September 11, 2019 • 62 mins
From ancient stories of shapeshifters to works of fiction like "The Island of Dr. Moreau", humanity has always been fascinating with the line between people and non-human animals -- but modern technology may finally allow us to create real-life chimeras. In fact, it already has. The only question here is how far scientists have actually gone in this regard (and whether that's something they don't want us to know).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel will
not be joining us today, but he is here in spirit.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission controlled dec and most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Before we do
our usual check in, we have a special announcement. Happy birthday, Mike. Yeah,
(00:49):
Mr Mike Wolfe, were belated believe your birthday was Tuesday?
Was yesterday? Yeah, but hey, Mike is twenty four today.
Everybody pretty awesome, Kelly says Hi, and uh hey, let's
get on with the show. But happ your birthday, Mike,
and nice cooler. Good to be back man, long time. Yeah,
I know, it's been an entire week and sum since
(01:12):
I've seen you, especially since we've been in the studio together.
And you know I cherished these times. And we're we're
coming to the end of the big birthday month here
at how stuff works Slash. I heart podcast Network where
so many of us were born around this time, and
just as a check in, I just want to let
you know that I got to karaoke for the first
time in a long time, because yeah, because it was
(01:35):
Annie's birthday, and I did this thing that I thought
you would have been proud of, but since you were
away on an adventure, you didn't get to witness it. Um.
I attempted to do Hip to Be Square, you know,
by Huey Lewis and the News, and then there's an
instrumental section that occurs in that song, and I had
prepared essentially it's not fully a monologue, but the dialogue
(01:57):
from one of the characters in American Psycho where he's
discussing Huey Lewis in the News, and I was I
was going to perform it during the instrumental section. Now,
let me just also say this because Mission Control was
there too. Mission Control was rocking out to some Britney Spears,
to some classic new metal, all kinds of really great songs.
(02:21):
Everybody was feeling it is a pact room, and I
got up to start doing mine, and it felt like
not a single person in the room even knew what
the song was, or at least didn't care. So I
turned around at one point just to be like, all right, guys,
we do it. Does anybody understand what this song is
or where it comes from? Crickets? So it's real embarrassing.
(02:43):
Now you're talking about, I believe the moment in the
film adaptation of American Psycho where Christian Bale's character begins
at an increasingly manic clip, uh, sort of describing his
his his criticism of Huey Lewis in the news well,
and also about how they've evolved, about how this this album,
(03:05):
in particular with this song on it, it's showing this
consummate professionalism and all of these things, and about critiques
of the song itself and the meaning behind it. And
this is as he's amping himself up to commit a murder. Correct.
I think that's brilliant. Well done, Thanks man, I really
thought you would have liked it. That it's okay, But hey,
(03:26):
you weren't there because you were on an adventure and
also late, Happy anniversary to you, my friend. Thank you,
Thank you very much, Matt and and likewise, because you
and Annie and Noel and our own Casey Pegram Tyler
and Tyler Klang uh and and more. We're missing someone.
(03:47):
Chandler is like almost in the club Chandler's debate. Yeah,
but but we do have quite a few August birthdays. Uh.
Circumstances found me, you know, I hate to miss Senning
recording of this show. But circumstances found me in Japan,
place where that mission control is very familiar with. Uh.
(04:08):
So what do you think about meandering intros? Sorry about that?
Let us know you can reach us directly. We are
one eight three three s T d W y t K.
Leave us a message. Tell us about specifically that intro,
and and ask us about Ben's crow story when when
he was in a different place, because hopefully he'll tell
(04:29):
that one too. It's a great story. That's very kind that. Yeah,
I'm coming in hot. My body doesn't know what time
it is. I have a vague awareness that it is
probably a Monday here. My body is just a cage.
My friend for words, you're about to say, that's true. Uh,
Camari's right, Uh not not camaros Uh Camara c h
(04:51):
I M E R A. This This is an interesting,
fascinating and as we will learn today disturbing con sept Really,
the best way to approach this is to ask ourselves,
what's the line between humans and other animals? Right? Because technically,
(05:13):
if we cast, if we put all the metaphysical stuff
and the spirituality and the religious stuff aside, biologically speaking,
human beings are defined as animals. So what makes us different?
