Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking pay and welcome to Forward Thinking the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the feature says, as he strong listen Bud,
Speaker 1: he's got radioactive blood. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Bocaton,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be
Speaker 1: tackling another listener request topic. It's a kind of creepy one.
Speaker 1: I almost wish it was Halloween season to do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually not that creepy as it turns out, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the point of this entire show. Basically,
Speaker 1: you can stop listening spoilers. If you were expecting creepy,
Speaker 1: We're largely going to be dismantling some of it is
Speaker 1: totally creepy. Okay, read, let's let's read these listeners right well, Actually,
Speaker 1: more than one listener has, in in different kind of ways,
Speaker 1: asked us to cover this topic. And the first one
Speaker 1: is from our listener, Amy, who actually wrote us a
Speaker 1: really long, super interesting email full of excellent ideas. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I want to get to all of Amy's ideas. But
Speaker 1: the part of her email that's relevant was she asked us.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done human animal hybridization? If they could
Speaker 1: grow an ear on a mouse, poor mouse? She says parenthetically,
Speaker 1: can they give humans the nasal capabilities of a dog?
Speaker 1: What about the muscle strength of a gorilla? M O?
Speaker 1: And it's worth asking, and we will we will attempt
Speaker 1: to answer some questions in this, but we have another listener.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. Lee wrote in on Facebook and said, Hi, there,
Speaker 1: I had an idea for an episode. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if you've covered genetic hybrids or not, but all the
Speaker 1: superhero episodes got me thinking of this. Since I grew
Speaker 1: up before why it was really a popular genre. I've
Speaker 1: been going back and reading some of those books now,
Speaker 1: including Maximum Ride, which has characters that are genetic hybrids,
Speaker 1: humans spliced with a bird or a wolf. I know
Speaker 1: they have created such genetic hybrids with some food and plants.
Speaker 1: I think there was a tomato with fish genetics senet
Speaker 1: or something, and just one it. If you could talk
Speaker 1: about this technology in general and the possible future of it.
Speaker 1: Is there something in the science that would prevent us
Speaker 1: from using such technology with humans or animals or is
Speaker 1: it purely an ethical concern? Well, guys, I mean Amy
Speaker 1: and Lee, thank you for writing it, and this gave
Speaker 1: us a great opportunity to look into this and discuss it.
Speaker 1: It's a I mean, this is a hot topic issue
Speaker 1: in many ways because while it's not like we're seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, cheetah boy running around outside, but we are.
Speaker 1: Science is reaching a level where we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of questions that pop up around things like this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's not even that new of a concern. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of our discoveries about genetics and the
Speaker 1: human genome and things like that have given us new anxieties.
Speaker 1: But the fear of crossing species goes way way back.
Speaker 1: It goes back into actually into mythology. You've got you know,
Speaker 1: like folklore with the minotaur, it's you know, half human,
Speaker 1: half man, and half man. I like, how I just
Speaker 1: rolled right through that too. I was like, yeah, half human,
Speaker 1: half man, that's terrible. You got me. I was trying
Speaker 1: to slip a fully human past on you. As a minotaur.
Speaker 1: This is an es School act with the head of
Speaker 1: a rabbit and the body of a different rabbit. Now
Speaker 1: the minotaur, of course, with the head of a bull
Speaker 1: and the body of a man and all that. All
Speaker 1: the terrifying stuff that comes with that. But even more recently,
Speaker 1: but also less recently, you had H. G. Wells the
Speaker 1: Island of Dr Moreau, right, which case you're talking about
Speaker 1: surgery in order to alter animals to be more human
Speaker 1: like and then conditioning them in order to be human right, Well,
Speaker 1: had he didn't know anything about genetics, nobody did yet,
Speaker 1: but he he already had this idea and was feeling
Speaker 1: a bit cautious about it. Oh yeah, yeah, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean that was also an anxiety I would imagine based
Speaker 1: on the surgeries of the day that were often performed
Speaker 1: at open galleries because you had to make your own fun,
Speaker 1: right right. Uh. And there was no TV back then,
Speaker 1: so and we did talk an awful lot about that
Speaker 1: crossing of boundaries in our Future of Monsters episode Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: which we did last October with Robert Lamb. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We even talked about it earlier in our September episode
