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“The Island of Dr. Moreau” is more than just a good book
and a bad movie: Thanks to officially sanctioned Chinese research,
it is becoming a reality.
H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel was one of the first great mad
scientist yarns, the tale of a man obsessed with creating crosses
between humans and animals. Marlon Brando slaughtered it a hundred
years later with a movie treatment one reviewer described as “an
opportunity to show off a few reasonably impressive explosions,” but
even that “disorganized mess” had a point about the dangers of
science unrestrained by virtue. Unfortunately, that message has
been lost in a mishmash of do-it-because-we-can morality and a code
of medical ethics based more on expediency than anything Wells might
recognize as principle.
Modern day Moreaus at China’s Shanghai Second Medical
University have created over 100 human-rabbit embryos, using cloning
technology to infuse human DNA in eggs taken from rabbits. The
research was published in a peer-reviewed journal connected with the
Chinese Academy of Sciences and reported this month in the U.S.
based journal Nature, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
The purpose of the project was to create stem cells,
science’s all-purpose justification for just about anything. U.S.
and other scientists seem inclined to accept the validity of the
research though are reportedly perturbed at the lack of detail.
Still, if true, this would be the first successful creation of a
human-animal cross.
Dr. Moreau would be proud; so would Dr. Mengele. Most
of the genetic material in the rabbit eggs was destroyed, leaving
the hybrids mostly human. The remaining rabbit DNA would likely
make the stem cells produced unsuitable for use in people, but is
just enough to make the project hare-brained even if one can get
past the moral implications.
Medical ethicists, of course, are on hand to do just
that. The Washington Post reports that R. Alta Charo, an associate
dean of law and professor of bioethics at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, is satisfied with restrictions placed by
China’s governmental ethics authorities – arguably an oxymoron –
including a requirement that the embryos not be allowed to live more
than 14 days, just shy of when a heartbeat can be detected in human
fetuses.
According to Charo, “Short of putting one of these
embryos into a woman’s body for development to term, I don’t think
this work harms anyone alive,” which I suppose is technically true
since the human hybrids are now dead. Far from contrite, Charo
believes the Chinese research will actually put cloning opponents on
the defensive, forcing them to draw a line as to where human cloning
should stop. In other words, reports the Washington Post, “How
human does an embryo have to be to have the moral standing these
advocates confer on embryos?”
A better question might be how much basic humanity is
required to denounce the casual creation, destruction, and
dissection of human embryos of any sort? Ethicists and other
advocates have long damned the use of animals in consumer product
testing, including tests of cosmetics and soaps on the eyes of
rabbits. Companies that have consented to these demands proudly
slap the phrase “cruelty-free” on their labels, which is dandy by me
but what about cruelty-free human research? And where is People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals when you need it?
The science Wells wrote of was far beyond the reach of
his day; I doubt he even thought it possible. Like all good science
fiction, his plot used the impossible (or at least the improbable)
to convey a message. Regrettably, some have mistaken it for a
blueprint.
Wells’ Moreau had delusions of godhood, demanding
submission and reverence; his ethical grandchildren cloak their acts
in science and claims of greater good. It makes their work no less
repugnant, and no less deserving of condemnation.
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