Speaker 1: Welcome back, fellow conspiracy realist. We returned to you once
Speaker 1: again with a classic episode as we wild through the holidays.
Speaker 1: Remember the Island of Doctor Moreau. Do you guys ever
Speaker 1: read that or did you see the awesome adaptation with
Speaker 1: With My Man?
Speaker 2: Awesome awful depending on where you stand.
Speaker 1: Awesome in the sense of awesome in the old sense
Speaker 1: of the word, just extraordinary and somehow inspiring of all.
Speaker 2: There is a documentary about that film, the production, how
Speaker 2: it completely went off the rails and they fired the
Speaker 2: original director, and how he just kind of lurked around
Speaker 2: like sort of peeking in.
Speaker 1: Like an escaped monster on the island.
Speaker 2: And apparently Marlon Brando just decided to paint himself white
Speaker 2: with lars onscreen ice bucket and wear the ice bucket
Speaker 2: on his head and have the little fellow on his
Speaker 2: shoulder whispering to him. And he was getting all his
Speaker 2: lines fed to him through an earpiece anyway, which.
Speaker 1: Was not Uncommon's amazing.
Speaker 3: What is that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it is about the idea of human animal hybrids, Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And when we were recording this in twenty nineteen, there
Speaker 1: were already some very i would say ethically challenging but
Speaker 1: medically fascinating innovations in the world of chimeras and human
Speaker 1: animal hybrids. Right, you can have pig grown organs that
Speaker 1: are replacing human organs for people in need. This episode
Speaker 1: is about how modern technology may finally allow us to
Speaker 1: create real life chimeras, but the problem is due to
Speaker 1: humanity's troubling track record with human experimentation and secrecy. We
Speaker 1: don't really know how far it's gone, and we don't
Speaker 1: know how far we look. What we can tell you spoiler,
Speaker 1: is that embryos have been created with the understanding that
Speaker 1: at a certain time they're going to eradicate those embryos.
Speaker 1: To just get past the question of what happens in
Speaker 1: a real life Doctor Moreau situation.
Speaker 3: I just want to be a cat boy.
Speaker 1: Guys, I want to be like a catboy, but a
Speaker 1: large cat. I've always you know, like be cool to
Speaker 1: be partially tiger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I mean you know this is not to
Speaker 2: be confused with the furry phenomenon.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, we're not talking about jiffing necessarily.
Speaker 3: Well, this one just goes out to a certain sandwich
Speaker 3: that we know. But I just want to be a Johnny.
Speaker 1: There we go if I'm partially Tiger, I still want
Speaker 1: to keep my regular penis. That's just a medical fact
Speaker 1: about cats, you guys, fair enough.
Speaker 3: That's throw all the tape.
Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 3: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt
Speaker 3: Noel will not be joining us today. Buddy is here
Speaker 3: in spirit.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben and your joint as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer Paul, Mission control decon. Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you. You are here, and that makes this stuff
Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. Before we do our
Speaker 1: usual check in, we have a special announcement. Happy birthday, Mike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, mister Mike Wolfe.
Speaker 1: We're belated. I believe your birthday was Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Is yesterday, Uh huh yeah, but hey, Mike is twenty
Speaker 3: four today. Everybody, it's pretty awesome, Kelly says, Hi, and
Speaker 3: uh hey, let's get on with the show. But happy
Speaker 3: birthday Mike.
Speaker 1: And nice cooler. Good to be back, man, long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's been an entire week and some
Speaker 3: since I've seen you, especially since we've been in the
Speaker 3: studio together, and you know, I cherished these times likewise,
Speaker 3: and we're coming to the end of the big birthday
Speaker 3: month here at how Stuff Works Slash. iHeart podcast Network
Speaker 3: where so many of us were born around this time,
Speaker 3: And just as a check in, just want to let
Speaker 3: you know that I got to karaoke for the first
Speaker 3: time in a long time. Yeah, because it was Annie's birthday,
Speaker 3: and I did this thing that I thought you would
Speaker 3: have been proud of, but since you were away on
Speaker 3: an adventure, you didn't get to witness it. I attempted
Speaker 3: to do Hip to B Square, you know, by Huey
Speaker 3: Lewis in the News, and then there's an instrumental section
Speaker 3: that occurs in that song, and I had prepared essentially
Speaker 3: it's not fully a monologue, but the dialogue from one
Speaker 3: of the characters in American Psycho where he's discussing Huey
Speaker 3: Lewis in the News, and I was going to perform
Speaker 3: it during the instrumental section.
Speaker 1: Oh cool.
Speaker 3: Now, let me just also say this because Mission Control
Speaker 3: was there too, and Mission Control was rocking out to
Speaker 3: some Britney spears to some classic new metal, all kinds
Speaker 3: of really great songs. Everybody was feeling it is a
Speaker 3: packed room. M hmm. And I got up to start
Speaker 3: doing mine, and it felt like not a single person
Speaker 3: in the room even knew what the song was, or
Speaker 3: at least didn't care. So I turn around at one
Speaker 3: point just to be like, all right, guys, we do it.
Speaker 3: Does anybody understand what this song is or where it
Speaker 3: comes from? Crickets? So it's real embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Now you're talking about, I believe the moment in the
Speaker 1: film adaptation of American Psycho where Christian Bale's character begins
Speaker 1: at an increasingly manic clip. Yeah, sort of describing his
Speaker 1: criticism of Huey Lewis in the news.
Speaker 3: Well, and also about how they've evolved, about how this album,
Speaker 3: in particular with this song on it, it's showing this
Speaker 3: consummate professionalism and all of these things, and about critiques
Speaker 3: of the song itself and the meaning behind it.
Speaker 1: And this is as he's amping himself up to commit
Speaker 1: a murderess. Correct. Yes, I think that's brilliant. I'm well done.
Speaker 3: Thanks man, thought you would have liked it. It's okay,
Speaker 3: but I hey, you weren't there because you were on
Speaker 3: an adventure and also late. Happy anniversary to you, my friend.
Speaker 1: No thank you, thank you very much, Matt. And likewise,
Speaker 1: because you and Annie and Noel and our own casey Pegram,
Speaker 1: Tyler and Tyler Klang and more, we're missing someone. Chandler
Speaker 1: is like almost in the club Chandler's debate. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we do have quite a few August birthdays. Circumstances found me.
Speaker 1: You know, I hate to miss any recording of this show,
Speaker 1: but circumstances found me in Japan, a place where that
Speaker 1: Mission Control is very familiar with. So what do you
Speaker 1: think about meandering intros? Sorry about that, let us know
Speaker 1: you can read just directly. We are one eight three.
Speaker 3: Three std WYTK leave us a message, tell us about
Speaker 3: specifically that intro and ask us about Ben's crow story
Speaker 3: when he was in a different place. Oh wow, because
Speaker 3: hopefully he'll tell that one too. It's a great story.