Speaker 1: GMOs Food and fud or If Your Uncertainty and Doubt,
Speaker 1: where we talked about how and and Lee alluded to this,
Speaker 1: the idea of the transmit, transplanting genes from one organism
Speaker 1: into another in order. Yeah, in this case, the fish
Speaker 1: jeens to tomatoes. The idea there, I believe was to
Speaker 1: make them more resistant to frost, yeah, cold weather. But uh,
Speaker 1: some people said, oh, does this mean that I'm going
Speaker 1: to get scales on my tomato or it's gonna taste
Speaker 1: fishy or smell fish right, which again, that was if
Speaker 1: you if you were curious about that, then you should
Speaker 1: definitely go and listen to both of those episodes because
Speaker 1: they kind of lay some groundwork. But we're going to
Speaker 1: continue that conversation and talk specifically about incorporating genetic material
Speaker 1: of animals and humans together. Yeah, okay, So one of
Speaker 1: the first things I think we should do is a
Speaker 1: little bit of vocabulary clean up because the word that
Speaker 1: always gets used in in popular talk about mixing species
Speaker 1: is hybrid or hybridization. Now, in a technical sense, a
Speaker 1: hybrid is something specific, and a lot of the times
Speaker 1: when people are talking about certain kinds of animal human hybrids,
Speaker 1: they're not actually talking about hybrids. In the technical sense,
Speaker 1: a hybrid would mean you've crossed germ cells like a
Speaker 1: sperm in an egg and created a true genetic mix
Speaker 1: of two different parent species, and so the offspring species
Speaker 1: would have the would have a mix of the two
Speaker 1: parent species DNA in every cell of its body, whereas
Speaker 1: a lot of times what people are actually talking about
Speaker 1: or what we would call chimeras. Yeah, chimera is also
Speaker 1: uh interesting organism. This is one that has at least
Speaker 1: four parents cells instead of the normal two and has
Speaker 1: at least two different sets of DNA as a result
Speaker 1: of this. Right, so you could be a chimera. That's
Speaker 1: you know, you are Jonathan Strickland, a human of human species,
Speaker 1: but some part of your body has been supplemented with
Speaker 1: with cells or genetic material from another species. Okay, so
Speaker 1: there we've established the basics. But the question that's at
Speaker 1: hand is mixing of humans and other animals in nature
Speaker 1: or any other organisms. Has anybody actually already done this
Speaker 1: and have and if they've done it, have they done
Speaker 1: it in ways that we should be concerned about? Um,
Speaker 1: they totally done it. Yeah, the answer to your first
Speaker 1: question is yes, whether you want to be concerned about
Speaker 1: it is really a personal issue that we should think on,
Speaker 1: which you know, we're not saying it's right or wrong
Speaker 1: to be concerned or not concerned, merely that it is
Speaker 1: a personal, you know decision you're gonna come to, well, sure. Sure,
Speaker 1: and we can tell you about some of the ways
Speaker 1: that this has been done and perhaps you can begin
Speaker 1: formulating that opinion. Yeah. And so when it comes to
Speaker 1: mixing or or transplanting genetic material from one organism into another,
Speaker 1: we've done a lot more, i would say, of transplanting
Speaker 1: human genetic material into animal cells than the other way around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's more of creating a human animal hybrid
Speaker 1: in a cellular sense, uh, with the human material going
Speaker 1: into the animal cells. Um. For for various reasons, and
Speaker 1: a lot of this has been for two major areas
Speaker 1: of research. One is biology just simply learning more about
Speaker 1: biological processes, and the other is being able to advance medicine.
Speaker 1: And uh, it turns out that there are really good
Speaker 1: reasons to pursue both of these in order for us
Speaker 1: to get a better understanding and also just more effective
Speaker 1: medical treatments for all sorts of stuff. Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: hear an example, all right. So, um, you know, when
Speaker 1: a pharmaceutical company is developing drugs and they need to
Speaker 1: start testing it on organisms, obviously they don't jump straight
Speaker 1: to humans, right. We talked about this in a previous podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure, yeah, yeah, about the method that that
Speaker 1: new drugs need to go through before they ever reach
Speaker 1: human testing, right. I think we were probably talking about
Speaker 1: this with respect to the idea of the organ on
Speaker 1: a chip. Yes, Like, can you you create a system
Speaker 1: that allows testing of drugs on simulated human organs that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessitate testing of animals or live human subjects? Right,
Speaker 1: So the testing of animals is a very I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's the accepted way of testing drugs before moving
Speaker 1: on to human trials, and to get them safer before
Speaker 1: they move on to those human trials. Right. You're learning
Speaker 1: exactly why dosages maybe toxic. You're learning whether they're actually
Speaker 1: efficacious or not, what kind of side effects they might have.