For a long long time we thought humans have sults,
and that's still what people will say. But again that's
that's more of a spiritual religious reasoning, not really provable
(05:38):
yet not really provable yet true. When we looked at
something more secular for centuries and centuries, we said, while
the big difference between humans and all other animals would
be intelligence. The problem is even now, our species has
a real difficult time defining intelligence. And the more we
(06:02):
examine this line between humans and other animals, the more
we see that this line fuzzes right. The demarcation is
not as stark as we would wish. Well, yeah, because
there are plenty of non human animals that display all
sorts of intelligence. Crows, yeah, absolutely, crow cetacetions to be
some of the most prominent ones. And elephants elephants, um,
(06:25):
what are octopus in cephalopods, cephalopods, Yeah, all, all kinds
of different animals show some form of at least and
an awareness beyond what we would usually contribute to an animal,
right right, uh sapience, sentience, wisdom. For years, you remember
this met For years, various organizations around the world have said,
(06:49):
you know what, some of these animals, the ones we
just named, are in fact so intelligent that they meet
the legal threshold of personhood, meaning that they're cognitive abilities
are high enough that they should be guaranteed some of
the same rights that we our species in theory gives
to every other human being. And today's episode approaches that
(07:13):
that same weird border. What is the line between human
and animal? And what happens when those lines even get
even further blurred, and where does it take us? Here
are the facts. You've probably heard the word chimera before.
The definition of chimera is is pretty cool. In folklore.
(07:35):
It's a very strange flex in mythology, specifically Greek mythology.
The chimera is this fire breathing monster. It's female, and
it's this strange anatomical mixtape. It's mostly a lion, right
at least in the front. It is a goat in
the middle, and it has a goat head coming out
(07:57):
of the back to the mid spine, and then it's
a dragon in the rear. Yeah right, I know most
of my chimeras from Magic the Gathering, I mean, as
well as Greek mythology. MTG has some some pretty great ones,
and they have some divergent takes, right, Oh, yeah, definitely.
I mean if you take the spell Heart chimera, that
(08:18):
was a big one for me back in the day.
I'm just kidding. We're not going to talk about this,
I want to hear at least there are a lot
of them, at least the card art and the way
they're described in the flavor text is very similar to
the traditional Greek mythology versions. So like three or more
usually distinct animals melded into a single creature. Sometimes it
(08:39):
gets down into you know, two fully separate heads. Sometimes
it's just one head with a body that's a little different,
but it's always a melding of creatures, right right, And
interestingly enough, in Greek mythology, the chimera is the child
of Typhon and Kidna, and it is also a sibling
of other multi headed creatures such as Cerebus, the three
(09:03):
headed canine that guards the underworld and the hydra. Oh yeah,
that's I didn't realize that it makes It doesn't make
perfect sense, but it makes better sense to have that
be the mythological order of of what is it, uh, childhood,
(09:24):
monster birth. For those to actually have this and this,
it's strange because again we see the intersection between folklore,
mythology and modern fact. You know, a lot of our
nomenclature and terminology comes from these ancient stories, and that's
why the word chimera still exists here in these our
(09:48):
modern days. We have a scientific definition of chimera. Oh yeah,
So if you look to science, it's gonna say a
chimera is a single organism, one distinct thing that's come
post of two or more distinct different populations. And this
is important of cells that originated from different zygotes involved
in sexual reproduction. So this is this is highly important
(10:12):
for today's episode. Two very specific sets of cells from uh,
from two different zygotes. Right, yeah, this is huge, This
is crucial. So far from the lion Goat, dragon Street
hit of ancient mythology, actual chimeras are more subtle, at
(10:36):
least the ones that you may have met sometime in
your life. Not only have you may have met them,
but you may have never noticed anything different about them.
Chimerican occur naturally in humans. So let's say that you
or your loved one are carrying a child, and there
(10:58):
are two two kids, and the fetus is right, not
not quite you know, kids, but but fetuses that will
become human beings. And one of the fetuses dies or
is absorbed by its twin, leaving the surviving fetus with
two distinct sets of cells. So like identical twins maybe
(11:23):
doesn't matter as much, but fraternal twins this does matter.
Genetically they are different, and it's hard to really comprehend
what that means unless you apply it to a story
or an example exactly exactly. So usually, not only would
you not know the person you met is a chimera,
they probably don't know either, And typically people find out
(11:45):
about this by accident. In two thousand and two, there
was a woman named Karen Keegan. Karen Keegan needed a
kidney transplant, and so she underwent genetic testing to see
whether one of her family members could be a potential donor.
This is clear standard operating procedure. You check with the
family first, right in this situation, they did conduct the
(12:08):
test and what they found, Um, they found something that
completely caught them off guard, something they were not looking for. Yeah,
sometimes you'll hear no, you're not the father, but you
know what, you never hear no you are not the mother.
Uh See. The genetic testing that Karen and her family
(12:30):
underwent indicated that technically speaking, she could not be the
mother of her children that she birthed, that she birthed, yes,
her biological children. This through everyone for a loop. It
was like the end of usual suspects. What's going on here?
The doctors eventually learned that Karen, in fact was a
(12:53):
human chimera. This this is just one example, and they
probably would never have caught this unless that kidney transplant
need came up. Bone marrow transplants can also create chimera. Uh.
Bone marrow transplants, by the way, really interesting. There are
a couple of unidentified people who were more or less
(13:15):
cured of HIV by bone marrow transplants. In this case,
you don't need to have something freakish happen. Bone marrow
contains the cells that later develop into red blood cells.
