds of creatures we have moral duties to, and how strong these duties are. Their work can help us here.<\/p>\n

For example, utilitarian philosophers see moral status as a matter of whether a creature has any interests<\/em> (in which case it has moral status), and how strong those interests are (stronger interests matter more than weaker ones).<\/p>\n

On this view, so long as an embryo model or brain organoid lacks consciousness, it will lack moral status. But if it develops interests, we need to take these into account.<\/p>\n

Similarly, if a chimeric animal develops new cognitive abilities, we need to reconsider our treatment of it. If a neurological chimera comes to care about its life as much as a typical human does, then we should hesitate to kill it just as much as we would hesitate to kill a human.<\/p>\n

This is just the beginning of a bigger discussion. There are other accounts of moral status, and other ways of applying them to the entities stem cell scientists are creating.<\/p>\n

But thinking about moral status sets us down the right path. It fixes our minds on what is ethically significant, and can begin a conversation we badly need to have.<\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Image Credit: Andrii Vodolazhskyi<\/a> \/ Shutterstock<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n