Speaker 1: But you know, an animal isn't exactly like a human, right,
Speaker 1: even the animals that we tend to use, Like we
Speaker 1: talked about how close mice are as far as you
Speaker 1: know when we're testing drugs, Like, well, mice react largely
Speaker 1: the way humans do. That's not entirely true. They have
Speaker 1: very different cellular makeup for certain organs. So, for example,
Speaker 1: a little mouse liver. Let's say you want to create
Speaker 1: a drug that you realize it's going to potentially have
Speaker 1: an effect upon the liver. If if that effect arises
Speaker 1: within a mouse's liver, that may or may not be
Speaker 1: indicative that the same day could happen to a human.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we've seen, as we've seen
Speaker 1: scientists UH put human liver liver cells into mouse test
Speaker 1: subjects and try to find out if in fact they
Speaker 1: could create uh essentially a liver in a mouse that
Speaker 1: is human tissue as opposed to mouse tissue, to thus
Speaker 1: test these drugs and see what the effect would be
Speaker 1: on a human liver. UM Sheep have actually been used
Speaker 1: for the same purpose, and most research that involves putting
Speaker 1: human genes into animals cells is along these improved animal
Speaker 1: testing research lines. Um uh mice have also been given
Speaker 1: humanized immune systems an attempt to give us new test
Speaker 1: subjects for HIV vaccines. UM there's tinkers at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan that gave a mouse a human anal sphincter
Speaker 1: to test treatments for incontinence. What. Yeah, that's science. That's
Speaker 1: something that's science that happened. So here's one that is more.
Speaker 1: This one certainly kind of skirts the line from some
Speaker 1: people's perspective as far as ethics are concerned, this is
Speaker 1: this is going to be part of this discussion. Is
Speaker 1: this idea of giving animals human like intelligence, if that
Speaker 1: were ever a possibility, would that be ethical? And I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting that that's what the team I'm about to
Speaker 1: talk about did, but it starts to approach that line.
Speaker 1: So there was an experiment at the universities of Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and Rochester to separate universities. Obviously, that involved using a
Speaker 1: toxin to destroy the hippocampus in test mice. That's the
Speaker 1: part of the brain that's associated with memory. So they
Speaker 1: would train the mice to, say, run a maze, and
Speaker 1: the mice would learn how to run a maze. Then
Speaker 1: they would use this toxin that essentially destroyed the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: so the mice could no longer remember how to run
Speaker 1: that mace. They couldn't do it anymore. Then they transplant
Speaker 1: cells from human embryos into the mice, which essentially repaired
Speaker 1: the damage in their neuron cells, and they regain their
Speaker 1: cognitive functions and we're able to run the maze again. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the hippocampus is one of the few parts of
Speaker 1: the human brain that does regenerate. Um, I mean and
Speaker 1: not like wolver Raine regenerates, but but but the way
Speaker 1: that your skin might regenerate. Wow. Yeah. Um. Other than brains,
Speaker 1: there are some things that humans produce that we would
Speaker 1: that it would be kind of cool and convenient if
Speaker 1: animals could produce for us, um, like cars, like milk.
Speaker 1: M Some researchers in China took jeans that create human
Speaker 1: milk proteins and swapped them first inten mice is a
Speaker 1: kind of test run, and then into goats, and these
Speaker 1: goats can now produce quantities of humanized milk. So this
Speaker 1: experiment involved milking mice to get human milk. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: good on a resume. Uh. You know, my first reaction
Speaker 1: to this is one of like, this is where we
Speaker 1: get into the creepy thing. Just one of those initial reactions.
Speaker 1: And by that I mean personally, that's my reaction. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to suggest everybody reacts that way. But then
Speaker 1: it leads me on to think, wait a minute, I
Speaker 1: drink other animals milk all the time. I am a
Speaker 1: big milk consumer. I like cheese as well, and I
Speaker 1: like goat cheese, and I eat so much cheese. Y'all.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just one of those things where I
Speaker 1: realized it would be weird if it was human goat cheese. Yes,
Speaker 1: it would be weird. It would be more weird would
Speaker 1: technically would just be human cheese that you got from
Speaker 1: a goat. This, this whole thing is kind of odd.