Speaker 1: That's very kind, Matt. Yeah, I'm coming in hot. My
Speaker 1: body doesn't know what time it is. I have a
Speaker 1: vague awareness that it is probably a Monday here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your body is just a cage, my friend, for
Speaker 3: the words you're about to say, that's true.
Speaker 1: Kimara's right, not not camaros kimaras c h I M
Speaker 1: E r A. This this is an interesting, fascinating, and
Speaker 1: as we will learn today, disturbing concept. Really the best
Speaker 1: way to approach this is to ask ourselves, what's the
Speaker 1: line between humans and other animals? Right? Because technically, if
Speaker 1: we cast, if we put all the metaphysical stuff and
Speaker 1: the spirituality and the religious stuff aside, biologically speaking, human
Speaker 1: beings are defined as animals, So what makes us different?
Speaker 1: For a long long time we thought humans have sults,
Speaker 1: and that's still what people will say. But again that's
Speaker 1: more of a spiritual religious reasoning.
Speaker 3: Not really provable yet.
Speaker 1: Not really provable yet true. When we looked at something
Speaker 1: more secular, for centuries and centuries, we said, while the
Speaker 1: big difference between humans and all other animals would be intelligence.
Speaker 1: The problem is even now, our species has a real
Speaker 1: difficult time defining intelligence. And the more we examine this
Speaker 1: line between humans and other animals, the more we see
Speaker 1: that this line fuzzes. Right. The demarcation is not as
Speaker 1: stark as we would wish.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because there are plenty of non human animals
Speaker 3: that display all sorts of intelligence. Crows, Yeah, absolutely, crow
Speaker 3: cetaceans to be some of the most prominent ones.
Speaker 1: Elephants.
Speaker 3: Elephants, what are octopus in cephalopods?
Speaker 1: Cephalopods yeaheah.
Speaker 3: All kinds of different animals show some form of at
Speaker 3: least and an awareness beyond what we would usually contribute
Speaker 3: to an animal.
Speaker 1: Right, right sapiens sentience wisdom. For years, you remember this matter.
Speaker 1: For years, various organizations around the world have said, you
Speaker 1: know what, some of these animals, the ones we just named,
Speaker 1: are in fact so intelligent that they meet the legal
Speaker 1: threshold of personhood, meaning that their cognitive abilities are high
Speaker 1: enough that they should be guaranteed some of the same
Speaker 1: rights that we our species in theory gives to every
Speaker 1: other human being. And today's episode approaches that that same
Speaker 1: weird border. What is the line between human and animal?
Speaker 3: And what happens when those lines even get even further blurred?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, And where does it take us? Here are
Speaker 1: the facts. You've probably heard the word kamara before. The
Speaker 1: definition of kimara is pretty cool in folklore. It's a
Speaker 1: very strange flex in mythology, specifically Greek mythology. The kimara
Speaker 1: is this fire breathing monster. It's female, and it's this
Speaker 1: strange anatomical mixtape. It's mostly a lion, right at least
Speaker 1: in the front. It is a goat in the middle,
Speaker 1: and it has a goat head coming out of the
Speaker 1: back to the mid spine, and then it's a dragon
Speaker 1: in the rear.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, right, I know. Most of my camera is
Speaker 3: from Magic the Gathering, huh. I mean as well as
Speaker 3: Greek mythology. MTG has some pretty great ones.
Speaker 1: And they have some divergent takes, right.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean if you take the Spellheart camera,
Speaker 3: that was a big one for me back in the day.
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding. We're not going to talk about this.
Speaker 1: I want to hear what please.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of them, at least the card
Speaker 3: art and the way they're described in the flavor text
Speaker 3: is very similar to the traditional Greek mythology versions.
Speaker 1: So like three or more usually distinct animals melded into
Speaker 1: a single creature.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it gets down into you know, two fully separate heads.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just one head with a body that's a
Speaker 3: little different, but it's always a melding of creatures.
Speaker 1: Right right, And interestingly enough, in Greek mythology, the Chimera
Speaker 1: is the child of Typhon and Echidna, and it is
Speaker 1: also a sibling of other multi headed creatures such as Cerebus,
Speaker 1: the three headed canine that guards the underworld, and the hydra.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's I didn't realize that. It makes it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make perfect sense, but it makes better sense
Speaker 3: to have that be the mythological order of what is it, child, monsters,
Speaker 3: baby birth, the monster birth. For those to actually have.
Speaker 1: This and this, it's strange because again we see the
Speaker 1: intersection between folklore, mythology and modern facts. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of our nomenclature and terminology comes from these ancient stories,
Speaker 1: and that's why the word chimera still exist here in
Speaker 1: these our modern days. We have a scientific definition of chimera.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So if you look to science, it's gonna
Speaker 3: say a chimera is a single organism, one distinct thing
Speaker 3: that's composed of two or more distinct different populations. And
Speaker 3: this is important of cells that originated from different zygotes
Speaker 3: involved in sexual reproduction. So this is this is highly
Speaker 3: important for today's episode, two very specific sets of cells
Speaker 3: from from two different zygotes.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, this is huge. This is crucial. So far
Speaker 1: from the lion goat dragon street hit of ancient mythology,
Speaker 1: actual chimeras are more subtle, at least the ones that
Speaker 1: you may have met sometime in your life. Not only
Speaker 1: have you may have met them, but you may have
Speaker 1: never noticed anything different about them. Chimera can occur naturally
Speaker 1: in humans. So let's say that you or your loved
Speaker 1: one are carrying a child, and there are two kids
Speaker 1: in the womb fetuses right, not quite you know, kids,
Speaker 1: but fetuses that will become human beings. And one of
Speaker 1: the fetuses dies or is absorbed by its twin, leaving
Speaker 1: the surviving fetus with two distinct sets of cells. Wo. So,
Speaker 1: like identical twins, maybe doesn't matter as much, But fraternal
Speaker 1: twins this does matter. Genetically, they are different.
Speaker 3: And it's hard to really comprehend what that means unless
Speaker 3: you apply it to a story or an example exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So, usually not only would you not know the person
Speaker 1: you met is a kamara, they probably don't know either,
Speaker 1: And typically people find out about this by accident. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, I was a woman named Karen Keegan.
Speaker 1: Karen Keegan needed a kidney transplant, and so she underwent
Speaker 1: genetic testing to see whether one of her family members
Speaker 1: could be a potential donor. This is clear standard operating procedure.
Speaker 1: You check with the family first, right in this situation,
Speaker 1: they did conduct the test, and what they found they
Speaker 1: found something that completely caught them off guard, something they
Speaker 1: were not looking for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes you'll hear no, you're not the father, but
Speaker 3: you know what you never here.
