Primate research ethics vs. chimeraphobia

I thought this article was going to be about the ethical challenges of conducting medical research on higher primates: Ethicists Offer Advice for Testing Human Brain Cells in Primates. You know, the behaviorally complex, sentient, endangered ones. The ones some people suspect of having, like, intrinsic value and stuff.

Good, I thought. This is a public discussion that is long overdue. Higher primate research is on of the most interesting and most neglected topics in bioethics. Abortion and euthanasia are easy compared to the ethics of invasive medical research on chimps.

The ethics of higher primate research are at the intersection of philosophy of mind, applied ethics, and environmental ethics. What kind of mental lives do these creatures have? How does their psychology relate to their moral status? How important is medical progress compared to environmental conservation? (For the record, I believe that experimentation on chimpanzees and other higher primates can be morally justifiable under exceptional circumstances, i.e., if there's absolutely no other way to test a promising treatment for a terrible human disease.)

Unfortunately, this article doesn't directly address any of the interesting aspects of primate research. Instead, it's another chimera-watch.

If stem cells ever show promise in treating diseases of the human brain, any potential therapy would need to be tested in animals. But putting human brain stem cells into monkeys or apes could raise awkward ethical dilemmas, like the possibility of generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee's body.

No such experiments are planned right now. But in a paper today in the journal Science, a group of scientists and ethicists is advising researchers to exercise care with such experiments, particularly if they should lead to a large fraction of a chimpanzee's brain's being composed of human neurons.

The group, led by Ruth R. Faden, a biomedical ethicist at Johns Hopkins University, acknowledged the view that monkeys and apes should not be experimented on at all, but nevertheless considered what kinds of research should be permitted if the experiments were required by regulatory authorities.

Here is the policy review that inspired the news item:

Mark Greene, Kathryn Schill, Shoji Takahashi, et al. Moral Issues of Human-Non-Human Primate Neural Grafting. Science, Vol 309, Issue 5733, 385-386 , 15 July 2005. Full text [Subscribers].

The original article is thoughtful but unexciting. It's a 2-page essay written by a committee of philosophers who don't have the space to pursue any specific empirical or conceptual arguments in detail. The authors acknowledge that it's unlikely but nevertheless conceivable, that neural grafting could alter the mental status of non-human primates in morally relevant ways.

It seems somewhat far-fetched to be worrying about engrafting a few human neurons into an overwhelmingly ape brain. Frankly, it strikes me as perverse to focus on the conceptual possibility that non-human primates might become even more sentient than they already are when the great apes may already be sentient enough to merit serious moral consideration in their own right.

Comments

[rob helpychalk]

Thanks for a very sane perspective.

Sadly the fear that most people have about this kind of research is a fear of moral pollution, not of harming a being with a rich mental life.

Honestly, no one could be seriously worried about a new possibility of "generating a humanlike mind in a chimpanzee's body" given how human like chimp minds already are.

The revulsion here is more akin to the revulsion at the thought of sex with a chimpanzee, or the revulsion felt by non-africans at eating a chimpanzee.

[Herbert Browne]

.."For the record, I believe that experimentation on chimpanzees and other higher primates can be morally justifiable under exceptional circumstances, i.e., if there's absolutely no other way to test a promising treatment for a terrible human disease.."--
Well, now, that argues for a moral justification for disease, then, mightn't it? What are there?.. 6 billion human primates to tinker with (in various ways), and- what? a few million chimps? faugh...

.."The group... acknowledged the view that monkeys and apes should not be experimented on at all, but nevertheless considered what kinds of research should be permitted if the experiments were required by regulatory authorities.."--
So, ethics is subservient to economic bottom lines of Big Pharma, in cahoots w/ the FDA. Now, THAT'S some REALpolitik, by golly... ^..^

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Well, now, that argues for a moral justification for disease, then, mightn't it? What are there?.. 6 billion human primates to tinker with (in various ways), and- what? a few million chimps? faugh...

A moral justification for disease? I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at, HB.

I think it's acceptable to test HIV vaccines on chimps because i) AIDS is a terrible scourge, ii) Only a few species are susceptible to HIV, so we don't have a lot of alternative models besides non-human primates.

[Herbert Browne]

Does disease have Any "moral relativity index"? Saving lives (essentially a process of staving off the inevitable) is a noble effort, i suppose. If the people with AIDS want to test an untried vaccine, why, let them try it. Why do you think that, in a world w/ a plethora of humanity and a growing paucity of certain other primate species, the 'inferior' animals should be sacrificed in order to 'do some good' for the "superior" ones? Does disease ever "make sense"?.. either ecologically &/or 'morally'? ^..^

[Herbert Browne]

Well, OK... "we" haven't wiped out smallpox because of a fear of any moral breach, I guess...

Re .."the great apes may already be sentient enough to merit serious moral consideration in their own right.."--
And perhaps the same may be said of "us"... I'm reminded of a quote ascribed to Einstein: "we are life that wants to live in the midst of other life, that wants to live..." ^..^

[rabbit]

Did you notice that they quoted Genesis in support of their findings? What's up with that?

[UnApologetic Atheist]

Herbert: "If the people with AIDS want to test an untried vaccine, why, let them try it."

Translation: AIDS patients aren't really *people*, but chimpanzees are.

So, you know, we shouldn't bother to make 100% sure vaccines/treatments are safe on beings that aren't human before injecting them into beings that are.

C'mon man, there's a reason the meds have to be tested as they are. Don't demonize AIDS patients just because you have already written them off to their fates and thus don't mind hurting a few of "them" in order to give them a cure you clearly don't think they deserve enough to warrant hurting our evolutionary cousins.

Don't get me wrong, I love chimps, particularly Bonobos; but I will not let anyone speak of the HIV/AIDS community is such dismissive terms. I've already heard enough Freepers talking about shipping "them" off to camps for the safety of everyone else, to make me particularly sensitive to the rhetoric when it is coming from a supposed Leftist.

[Njorl]

"...the great apes may already be sentient enough to merit serious moral consideration in their own right."

Is there a relationship between morality and sentience? There are, undoubtedly, humans with severe mental retardation or brain damage who are probably less intelligent than some chimpanzees. Yet we would not consider that they should have less moral protection than those chimps.

Morality is an inherently selfish concept. The weak should not be exploited for I will eventually be one of them. I could become brain damaged, I could become infected with HIV, any of a million misfortunes could befall me or my loved ones, and I would not want society to take advantage of my situation. However, I am not in danger of becoming a chimpanzee.

It is not sentience in and of itself that warrants consideration for the great apes. It is their capacity for suffering that warrants it. It is no different than the moral consideration given any non-human animal. It is a matter of degree, not quality. There are a myriad of reasons why we don't casually inflict suffering on animals. They are, in final analysis, pragmatic and selfish. They appy more strongly to great apes because their intelligence gives them a greater capacity for suffering.