Speaker 1: At the same time, however, I can definitely see where
Speaker 1: it could be a benefit. You know, it's not It's
Speaker 1: not necessarily the most healthy thing in the world for say,
Speaker 1: an infant to be switched to another animal's milk right away. Sure,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, and even formulas don't really make up
Speaker 1: the difference of all of the benefits of human milk, right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I totally see where this is going. It's
Speaker 1: just it's interesting that that was the first thing on
Speaker 1: this list that had me get that kind of reaction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, rationally, again, I I get around that
Speaker 1: pretty quickly, But there is that weird emotional reaction that
Speaker 1: I can't necessarily explain. Another important use for this kind
Speaker 1: of approaches is the cultivation of stem cells. Now, stem
Speaker 1: cells are very important. We've talked about those before. Stem
Speaker 1: cells have the potential to turn into other types of cells. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got potent stem cells. Those are the that the
Speaker 1: golden goose transformers. Those are the ones that have the
Speaker 1: potential to be any type of tissue. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of stem cells have specific types of tissue they're limited
Speaker 1: to they can only develop into certain kinds. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, cultivating them has been a controversial issue for
Speaker 1: many years, and there we've seen a lot of advances
Speaker 1: in science to allow doctors and scientists researchers get stem
Speaker 1: cells in innovative ways. Uh So, scientists in the UK
Speaker 1: used cow egg cells that they kind of scooped out
Speaker 1: the genetic material. They put in the human genetic material
Speaker 1: from skin cells. They stimulated those cells and that cause
Speaker 1: them to divide and create stem cells, which they then harvested.
Speaker 1: Rabbit eggs have been used for the same thing, actually,
Speaker 1: or rabbit egg cells, I should say, because otherwise we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Cadberry bunny, which is a different issue. However,
Speaker 1: if you want to send us Cadbury eggs, feel free.
Speaker 1: We will do so much research about how tasty they are.
Speaker 1: I will. I will research until I can't feel my
Speaker 1: right arm. So who are you too? You eat candy eggs?
Speaker 1: Cadbury eggs are amazing. I'm gonna have to show you
Speaker 1: a video when this don't know what I'm going to
Speaker 1: show you a video when this is all over of
Speaker 1: a guy who makes Cadbury eggs. Benedict's. Is that on
Speaker 1: Epic meal Time? No, it's on Andy Candy. It's a
Speaker 1: free plug for Andy Candy. There's Uh. There's another category
Speaker 1: of research that can really only be carried out with
Speaker 1: hybrid cells like this. UM. For for example, the Mayo
Speaker 1: Clinic in Minnesota gave pigs some human blood, like human
Speaker 1: blood pumps through their veins. Um. Not like they became
Speaker 1: vampire pigs. No, not that I'm aware of um. Uh
Speaker 1: And and and having this human blood in the pigs system,
Speaker 1: let's researchers look at how viruses pass from animal cells
Speaker 1: to human cells. Very important work. Yes, yeah, we have
Speaker 1: talked about that before on this show. I believe in
Speaker 1: terms of the future, yes, yes. And hybrids can can
Speaker 1: also possibly help us gain a better understanding of cells.
Speaker 1: Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA, which is generally important for medical
Speaker 1: research because it's one of those tiny things that that
Speaker 1: we can't really get that good of a look at
Speaker 1: by just looking at normal old human cells. For example,
Speaker 1: in human pig hybrid cells created at the University of Warwick,
Speaker 1: UM Higgs egg cell will be implanted with a human
Speaker 1: cell nucleus. Okay, so so like so like scoop out
Speaker 1: the pig nucleus, put in a human nucleus UM, and
Speaker 1: then watching the cells grow UM. Based on that that
Speaker 1: large amount of genetic information from the human nucleus, and
Speaker 1: though we little bits of genetic information from the mitochondria
Speaker 1: that are still pig mitochondria UM will throw each DNA
Speaker 1: types rolls into more of a stark contrast than we
Speaker 1: would normally see from from regular cells UM, because you know,
Speaker 1: the different cellular structures affect the whole cells. You know,
Speaker 1: complete growth right so UM. So hypothetically watching and learning
Speaker 1: from these interactions could lead to better research into therapies
Speaker 1: for genetic defects and stuff like Alzheimer's. That's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I never considered that, but it makes so much sense
Speaker 1: when you've got you know, we talk about complex systems
Speaker 1: all the time on this show, whether it's biological system
Speaker 1: or a climate system, and the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to kind of force a system where there is this
Speaker 1: stark contrast where you can see those reactions more clearly
Speaker 1: because there's this delineation due to the fact that you're
Speaker 1: talking about two different species. Genetic information is a really
Speaker 1: novel approach that I honestly had never heard of until
Speaker 1: until just now. Yeah, using this method be a way