Speaker 1: No you are not the mother. See, the genetic testing
Speaker 1: that Karen and her family underwent indicated that technically speaking,
Speaker 1: she could not be the mother of her children that
Speaker 1: she birthed, that she birthed, yes, her biological children. This
Speaker 1: threw everyone for a loop. It was like the end
Speaker 1: of usual suspects. What's going on here? The doctors eventually
Speaker 1: learned that Karen, in fact was a human chimera. This
Speaker 1: is just one example, and they probably would never have
Speaker 1: caught this unless that kidney transplant need came up. Bone
Speaker 1: marrow transplants can also create chimera. Bone marrow transplants, by
Speaker 1: the way, really interesting. There are a couple of unidentified
Speaker 1: people who were more or less cured of HIV by
Speaker 1: bone marrow transplants. In this case, you don't need to
Speaker 1: have something freakish happen. Bone marrow contains the cells that
Speaker 1: later develop into red blood cells, the old stem cells,
Speaker 1: the old stem cells, the old stem cell. So what
Speaker 1: happens when someone has a bone marrow transplant is that
Speaker 1: their own bone marrow is destroyed somehow and it's replaced
Speaker 1: with marrow from this donor, and this marrow, this stranger's
Speaker 1: marrow creates these new blood cells. They continually are created.
Speaker 1: And that means that if you receive a successful bone
Speaker 1: marrow transplant, for the rest of your natural life, you
Speaker 1: will carry genetically distinct cells within your body that reproduce.
Speaker 1: You will become a chimera.
Speaker 3: Wow, I've never thought of it that way. I didn't,
Speaker 3: I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it that way because I guess
Speaker 1: you and I have been fortunate enough in our lives
Speaker 1: to not have to delve into own marrow transplant.
Speaker 3: True, so, very true, very true. We've been very fortunate.
Speaker 3: But you know, when you're thinking about in this way,
Speaker 3: it's in that particular example, it's a very good thing.
Speaker 3: Like being a chimera is great. You've got the blood
Speaker 3: of someone else's essentially in your body because they helped
Speaker 3: you survive or they have to helped you continue on. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a camera in this way, in a scientific way, just
Speaker 3: isn't scary at least, it's not nearly as creepy as
Speaker 3: the Greek mythology monsters that existed because of this word
Speaker 3: or this word was used to describe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's much, it's it's much. It's a much more inspirational.
Speaker 3: Yes, really it really is.
Speaker 1: Look at us humans, go medicine, go science. They Yeah,
Speaker 1: these chimera don't seem you're as frightening. You wouldn't notice it.
Speaker 1: And here's another thing. While we're talking about pregnancy for
Speaker 1: a time, there's a study from I want to say,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen ors so that indicates women during pregnancy may
Speaker 1: function as kamara for a limited amount of time.
Speaker 3: Because the fetus is creating, it's it's developing its own
Speaker 3: cells and blood and everything is being shared in that
Speaker 3: one symbiotic system. Oh wow, but oh you know what
Speaker 3: that makes do? That makes total sense? Uh, My wife
Speaker 3: and I had had all these discussions. She was learning
Speaker 3: a lot during our pregnancy, but how the hormones in
Speaker 3: her body as well as having this you know, this
Speaker 3: being existing inside of her that she's sharing fluids with
Speaker 3: with all these stem cells and young blood and all
Speaker 3: this her. She was so ridiculously healthy during her pregnancy,
Speaker 3: so much more so than before or after. Not to
Speaker 3: say she's unhealthy, it's just there was like it was
Speaker 3: like she was had superpowers or something.
Speaker 1: It's kind of evolutions. Get out of j free pass,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we've we've seen we've seen different indicators
Speaker 1: of that. Wow, we could do it an entire series
Speaker 1: of episodes on the stuff that we as a species
Speaker 1: don't yet fully understand about pregnancy. Oh yeah, but what
Speaker 1: if the idea of being a camara? What if cameraicism
Speaker 1: doesn't stop their cameraicism is a word that I just
Speaker 1: made up.
Speaker 3: I accept it, thank you.
Speaker 1: What if breakthroughs in medical technology can enable us to
Speaker 1: create real life creatures closer and closer and closer to
Speaker 1: the monsters described in Greek mythology. What if we could
Speaker 1: create a melding of various animals or even some sort
Speaker 1: of human animal hybrid. Could this be possible and if so,
Speaker 1: what would we do? We'll explore this after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy. The answer
Speaker 1: to the first part of the question is emphatically. Yes.
Speaker 1: Not only can we as a species do this, we
Speaker 1: are already doing this. This is already happening. Pandora's jar
Speaker 1: is twisted open and there is no twisting it back.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we're heading towards the land of the centaurs. Everybody.
Speaker 3: Just if we take it back to mythology, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I mean, really think about it. Humans in our storytelling,
Speaker 3: in our legends, we've been pretty obsessed with humans and
Speaker 3: animals becoming one thing. If you think about think about werewolves,
Speaker 3: think about the skin Walker's like the version of skin Walker,
Speaker 3: though it's a little different thing.
Speaker 1: Or Selki oh yeah, you know. Or Mermaids Mermaids perfect
Speaker 1: where Jaguar. There's so many stories of people, through one
Speaker 1: means or another. Weirdly enough, it wasn't evil for a
Speaker 1: long time. It just became evil later, but through one
Speaker 1: means or another, people acquiring the attributes of different animals,
Speaker 1: if not the ability to completely become those animals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for either advantageous means or perhaps because they were
Speaker 3: cursed in some.
Speaker 1: Way, right, some sort of divine interventions. Usually how it starts.
Speaker 1: This obsession carried on for thousands and thousands of years.
Speaker 1: In fact, and an earlier episode, I don't know how
Speaker 1: long ago now, Matt, you and I explored the strange
Speaker 1: true story of the so called human z Do you
Speaker 1: remember that, I do.
Speaker 3: Was this a Soviet experiment back in the day, Yes,
Speaker 3: but it was. I can't remember if we decided it
Speaker 3: was proven or not. I know for sure that there
Speaker 3: were a ton of rumors. I think the big question
Speaker 3: back in the day was was this propaganda of some
Speaker 3: sort from either side? But there appeared, at least on
Speaker 3: the surface, to be experiments in the Soviet Union to
Speaker 3: create a human chimpanzee hybrid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was Iliya Ivanovich Ivanov in the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. The idea was that one could combine the intelligence,
Speaker 1: or at least the potential for intelligence, of the human
Speaker 1: being with the physical prowess of a primate. And they said, well,
Speaker 1: out of all the great apes, the chimp is the
Speaker 1: closest that we can find to the human. So let's
Speaker 1: get them together. Play some R and B, you know, lights,
Speaker 1: some candles, put on some shot. A see what happens.
Speaker 3: No no, no.
Speaker 1: No, no, no. Solely because A was not around in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenty.
Speaker 3: Oh, Shade was the only part of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, yeah, they they just didn't have the
Speaker 1: music right and you got it.