Speaker 1: to isolate variables, right right. Um. Then there's also the
Speaker 1: crazy art side of things, of course. Um there's what yes,
Speaker 1: crazy art hybrids for crazy art. Um, there's Dr Moreau
Speaker 1: as an artist. A guy named Eduardo cock Um worked
Speaker 1: together with a plant biologist by the name of Neil
Speaker 1: Olswisky to put a little bit of of Eduardo's genetic
Speaker 1: material into a pink petunia. It doesn't do anything other
Speaker 1: than grow pretty much normally like a petunia would. Um,
Speaker 1: but he does call it a plant amole. Why wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. So this is this is swamp thing
Speaker 1: they made swamp thing or or it's man thing, one
Speaker 1: of the two. It could be either one. It's and
Speaker 1: it was. It was a little bit of his amino
Speaker 1: globin DNA, So it's it's part of it's sort of
Speaker 1: clever because it's it's uh, you know, part of your
Speaker 1: DNA that tells your body which cells are yours and
Speaker 1: which cells are something else's, And so by incorporating them
Speaker 1: into something else that was kind of cute. What if
Speaker 1: it turns out this bowl of flowers is in fact
Speaker 1: the same character from Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy that thinks,
Speaker 1: oh no, not again before breaking on the surface of
Speaker 1: the earth, Dear, What if these flowers are sentient and
Speaker 1: have a soul, thus saying oh no, not again when falling,
Speaker 1: he's doomed his genetic material to a terrible fate. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: I already know the answer to that, because there's a
Speaker 1: character in the Hitchhecker's Guide series gets reincarnated over and
Speaker 1: over again and is constantly killed by Arthur Dint And
Speaker 1: it's not No, it's not EDWARDO. Well, okay, So we've
Speaker 1: talked about putting human genetic material into animal cells, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think a lot of people would be
Speaker 1: on board with that basically if it's done for a
Speaker 1: good cause, if it's done for useful research that can
Speaker 1: save lives or teach us more about how the body
Speaker 1: works and things like that. But what about going the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, So bringing animal material into a human organism. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we've done some of that. It's not a genetic transplant,
Speaker 1: but we've seen zeno transplant experiments. That's where you take
Speaker 1: an animal organ and transplant into a human person. You
Speaker 1: mean like Dr Brinkley, Dr Brinkley. Have you not read
Speaker 1: about Dr I haven't read about Dr Brinkley's gonna have
Speaker 1: to explain. Dr Brinkley was a guy who came up
Speaker 1: with the popular goat testical cure, where he would put
Speaker 1: goat gonads into men's bodies to increase their virility. That's
Speaker 1: not what I was thinking, but that work out for
Speaker 1: people not so great in the end. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: looked it up and uh, and his full name was
Speaker 1: John Romulus Brinkley. He later changed the Romulus to Richard
Speaker 1: And I can't imagine why I was hoping we changed
Speaker 1: it to James Tiberius Brinkley. I was. I was hoping
Speaker 1: he would go with John Vulcan Brinkley. So we have
Speaker 1: a very similar joke in mind. But I think he's
Speaker 1: better Joe. Yeah. Well, at any rate. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the xeno transplants really are more like things like taking
Speaker 1: a baboon heart or a pig heart and transplanting it
Speaker 1: into a human patient, and I guess you could say
Speaker 1: it's been met with limited success. Really, the transplanting another
Speaker 1: species organ into a human very frequently results in the
Speaker 1: human body rejecting that organ. Yeah, well, I mean transplanting
Speaker 1: a human organ into another human can frequently and in
Speaker 1: rejection of the and and smaller pieces I think have
Speaker 1: found more success. I think I've read about pig heart
Speaker 1: valves to bypass surgery, things like that. Also, joints being
Speaker 1: joint replacement surgery. Sometimes the joints are taken from animals,
Speaker 1: and that has seen more success. But yes, when you
Speaker 1: start getting into complicated tissues like kidney or heart, then
Speaker 1: the chance for rejection gets a lot higher. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would just be my non expert intuition would be that
Speaker 1: the more the tissue is just a sort of basic
Speaker 1: mechanical object, the better it would do. And and the
Speaker 1: more it's like a complex thing, it seems like that
Speaker 1: would be more likely to not work out. Yeah, anything
Speaker 1: that's tied to any kind of hormones or proteins or
Speaker 1: any of those we little bits that fly around and
Speaker 1: muck all of our stuff. They call the decisions on
Speaker 1: our behalf without us knowing about it. Put some dead
Speaker 1: leaves under your skin, and yeah, I just shove it
Speaker 1: in there. It's fine, Like suddenly it became a Tim
Speaker 1: Burton movie. Uh. Well, the interesting thing here to me,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is all interesting, but this also leads
Speaker 1: to the fact that there are doctors and scientists who
Speaker 1: are trying to work with animals to develop more human
Speaker 1: like organs, you know, actually cultivating human like organs in
Speaker 1: animals for the purposes of transplanting those into actual human patients.