Speaker 3: I have the least a huge role put on that
Speaker 3: New Swift album. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So, so, as far as we know, officially, these experiments
Speaker 1: during this time did not reach success. There was not
Speaker 1: a viable offspring, and there will be. You know, there
Speaker 1: are other reports of there was the one ape that
Speaker 1: had lost some of its hair and its head that
Speaker 1: exhibited human characteristics according to its observers m. But none
Speaker 1: of those, none of none of those experiments, none of
Speaker 1: those creatures so far as we know, created a viable
Speaker 1: A viable example. Oh that's right. It was a chimp
Speaker 1: called Oliver. A chimpanzee, Oliver Bells, Yeah, brought to brought
Speaker 1: to the US who people said he had a human
Speaker 1: like appearance, ability to walk upright, and would rather hang
Speaker 1: out with humans versus chimps. But genetic testing confirmed you
Speaker 1: was a chimpanzee. And look, chimpanzees are incredibly intelligent, Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very smart. Don't mess with them, don't try it
Speaker 1: out smart them, don't definitely don't piss them off. In
Speaker 1: Oliver's case, this chimpanzee was probably just very highly acclimated
Speaker 1: to humans right had been raised with them, and this,
Speaker 1: you know, this is its own unethical, sad thing. But
Speaker 1: long story short, unless there is a huge secret in
Speaker 1: terms of Soviet hybridization experiments, we as a species haven't
Speaker 1: seen a successful version of this. However, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we stopped trying. You see, as it turns out, fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realists across the planet have not only continued these experiments,
Speaker 1: they have made striking, breath taking forays into this world
Speaker 1: of human animal hybridization. We found several strange and again
Speaker 1: we cannot emphasize this enough. Real genuine, actual examples of
Speaker 1: chimera being created today.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So let's just jump through some of these.
Speaker 3: The first one, it's an attempt to make an increasingly
Speaker 3: intelligent ape or monkey in this case of some sort.
Speaker 3: So there are some researchers in both China and the
Speaker 3: United States that have attempted to create a version of
Speaker 3: a monkey that also carries a human gene, and this
Speaker 3: particular gene plays a role in the development of the brain.
Speaker 3: And if there's a study, as according to study that
Speaker 3: was published in Beijing's National Science review. This all occurred
Speaker 3: when researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology this is
Speaker 3: a Chinese academy of sciences, and they were working along
Speaker 3: with the University of North Carolina and some other institutions.
Speaker 3: They reported that there were eleven transgenic this is what
Speaker 3: they're called transgenic reesis monkeys that were created through the
Speaker 3: studies here. And that's pretty that's pretty intense that we
Speaker 3: were already creating something like this before working on this episode. Personally,
Speaker 3: I had no idea that there was already some kind
Speaker 3: of chimeric testing done to create an intelligent animal.
Speaker 1: That had been allowed to survive, yees to be born,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the experimentation that we have read
Speaker 1: about or we have encountered occurs at the embryo stage,
Speaker 1: embriotic stage.
Speaker 3: And it's mostly to see if it would be possible
Speaker 3: to then take that, you know, creature to term, Like
Speaker 3: if we were going to we could, this would be
Speaker 3: a viable specimen, right right.
Speaker 1: But then for insert ethical conscers iteration A through Z here,
Speaker 1: we are going to terminate the growth of this this
Speaker 1: bundle of cells and do it before you know, before
Speaker 1: organ's form and like a brainstem and a nervous system
Speaker 1: forms and so on. And that's the attempt to circumvent
Speaker 1: the ethical quandaries that might occur if it's allowed to
Speaker 1: reach a later stage of development. Yes, specifically, what they
Speaker 1: did with these eleven Recis monkeys is they they gave
Speaker 1: them human copies of a gene called mcph one. Mcph one,
Speaker 1: as you said, Matt plays it plays a big role
Speaker 1: in brain development. Two startling things happened here. According to
Speaker 1: this study, this small change, this little bit of extra
Speaker 1: cognitive gas, did make a discernible difference. The monkeys that
Speaker 1: carried the human copy of this gene exhibited better short
Speaker 1: term memory. They also had faster reaction time and when
Speaker 1: compared with a control group of wild Recis monkeys who
Speaker 1: had not had their skullhoods tampered with.
Speaker 3: Right, wow, Well it's interesting to if you delve deep
Speaker 3: into the research and all the documentation and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, it makes you wonder how much just keeping
Speaker 3: them as not wild Recis monkeys, if that had any effect.
Speaker 1: That's a great point. Yeah, is at the Oliver effect. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll just call it that. Here's the startling thing. Though
Speaker 1: you said there were eleven monkeys right, Yes, who had
Speaker 1: this gene transferred to them? These eleven monkeys were not
Speaker 1: created all in one go. Eight of these monkeys were
Speaker 1: first generation, the other three were second generation. Whoa, meaning
Speaker 1: that this trait transferred. Yeah, which of course is how
Speaker 1: genes are supposed to work.
Speaker 3: But still knowing that that's even possible. You really have
Speaker 3: to do is create one came era and then you
Speaker 3: could have you could have endless offspring, depending on which
Speaker 3: species are using and how long. All you need is
Speaker 3: time and a mate.
Speaker 1: You are entering another dimension. Yeah. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: real life super monkeys with some strong air quotes around there.
Speaker 1: But the story doesn't stop there. We had this in
Speaker 1: our notes as Piggy people question mark. Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that a lot of us listening today are huge fans
Speaker 1: of Animal Farm, right in the work of George Orwell,
Speaker 1: and there is a incredibly bleak, incredibly well written part
Speaker 1: of that book where the animals. That's well, quick spoiler
Speaker 1: Animal Farm. If you are not familiar with the plot
Speaker 1: and you don't want it spoiled for you, and you've
Speaker 1: been waiting for a chance to read it or watch
Speaker 1: one of the mini adaptations, please can consider this your
Speaker 1: spoiler warning three to one spoilers. All right, so an
Speaker 1: animal farm, the human owners of the farm or the
Speaker 1: human authority figures of the farm are are kicked out
Speaker 1: of power, right, and the animals in the farm attempt
Speaker 1: to create a utopian society wherein individuals contribute according to
Speaker 1: their ability and are supported according to their need. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sounds great on paper. Anyway, it turns out that the
Speaker 1: pigs on the farm supplant the former role of the humans,
Speaker 1: and they are real pills. They're bad, and they betray
Speaker 1: all their ideals.
Speaker 3: Well, and as it turns out, genetically, it's an interesting
Speaker 3: story too, because humans and pigs are close enough on
Speaker 3: that mammalian scale where you know, the the what is
Speaker 3: the term pig yes to describe a human in certain
Speaker 3: ways when consumed, when consumed. Yeah, we really aren't that different.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, And pigs themselves, outside of orwell, are
Speaker 1: quite intelligent. There's this very bleak moving segment of animal farm.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of us already know what I'm
Speaker 1: going to say, where the surviving animals on the farm
Speaker 1: are looking from the humans to the pigs and back
Speaker 1: and forth, and they cannot tell the difference so this
Speaker 1: is a comment of course, orwell means it to be
Speaker 1: a comment on the cycles of supplanting and replacing power structures.