Speaker 1: So this would combine both of the things we just
Speaker 1: talked about. So it would be like making putting genetic
Speaker 1: material from a human into an animal to make the
Speaker 1: animal grow something that's human that you can take out
Speaker 1: of the animal and put into a human exactly. It
Speaker 1: would be the idea of you've got a human heart,
Speaker 1: but you've got your human heart from a pig, so
Speaker 1: kind of like getting your human milk from a goat.
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, but you know that's that's the possible
Speaker 1: future that we have with this. Now. Granted, this is
Speaker 1: one element one one line of research. We've talked a
Speaker 1: lot in other episodes about other lines of research that
Speaker 1: could end up making this particular or line obsolete. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if we get to a point where we
Speaker 1: can reliably produce three D printed organs based upon the
Speaker 1: patient's own biological information, that's obviously preferable and safer and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, more cuddly for the poor pig. Right, you
Speaker 1: don't have you don't have the ethical questions about is
Speaker 1: this really the right thing to do? You know, altering
Speaker 1: animals in order to benefit humans. We've done that throughout
Speaker 1: the entire history of our species is not new with genetics.
Speaker 1: We've been doing that forever. It's just now we're able
Speaker 1: to do it on a level that some people find
Speaker 1: disturbing questionable. Yeah. Uh so obviously though, like you were saying, Lauren, Yeah,
Speaker 1: going with this other approach would mean that you don't
Speaker 1: have to put those animals in harm's way, You don't
Speaker 1: have to alter them in any way. You don't have
Speaker 1: the tricksy question of whether it's okay to eat the
Speaker 1: pig after the human heart has been transplanted out. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that, But then I don't
Speaker 1: eat mammals, so, uh that one, that one did not
Speaker 1: even occur to me. That's excellent point. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: this is still the three D printed organs is a
Speaker 1: wonderful future that we hope we get to, but there
Speaker 1: there may be many many years before that's viable, which
Speaker 1: is a reason why this other line of research is
Speaker 1: in fact necessary. I mean, we are talking about human
Speaker 1: lives in the balance here. So that being said, let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about what are our listeners
Speaker 1: brought up this idea of not just human animal hybrids,
Speaker 1: but actually bestowing upon people animal like traits due to
Speaker 1: this kind of cross hybridization thing, right, like a like
Speaker 1: like terrific fins for swimming, or or the or yeah,
Speaker 1: our the ability to do a vertical jump that's three
Speaker 1: times higher than watching normally could and land it without
Speaker 1: breaking all your bones or snapping attendant uh, bombardier beetle
Speaker 1: burning acid chamber. Yeah, or just a dung beetle's ability
Speaker 1: to push a weight far greater than its own, so
Speaker 1: that way, when your car breaks down, you can just
Speaker 1: move it yourself off the side of the road without
Speaker 1: you know, scorpion tail, six extra eyes, sider web spinning capability.
Speaker 1: Now we're getting to the quote I started this entire
Speaker 1: episode off with, um, Yeah, so here's the deal guys.
Speaker 1: First of all, scientists have pointed this out many times.
Speaker 1: We don't know enough to do anything like that, Like
Speaker 1: not even we don't even know what we don't know yet, right,
Speaker 1: we don't the ignorance here is this enormous black cloud,
Speaker 1: and we have the dimmest of candles shining just a
Speaker 1: little bit of light. We don't know enough to be
Speaker 1: able to dope a human with human genes, uh, let
Speaker 1: alone using another animal. So you're saying like, we don't
Speaker 1: know enough to go get some Olympic sprinters genes and
Speaker 1: put that in somebody else and make them run fast exactly,
Speaker 1: and that you would assume would be at least a
Speaker 1: little bit easier than translating some animal characteristic into a human.
Speaker 1: Going from one human to another has got to be
Speaker 1: orders of magnitude simpler than that. I mean you're talking about, like,
Speaker 1: how would you ever make sure that such an organism,
Speaker 1: such a hybrid between a human and an animal, would
Speaker 1: be able to survive, to be born, alive, to grow
Speaker 1: and develop, and to develop those animal traits in a
Speaker 1: way that is incorporated with the human traits. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are all really complicated. The ideas that we just
Speaker 1: don't have the answers too. We don't have the question.