Speaker 3: And you know how the dangers of gaining power really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's also to what you say, man, it's
Speaker 1: a very interesting comment on the biological similarities. So some
Speaker 1: people maybe not inspired by, orwell maybe very much inspired
Speaker 1: by orwell.
Speaker 3: They probably read it. Almost certainly they read it.
Speaker 1: In school, almost certainly they had to. They decided to
Speaker 1: see whether it was possible to leverage the biological similarities
Speaker 1: between the pig and the human to create chimera for
Speaker 1: a very specific purpose. Based on multiple interviews, the MIT
Speaker 1: Technology Review estimated that in twenty fifteen there were about
Speaker 1: twenty pregnancies of pig human or sheep human chimera. And again,
Speaker 1: they're not These aren't being born out right. As far
Speaker 1: as we know, we know that these come with a
Speaker 1: very specific goal attached to them. A chimera of pig
Speaker 1: and human, a poresine human camera or the same product
Speaker 1: with cheap and humans are attractive because pigs and sheep
Speaker 1: both have organs that are about the right size for
Speaker 1: a human ballpark, right size for transplantation into a human being.
Speaker 3: And if you can get the human cells in there
Speaker 3: to grow a human liver in particular inside one of
Speaker 3: these creatures, then well, there you go. You've got an
Speaker 3: organ factory, my friend.
Speaker 1: You do you do not a perfect organ factory for
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Yeah, but this is again just the beginning.
Speaker 1: Immediate questions, right, skirt, immediate questions. Why have we not
Speaker 1: seen grown up hybrids yet? Well, first, the ratio of
Speaker 1: human to animal cells and this sort of creature is very,
Speaker 1: very low. We're not at the point of poresine people yet,
Speaker 1: we're not reaching peak pig people, peak pig people. There
Speaker 1: we go. We are instead seeing things that would look
Speaker 1: exactly like a pig or a monkey or a sheep,
Speaker 1: but they're internal re show is what changes. So there's
Speaker 1: a and.
Speaker 3: It's really just a few genes.
Speaker 1: It's just a fu greven alters, just a tweak, just
Speaker 1: the tweak. Matt and I are both like holding our
Speaker 1: pointer fingers and our thumbs mere centimeters from each other
Speaker 1: and then just sort of twisting in the air just
Speaker 1: a little the genetic screw drivity. Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 1: What could go wrong? Seconds? As I think you said earlier, Matt,
Speaker 1: In most cases, these hybrids have never been allowed to
Speaker 1: develop for more than a few weeks. They've been terminated
Speaker 1: before actual organs, nervous systems, and so on have been
Speaker 1: given the chance to form. So one expert put it thusly.
Speaker 1: They said, you know, we're essentially just creating groups of
Speaker 1: cells to see whether they can work together, coexist, and
Speaker 1: then we're ending them before anything gets into that murky
Speaker 1: ethical quagmire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not. It's only in approaching the dark gray area.
Speaker 3: If you know, you only get them a couple like
Speaker 3: a week or.
Speaker 1: Two further, I say, further into the darkness. You may
Speaker 1: have had your ears pricked up a bit when you
Speaker 1: heard the concept of organ production. What are we talking about?
Speaker 1: We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and.
Speaker 3: We're back in. One of the big things we're gonna
Speaker 3: be really postulating or having thought experiments about a little
Speaker 3: later in the show, just to give you a heads up,
Speaker 3: is why do these things? Why continue down these pathways?
Speaker 3: And as before the ad break we talked about the
Speaker 3: organs are important. Human organs are important. There are not
Speaker 3: enough human organs to be transplanted for the needs of
Speaker 3: the humans on the Earth. Right now, and if we
Speaker 3: can make more, let's do it. Let's find a way.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man, I was just I'm smirking like that
Speaker 1: because halfway through I got this this very vivid image
Speaker 1: of church organs, and some would say they're not enough
Speaker 1: church organs.
Speaker 3: Well, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: But to be clear, you're taught you're making an incredibly,
Speaker 1: incredibly important point about things like hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, eyes.
Speaker 3: There are people all over this planet right now that
Speaker 3: need a transplant, that cannot get one, or they're on
Speaker 3: a list, and they have to just wait and hopefully
Speaker 3: they will live long enough to see that. You know,
Speaker 3: organ transplantation is a miracle of sorts of modern science,
Speaker 3: and I don't think we can downplay that, just like
Speaker 3: we spoke about with the bone marrow transplants that I
Speaker 3: who imagine that that could happen a couple hundred years ago,
Speaker 3: There's no way. But now we are at a place
Speaker 3: where we can do that. We just need the organs.
Speaker 3: So let's jump to two nineteen July. In particular, according
Speaker 3: to two places that we looked at, both the academic
Speaker 3: journal Nature as well as the Ontario Canada paper National Post, apparently.
Speaker 3: In July this year, a professor working with the Institute
Speaker 3: of Medical Science with the University of Tokyo and the
Speaker 3: Department of Genetics at Stanford University. This professor received approval
Speaker 3: to begin inserting quote human stem cells into rodents in
Speaker 3: an attempt to grow a human pancreas in the animal.
Speaker 1: Finally, okay, great.
Speaker 3: We're moving forward to do this. Right though, it is
Speaker 3: not as easy both in practice to make it happen,
Speaker 3: and it's also not as easy to get approval for
Speaker 3: something like this.
Speaker 1: Right. However, there is precedent because earlier experiments have shown
Speaker 1: the ability to grow to grow rat mouse came era. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we know that, and those some of those have
Speaker 1: been allowed to live.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So you may think, Okay, well, why is
Speaker 3: this news. It's July twenty nineteen. This stuff's already been happening.
Speaker 3: We've probably you may have seen something in one of
Speaker 3: these magazines like Scientific, American Popular Science, or exactly where
Speaker 3: where over the past ten years or so, these things
Speaker 3: have been discussed. Well, here's where we get into all
Speaker 3: this stuff. Because approval for this experiment. It's headed by
Speaker 3: a man named Hirometsu Nakauchi. Approval for the experiment came
Speaker 3: from a group of scientists who were working directly with
Speaker 3: the Japanese government. Okay, and in years past, the Japanese
Speaker 3: government had limited the quote creation and experimentation of animal
Speaker 3: embryos imbued with human cells to be only fourteen days,
Speaker 3: So they're only allowed to live for fourteen days before
Speaker 3: I guess you have to terminate them. Now, in March
Speaker 3: of this year, the Japanese government announced that that fourteen
Speaker 3: day window for testing is actually going to get expanded,
Speaker 3: and they're going to allow for within certain approved studies
Speaker 3: for human animal hybrids to be permitted to be brought
Speaker 3: to full term. Now here's where it gets exciting for science,
Speaker 3: I guess, right, Because if you can create a hybrid
Speaker 3: human rat being that can grow a full pancreas, then
Speaker 3: that's great, right, that's amazing. But you would have to
Speaker 3: go to full term and then live and continue to
Speaker 3: live for that pancreas to develop big enough or long
Speaker 3: enough or large enough to be usable. But that's actually
Speaker 3: not the endgame of the study. This is just a
Speaker 3: first step.
Speaker 1: Toward what.
Speaker 3: Well, first it's going to be mice. He's and we're
Speaker 3: talking about rats. He got approved to do rats, right, right,
Speaker 3: that are quite a bit larger than rats, especially laboratory mice.
Speaker 3: So so he's starting with mice just to make sure
Speaker 3: that it'll work. Then his group is moving on to rats,
Speaker 3: and then eventually they're moving on up to pigs. And
Speaker 3: pigs is kind of the endgame for this experiment, because
Speaker 3: that is how they're going to be able to successfully
Speaker 3: grow you know, a pancreas or whatever other organ at
Speaker 3: the correct size.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, yeah, this makes sense because previously they've been
Speaker 1: able to grow the pancreas for a mouse inside of
Speaker 1: a rat, and they used islet cells to cure diabetes
Speaker 1: and mice. This then becomes a series of steps, right,
Speaker 1: they're progressively building up and hopefully learning mistakes, making errors
Speaker 1: at the less damaging stages of the process.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, exactly. But eventually the man pig is what
Speaker 3: they're going for. Pig person, the big person. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, sorry, gosh.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't know. Man pig has a ring to it.
Speaker 1: Surely that's is that a superhero yet? No?
Speaker 3: You just throw a bear in there and then you've
Speaker 3: really got something.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking. Of that's what I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: man bear pig from South South Park.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm so surreal man pig.
Speaker 1: Ah, Sorry, I get all these weird images of like,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between man pig and a pig?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Is it? Like man bat and batman? Is one of
Speaker 1: them a very wealthy dude in a strange costume and
Speaker 1: the other one.
Speaker 3: Was just yelling to kill me girl?
Speaker 1: Men?
Speaker 3: God? Yeah, I feel highly insensitive to a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff. I apologize to you, Ben, apologized to everyone,
Speaker 3: especially you. Paul.
Speaker 1: Uh. Yeah. I think Paul back in twenty seventeen said
Speaker 1: he would never forgive us, and I think he's holding
Speaker 1: to that. Paul, Are you holding to.
Speaker 3: That, never forgive, always forget?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he nodded solemnly. We're still in the dog of
Speaker 1: that guy, still in the big man, big dog house.
Speaker 1: This is getting complicated, But the science here is important
Speaker 1: because one of the huge factors holding this sort of
Speaker 1: experimentation back is not a matter of technical expertise, nor
Speaker 1: is it a matter of possessing the correct technology. Instead,
Speaker 1: it is a matter of ethics exactly.
Speaker 3: And one of the biggest issues here is, let's say
Speaker 3: you're manipulating the genes in eventually a pig within this
Speaker 3: study we've been referencing, sure, or a sheep or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but in another animal, and you're generally manipulating genes that
Speaker 3: are going to allow to create organs that are human, right,
Speaker 3: how do you prevent it from affecting the genes that
Speaker 3: are gonna affect brain development or intelligence? Because these animals,
Speaker 3: whether you want to believe it or like it or not,
Speaker 3: they are experiments. They are subjects of an experiment, and
Speaker 3: they will be terminated most likely at some point. Even
Speaker 3: if even if it's completely successful and they do grow
Speaker 3: a pancreous, that animal will be terminated most likely in
Speaker 3: order to get that pancreas right exactly. And if it's intelligent,
Speaker 3: if it can understand what's occurring because it's been imbued
Speaker 3: with human genes that have allowed for different brain growth,
Speaker 3: that's where that's where things get really just complicated.
Speaker 1: Right, father, What is my purpose? Yeah? Why? Why you
Speaker 1: big child? Your my replacement liver? Because I'll be damned
Speaker 1: if I stop drinking.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, then you get into the ethical issues of
Speaker 3: does this creature deserve rights of some sort or are
Speaker 3: we dealing with human experimentation. That point, how what percentage
Speaker 3: of human experimentation is occurring.
Speaker 1: Right now, right, right, right? Whereas the tipping point genetically
Speaker 1: does it need to be defined? Is an animal still
Speaker 1: for legal purposes an animal not deserving of rights if
Speaker 1: it is only forty eight percent human? Right, And then
Speaker 1: it hits fifty one, and it's like, oh, now you
Speaker 1: can vote for your conscience. Yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 1: clearly that's a made up experiment there, but it is
Speaker 1: intensely problematic and it does lead into stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know. They being private institutions funding this research,
Speaker 1: they being state actors that are playing fast and loose
Speaker 1: with international conventions on how to conduct experiments. Right. There's
Speaker 1: a very interesting point that you raised off airmat that
Speaker 1: we should explore before we continue here, and that is,
Speaker 1: let's say these things do happen, more creatures drawn into
Speaker 1: these experiments, what will they be used for? First? Obviously organs?
Speaker 3: Right, Oh, yeah, that's what we keep talking about. It's
Speaker 3: just it's the thing we've been attempting to do as
Speaker 3: humans for quite a while now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a huge business that is on both sides
Speaker 1: of the law. Imagine how many people if we want
Speaker 1: to assume the utopian vision of the future, if we
Speaker 1: want to be super optimistic about this, just imagine how
Speaker 1: many millions of people could have their lives saved if
Speaker 1: medical researchers are able to grow bespoke or custom replacement organs.
Speaker 1: Why would you languish for years on a recipient waiting
Speaker 1: list when a creature with the perfect liver for you
Speaker 1: could be grown and mature and then harvested and have
Speaker 1: that liver transplant within a matter of months.
Speaker 3: It seems pretty compelling, but you you get into the
Speaker 3: questions that arise when you're talking about cloning, right.
Speaker 1: Right, because technically speaking, in theory, it is possible for
Speaker 1: you and for Paul and I and all of us
Speaker 1: listening to have a clone of ourselves grown. Right, Do
Speaker 1: some do some sort very doctor Frankenstein asks stuff to
Speaker 1: prevent a brain from forming or coming into the equation
Speaker 1: and then just have your spare seto organs? Right? YEA
Speaker 1: expensive to maintain, but at what price? At what price immortality?
Speaker 3: You know? Yeah? And what you know? Does that clone
Speaker 3: deserve any kind of rights?