Speaker 1: We don't even know the questions to ask yet, right right,
Speaker 1: And and it's you know, we were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: examples of hybrids and nature, and and not even those
Speaker 1: work out well all the time. I mean, even even
Speaker 1: something is as simple as a as a African versus
Speaker 1: a European elephant can can not douce viable offspring. So
Speaker 1: so if you you know, with this in mind, we
Speaker 1: don't we don't have any way of approaching the answer
Speaker 1: to this question yet. I mean, we don't know, um,
Speaker 1: if there are actual limits to what we can do, Like,
Speaker 1: is there is there a hard limit to the amount
Speaker 1: of genetic material that we can transplant from one organism
Speaker 1: into another and have it actually make a meaningful change
Speaker 1: in whatever, you know, whatever the result was supposed to be. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't know. There might be a limit. There might
Speaker 1: be something where we find out that, you know, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to to have retractable clause or something, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that no matter what I do, I
Speaker 1: can't have that happen. It's not gonna there's there's just
Speaker 1: a limit. And then cells are no longer viable. That's
Speaker 1: a possibility, we don't know. Also, side note, um elephants
Speaker 1: have been extinct in Europe for several thousand years, so
Speaker 1: it's probably more like Asian elephants that were interbreed unsuccessfully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I just wanted to throw that in there. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: but that that just means the European elephants really aren't
Speaker 1: going to be breeding with the African elephants for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: But also there's the question of ethics. Is it ethical
Speaker 1: to do this, because we're not talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: being bitten by a radioactive you know, wombat and suddenly
Speaker 1: you have wombat powers. We're talking about creating an organism
Speaker 1: from the cells up right, You're not you know, you're
Speaker 1: not talking about having some sort of shot that you
Speaker 1: get and now you're panther man um. It's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be more like, well, let's try and create a bibit
Speaker 1: that's got animal characteristics and human characteristics. That's a huge problem,
Speaker 1: is that. I mean, because you can't ask that baby
Speaker 1: that's that an Let's say it works, but then they decide, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, this was a bad idea. We can't
Speaker 1: do that. Well, now you've got an organism that is
Speaker 1: the only of a it's kind, and you know, we've
Speaker 1: read plenty of science fiction that has warned us against
Speaker 1: this very thing, like like it's completely unfair to the organism.
Speaker 1: And you know how the the amount of a hubrists
Speaker 1: shown by by the humans who are in charge of
Speaker 1: it is ridiculous. So there is that ethical question like
Speaker 1: where do you get to the point, like how can
Speaker 1: you how can you come to a conclusion where this
Speaker 1: is in fact something that should be done. Um, and
Speaker 1: it may very well end up being moral on the
Speaker 1: lines of for the sake of the future of the species,
Speaker 1: we have to alter the species. If we were to
Speaker 1: ever get to that point, maybe it would be a
Speaker 1: viable conversation to have. I can't imagine what that stuff
Speaker 1: circumstances would be. But that doesn't mean to I don't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that it couldn't possibly come about. What
Speaker 1: if there what if there's such a change in climate,
Speaker 1: for example, that we realize, well, if we want humans
Speaker 1: to exist on another three generations, we have to change
Speaker 1: what humans are. Yeah, yeah, but I mean it probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't be you know, like I don't know, like dragon
Speaker 1: arms for law zys, like it's not going to be
Speaker 1: it's probably never going to be like that. I don't
Speaker 1: see us gang too. I mean, not even considering the
Speaker 1: fact that Dragonstone exists, right, I was just thinking of
Speaker 1: Trug Door. He was a man. He did, he did.
Speaker 1: But what if you're a human, it follows that a human, yeah,
Speaker 1: do Trug The very first part of the Door was
Speaker 1: a man. I mean, he was a dragon. He was
Speaker 1: a dragon man. So there's some confusion already. We don't
Speaker 1: know what what how it all started at any rate.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, a few states have actually
Speaker 1: passed laws that formerly formerly that formally prohibit animal human
Speaker 1: hybrid creation. UM. These laws generally positive that you know,
Speaker 1: it's okay to implant most genes or or organs into animals,
Speaker 1: and to implant little animal bits into humans where applicable
Speaker 1: for the kind of medical research purposes that we've talked
Speaker 1: about um during this episode. UM, but that it's not
Speaker 1: okay to fertilize human eggs with animal sperm or vice versa. UM.
Speaker 1: And furthermore, that's not okay to attempt to put a
Speaker 1: human brain into an animal, right, because that's shady as hell, y'all. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like if you if you give an animal
Speaker 1: the ability at all to think on a remotely human level,
Speaker 1: that raises tons of ethical questions. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as soon as you've put a human brain in an animal,
Speaker 1: you've essentially created the salient factor about being human that
Speaker 1: says we shouldn't experiment on, you know, humans. So now
Speaker 1: by virtue of the fact that you've created a human
Speaker 1: animal hybrid, the experiment is intrinsically unethical, right, Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people might say that that
Speaker 1: such laws seem like they are regulating something that doesn't
Speaker 1: exist yet, that there's no, we don't have the science.