Speaker 1: So the aim here would ultimately be the ability to
Speaker 1: grow replacement organs for almost every single original organ in
Speaker 1: a human body, minus, of course one would assume the brain. Maybe,
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I don't know. I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this too, like if if it were possible, or
Speaker 1: if it would ever be possible for certain parts of
Speaker 1: the brain to be replaced, which gets us into that
Speaker 1: ship of thesis, experiment and problem very quickly. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, and our pal Damian Williams love this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we're already reaching a point where we have to redefine
Speaker 1: what is considered consciousness in general. But I wondered when
Speaker 1: we were looking at this math, I wondered if there
Speaker 1: would ever be someone who just to be edgy, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty years in the future or something, says, my body's fine,
Speaker 1: but I want a brain transplant. Just grow a new
Speaker 1: brain and put it in this thing, and then, you know,
Speaker 1: just make sure that's me. That's insane. I don't think
Speaker 1: it would. I don't. I don't see it working unless
Speaker 1: we had some way to sounds insane, just to see it,
Speaker 1: unless we had some way to replicate the synaptic actions
Speaker 1: in the neurochemical processes that function as the fingerprint of consciousness.
Speaker 3: If I mean, if that is truly what then.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, you're right, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: But I do think at some point we'll be able
Speaker 3: to have some kind of technology that maps a brain
Speaker 3: so fully at such a such a minute level that
Speaker 3: we can at least print physically what what that thing
Speaker 3: looks like. But whether or not it contains memories and
Speaker 3: experience and knowledge I will find out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's one thing that's fascinating, right because now
Speaker 1: we we at the top of the show said we
Speaker 1: would bracket the conversation about the soul, but it inevitably
Speaker 1: creeps in, doesn't it, Because now we're saying that if
Speaker 1: consciousness or if sentience for each individual is something more
Speaker 1: than what can be mapped in that one specific organ
Speaker 1: in the human body, then just futzing around with that
Speaker 1: one organ it's it's a lot like yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just fixing part of the system. It's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like saying, Okay, let's say let's say the brain
Speaker 1: is just hardware, right, hardware that processes electricity like a computer,
Speaker 1: and so you can you can take apart the hardware.
Speaker 1: You can replace the motherboard or the graphics process or something.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have anything to plug it in too.
Speaker 1: That change does not matter. It is nil. The difference
Speaker 1: is nil. The problem is moot.
Speaker 3: So maybe you got to get no less in there, man.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I know us sure, Perhaps that is perhaps
Speaker 1: that is something approaching, you know, the seed of God,
Speaker 1: or you know the electricity that comes when you plug
Speaker 1: it into an outlet or the matrix or the matrix
Speaker 1: or the matrix. Yes, maybe that is what volume four
Speaker 1: is about, right.
Speaker 3: That's what it is, matrix, Volume four, the hard intelligence problem.
Speaker 1: Perhaps perhaps for perhaps there's there's another experiment too. While
Speaker 1: we're talking about the brain. This is another use, a
Speaker 1: possible use for hybrids. There are many, many experiments, especially
Speaker 1: experiments evolving cognition, that we cannot legally and officially conduct
Speaker 1: because we would have to be humans experimenting on other humans.
Speaker 1: So Alzheimer's research, right, is a huge field, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential for improvement. And Alzheimer's is, as
Speaker 1: anyone can attest, a debilitating, tragic condition. When we make
Speaker 1: models of the decay involved in Alzheimer's we could potentially
Speaker 1: make much more robust, much more helpful models if we
Speaker 1: used the brains of human monkey hybrids.
Speaker 3: Ah, but we would have to allow them to decay
Speaker 3: so many times, Yeah, with so many you know, subjects
Speaker 3: to get that robust model, that's what you mean?
Speaker 1: Right? We could create other brain disease models where it's
Speaker 1: possible to allow a condition to progress beyond what would
Speaker 1: be ethical or legal to do with a full human being.
Speaker 1: And even there isn't that sticky? Isn't that already? Doesn't
Speaker 1: that already make you feel kind of gross? The fact
Speaker 1: that we had to say full human? Yeah, because what
Speaker 1: everything we have learned about our species throughout the span
Speaker 1: of recorded history, everything we have learned indicates that we're
Speaker 1: really starting to screw up when we start referring to
Speaker 1: any part of a population as full human versus something else,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So maybe we as a
Speaker 1: species simply don't have the philosophical or ethical chops to
Speaker 1: address this, and that goes to our concerns, right. James McDonald,
Speaker 1: writing for Jstore Daily, phrases this in a succinct fashion.
Speaker 1: He says, in many ways, the ethical concerns are thornier
Speaker 1: than the technical aspects. Direct transfer of tissue between animals
Speaker 1: and humans raises concerns about animal diseases crossing over to
Speaker 1: humans potentially threatening a large population.
Speaker 3: Okay, I can see that.
Speaker 1: I can see that absolutely. Another concern, he says, is
Speaker 1: that animals developing with human cells might somehow develop human
Speaker 1: physical or mental characteristics. The idea of, say, a pig
Speaker 1: with a human mind being used as an organ donor
Speaker 1: is horrifying.
Speaker 3: Agreed.
Speaker 1: Agreed. Luckily, so far as we know this, human mind
Speaker 1: development probably would not happen by accident. Emphasis on probably,
Speaker 1: which bothers me. I don't know about you, but most certainly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But McDonald says, even if human tissue somehow migrated to
Speaker 1: an animal's developing brain, it would still probably develop his
Speaker 1: animal brain tissue. But is probably enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I know.
Speaker 1: You don't think so. But your kidneys are fine.
Speaker 3: I know exactly. I don't. I don't have a pressing. Well,
Speaker 3: that's not true.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 3: There are members in my family that right now need
Speaker 3: a heart I have.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of a person in particular that needs a
Speaker 3: heart transplant or his you know, his life will be
Speaker 3: cut short almost certainly so having this. If we had
Speaker 3: access to this, I would have to I would have
Speaker 3: to advocate for it.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like at various times in the course
Speaker 1: of stem cell research, politicians who are very much against
Speaker 1: it for usually for reelection or election purposes, for anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they pulled one to eighty when they realized they could
Speaker 1: help a loved one.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, or just they have that one degree of
Speaker 3: separation with somebody who it is fully impacting. Right, We've
Speaker 3: seen that over and over and over again with any issue.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And so now we end in media arrests. We
Speaker 1: end in the middle of the story, and we have
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves and ask you as well, what next. Again,
Speaker 1: here is the situation as it stands. Barring some global catastrophe,
Speaker 1: experimentation in this field will continue because the possible potential
Speaker 1: benefit are just too impressive. They're too too much of
Speaker 1: a beneficial paradigm shift.
Speaker 3: And you know, we haven't even gotten into some of
Speaker 3: the other really out there ideas about what this could
Speaker 3: be or mean.