Speaker 1: But at the point it's it's almost hilarious in fact
Speaker 1: that anyone was so worried about this that they felt
Speaker 1: like they needed to pass a law like right now,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not it's not anywhere close to that.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's almost like saying, do
Speaker 1: we entrust that people come to these ethical decisions on
Speaker 1: their own when they are knee deep in the science,
Speaker 1: or do we get ahead of it and and regulate
Speaker 1: or make a law now that that paints a distinct
Speaker 1: line and says anything that's across this line is totally
Speaker 1: tote's not okay, guys, Yeah, yeah, And and they're and
Speaker 1: they are pretty sensible laws at least, I mean that
Speaker 1: the laws aren't aren't in there going all like oh mg,
Speaker 1: no mermaids, y'all. Yeah. Yeah. The last thing I would
Speaker 1: point out is that we don't even know if let's
Speaker 1: say that it is in fact possible that we figure
Speaker 1: out how to do this where we can give uh
Speaker 1: animal traits to people. Let's say that we have satisfied
Speaker 1: whatever ethical concerns there may be. So now we've reached
Speaker 1: some formidable, huge assumptions assumptions. But even then I would worry, like, um, okay,
Speaker 1: let's say you can do it, and we decide we
Speaker 1: feel good about doing it. Yeah, is it a good
Speaker 1: idea for the organism? Right? Is it actually going to
Speaker 1: work out in the long run? Right? One? Is the
Speaker 1: organism viable? Is it going to live? If it is
Speaker 1: going to live, what kind of life are we talking about?
Speaker 1: On top of that, we don't have any idea of
Speaker 1: how this could impact the overall population. So you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking earlier about studying how viruses can pass
Speaker 1: from animals to humans, that the viruses can com mutate
Speaker 1: to the point where it infects one species and then
Speaker 1: can slowly infect other species. I would imagine this kind
Speaker 1: of hybridization would could potentially escalate that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So we don't know. I mean, obviously it's at a
Speaker 1: level where it's beyond what we can really talk about realistically.
Speaker 1: But it's again another concern, so not just ethical or possible,
Speaker 1: but also is it safe. All of these questions to
Speaker 1: me suggest that uh, if anything, if we ever get
Speaker 1: to that point, we are decades away from that uh
Speaker 1: maybe even beyond the standard forty in this case. Um.
Speaker 1: But and again, it may turn out that other advances
Speaker 1: in science and technology make a lot of these questions moot,
Speaker 1: because perhaps we'll end up finding technology to enhance us
Speaker 1: and give us animal like abilities, but without actually implanting
Speaker 1: animal genetic information into us. We may rely on some
Speaker 1: sort of technological uh construct, whether it's an exoskeleton or
Speaker 1: some form of implant, that would allow us to do
Speaker 1: those kind of things without genetically altering ourselves. UM. Don't
Speaker 1: know the answer to that either. I just I think
Speaker 1: it's more likely because there I think the ethical concerns
Speaker 1: are a little easier to handle. I mean, there still
Speaker 1: are some I mean, obviously there's some for doctors who
Speaker 1: would perform such a thing, but I think it's a
Speaker 1: little less murky than the animal questions. So uh. And
Speaker 1: and also a lot of those things come under the
Speaker 1: umbrella of enhancing us rather than altering us. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a subtle difference. I think. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that in general, when when there are lives to be saved,
Speaker 1: human lives to be saved, um, we can we can
Speaker 1: excuse an awful lot of things that um that that
Speaker 1: might be a little bit on the tricky end at
Speaker 1: the speaking, Um, you know, it's it's one of the
Speaker 1: the greater good kind of things. Um. But I think
Speaker 1: it's to all of our greater good that we wound
Speaker 1: up talking about this today. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: to Lee and Amy for that was a great question
Speaker 1: that both of you sent in. Uh, so well done.
Speaker 1: I assume there was no collusion between the two of you. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: that's fantastic, And we really had a fun time looking
Speaker 1: into this very kind of tricky conversation to have in
Speaker 1: many ways. But if you guys have any other questions
Speaker 1: that relate to the future, something that you've always wondered
Speaker 1: about and you would like to hear our take on it.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. We love getting this
Speaker 1: and we want to do more of these kind of
Speaker 1: episodes in the future, but in order to do that,
Speaker 1: we have to hear from you first, So right to us.
Speaker 1: Our email address is fw thinking at how Stuff Works
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