Speaker 1: Barely touched it. Super soldiers possibly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, super soldiers or superspies, because imagine if you could
Speaker 3: have a cat human hybrid that looks just like a cat,
Speaker 3: but has the intelligence of a human and can communicate
Speaker 3: in some way and it's just spying on you know
Speaker 3: whatever housing. Maybe it's in your house. Do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? I mean, think about that.
Speaker 1: I don't I have cats. I don't trust them, nor
Speaker 1: anybody as everybody who has a cat as a companion,
Speaker 1: don't trust them.
Speaker 3: I love them, just don't trust them.
Speaker 1: I think that's the most prejudiced thing I've ever said,
Speaker 1: at a one hundred percent stand behind it. I love
Speaker 1: the animals that live with me, I do not trust them.
Speaker 1: That's what dogs are for.
Speaker 3: They're already too smart. I mean, if we're if we're
Speaker 3: gonna make a hybrid, it's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1: You know, didn't we talk about how US intelligence agencies
Speaker 1: tried to make cyber cats before. Yeah, and then also
Speaker 1: cats domesticated themselves, right, and they you know, you ever
Speaker 1: look at a pug and you think, dang, that could
Speaker 1: have been a wolf. Cats did not undergo that same
Speaker 1: sort of eugenic practice.
Speaker 3: They just showed up like y'all have food, Give me
Speaker 3: more of that food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they said they'd solved the rat problem, and they
Speaker 1: kind of did in a lot of cases. But then
Speaker 1: they didn't leave. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: They solved the hard rat problem.
Speaker 1: They solved the hard rat problem. But speaking of solving
Speaker 1: hard problems. We're faced with a geopolitical dilimmau here too,
Speaker 1: because countries and institutions that enforce ethical conventions in this
Speaker 1: regard may end up falling behind. We're already seeing this
Speaker 1: sort of splintering of experimental heft and and location of
Speaker 1: the pioneering research because these experiments are happening, you know,
Speaker 1: the more extreme ones are happening in countries where it's
Speaker 1: a little easier to bend certain regulations.
Speaker 3: Well, what we're talking about Japan, and you know that
Speaker 3: one in particular, You're not necessarily it doesn't strike me
Speaker 3: as a country that would bend these rules too much, unless,
Speaker 3: of course you go back to World War two and
Speaker 3: Unit seven thirty one and some of that kind of experimentation.
Speaker 3: But it's such a different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Matt I was. I was specifically
Speaker 1: thinking of China, but already the different scientific communities of
Speaker 1: the country of China, places based there are raising hell
Speaker 1: with objections to what they see as lacks ethical regulations
Speaker 1: and so on. There have been a number of notable
Speaker 1: experiments in the past years that have pushed the envelope
Speaker 1: there to various extreme degrees. The thing that we'll run
Speaker 1: into here is that private entities that are state sponsored
Speaker 1: can make enormous progress on this. And it becomes scary
Speaker 1: when we realize that right now there's very strong potential
Speaker 1: for this, but there's not provable precedent yet. As soon
Speaker 1: as provable precedent exists something that can be reproduced with
Speaker 1: let's say, gosh, even a seventy eighty percent chance of success,
Speaker 1: then people and institutions will rethink whatever existing ethical considerations
Speaker 1: they have, because then it becomes a question of what
Speaker 1: do you place what is higher on your list of
Speaker 1: important things, your moral code or your ability to live
Speaker 1: to see tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Ability to live to see tomorrow, as well as creating
Speaker 3: a viable business plan.
Speaker 1: True, oh my gosh, even worse. Yes, So what we'll
Speaker 1: see is going to be going to be darkly fascinating.
Speaker 1: There will either be a sea change in the way
Speaker 1: we approach ethical concerns of the past or why. Possibly
Speaker 1: there will be very well funded secret programs. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long they would be able to remain secret.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, we've already kind of covered this before,
Speaker 3: especially when we were talking with Josh Clark about his
Speaker 3: show The End of the World. The experimentation that's going
Speaker 3: on in small labs that are just you know, you
Speaker 3: pay for the time, nobody asks any questions you do
Speaker 3: your experimentation that's occurring across the world, especially in the
Speaker 3: United States. True, if you have an outfit that is
Speaker 3: working on something and you're being successful at it and
Speaker 3: nobody is checking or approving your experiments.
Speaker 1: Especially in this environment where certain things are certain things
Speaker 1: like genes or the technology applying genes is allowed to
Speaker 1: be patented, that comes troublingly close to a private entergy
Speaker 1: being able to own, for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: and entire form of life. Yeah, so imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: imagine it's not just pig people or mandig. It's Comcasts.
Speaker 1: Pig people, pig people powered by Comcast.
Speaker 3: And they represent X number of viewers every week, the subscribers.
Speaker 1: You know, I just picked Comcasts because they have a
Speaker 1: monopoly in certain parts of the US. I don't think
Speaker 1: they're in the chimera game yet.
Speaker 3: Dude, gosh, I just had a really dark vision of
Speaker 3: web bots, you know, and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But in this case, it's some company that has patented
Speaker 3: a certain human type or a hute diversion of a
Speaker 3: human where they just mass produce them in, put them
Speaker 3: in housing somewhere, and then attach them to the television
Speaker 3: so they can have a certain number of viewers for
Speaker 3: every episode of whatever thing it is. Yeah, wow, that
Speaker 3: would not make any sense.
Speaker 1: But do their rights count? I don't know. Well, let
Speaker 1: us know what you think. So along and short of
Speaker 1: it is that something like this is inevitable because again,
Speaker 1: the potential benefits are just too good for anyone to
Speaker 1: really walk away. But will this end up being a
Speaker 1: dystopian nightmare? Will this end up being the utopian answer
Speaker 1: to so many problems today? Where's the answer, as it
Speaker 1: so often is, somewhere disappointingly in between those two goalposts.
Speaker 3: Where it ends up being a great opportunity for anyone
Speaker 3: with a lot of money to get a great organ,
Speaker 3: but for everybody else.
Speaker 1: Or even worse, look at the way medicine works in
Speaker 1: many countries, especially in the US. Now, imagine that you
Speaker 1: are able to buy let's say, of a replacement kidney
Speaker 1: or something that you need to live, but because it
Speaker 1: is privatized, you are required to you know, you're essentially
Speaker 1: renting or making you have an organ mortgage that's gonna
Speaker 1: happen organ mortgages. I know, and it sounds like if
Speaker 1: you didn't speak English. Organ mortgage sounds like a pretty
Speaker 1: cool phrase.
Speaker 3: It really does. But in the end, it just means
Speaker 3: a lot of money coming out of your paycheck every month.
Speaker 1: And then what happens if you can't pay the.
Speaker 3: Bank buys your organ, right or it just gets your organ.
Speaker 1: And then do they decide how you how you concentrate
Speaker 1: your labor to pay them back? Tricky, tricky, tricky stuff.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2: That's right.
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