Ye old stem cells, ye old stem cells, the old
stem cell. So what happens when someone has a bone
(13:38):
marrow transplant is that their own bone marrow is destroyed
somehow and it's replaced with marrow from this donor, and
this marrow, this stranger's marrow creates these new blood cells.
They continually are created. And that means that if you
receive a successful bone marrow transplant, for the rest of
(13:59):
your now trull life, you will carry genetically distinct cells
within your body that reproduce. You will become a chimera. Wow,
I've never thought of it that way. I didn't, I
had no idea. I haven't thought about it that way
because I guess you and I have been fortunate enough
in our lives to not have to delve into bone
(14:24):
marrow transplants. So very true, very true, We've been very fortunate.
But you know, when you're thinking about in this way,
it's in that particular example, it's a very good thing.
Like being a chimera is is great. You've got the
blood of someone else's since essentially in your body because
they helped you survive or they have to help you
continue on. Right, a chimera in this way, in a
(14:47):
scientific way just isn't scary at least, it's not nearly
as creepy as the Greek mythology monsters that existed because
of this word or this word was used to describe.
It's much. It's it's much. Um, it's much more inspirational.
It really look at us humans, go medicine, go science.
(15:11):
They Yeah, these camera don't seem near as frightening. You
wouldn't notice it. And here's another thing. While we're talking
about pregnancy for a time, there's a study from I
want to say years so that indicates women during pregnancy
may function as chimera for a limited amount of time
(15:34):
because the fetus is creating, it's it's developing its own
cells and blood and everything is being shared in that
one that goes back to fetal cells. But oh, you
know what that makes dude, That makes total sense. Um,
My wife and I had had all these discussions. She
was learning a lot during our pregnancy. But how the
(15:56):
hormones in her body as well as having this know,
this being existing inside of her that she's sharing fluids with,
with all these stem cells in young blood and all
this her she was so ridiculously healthy during her pregnancy
so much more so than before or after. Not to
say she's unhealthy, it's just there was like it was
(16:17):
like she was had superpowers or something. It's kind of evolutions. Um,
get out of jail free pass. You know. Yeah, we've
we've seen we've seen different indicators of that. Wow, we
could do it in entire series of episodes on the
stuff that we as a species don't yet fully understand
about pregnancy. Oh yeah, but what if the idea of
(16:45):
being a kmaro. What if camaricism doesn't stop their Camaricism
is a word that I just made up. I accept it,
thank you. What if breakthroughs in medical technology can enable
us to create real life creatures closer and closer and
closer to the monsters described in Greek mythology. What if
(17:08):
we could create a melding of various animals or even
some sort of human animal hybrid. Could this be possible
and if so, what would we do? Will explore this
after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
(17:34):
The answer to the first part of the question is
emphatically yes. Not only can we as a species do this,
we are already doing this. This is already happening. Pandora's
jars twisted open and there is no twisting it back.
Oh yeah, we're we're heading towards the land of the centaurs. Everybody,
(17:55):
Just if we take it back to mythology, yeah, because
I mean, really think about it. Humans in our storytelling,
in our legends, we've been pretty obsessed with humans and
animals becoming one thing. If you think about think about werewolves,
think about the skin walkers, like the version of skin walker,
those a little different thing, or sulky, you know, or
(18:20):
mermaids mermaids perfect where jaguar there. There's so many stories
of people through one means or another. Weirdly enough, it
wasn't evil for a long time. It just became evil later,
but through one means or another, people acquiring the attributes
(18:42):
of different animals, if not the ability to completely become
those animals. Yeah, for either advantageous means or perhaps because
they were um cursed in some way, right, some sort
of divine interventions. Usually how it starts, this obsession carry
Dawn for thousands and thousands of years in fact, and
(19:04):
an earlier episode, I don't know how long ago, now, Matt,
you and I explored the strange true story of the
so called human z Do you remember that, I do.
Was this a Soviet experiment back in the day, Yes,
but it was, it was. I can't remember if we
decided it was proven or not. I know for sure
(19:27):
that there were a ton of rumors. I think the
big question back in the day was was this propaganda
of some sort from either side? Um? But there appeared,
at least on the surface, to be experiments in the
Soviet Union to create a human chimpanzee hybrid. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov in the nineteen twenties. The
(19:50):
idea was that one could combine the intelligence, or at
least the potential for intelligence, of the human being with
the physical prowess of a primate. And they said, well,
out of all the great apes, the chimp is the
closest that we can find to the humans. So let's
(20:13):
get them together. Play some R and B, you know, lights,
some candles, put on some shot a see what happens. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Solely because it was not around in the the only
part of that, okay, all right, yeah, they they just
didn't have the music right. And you got it definitelyas
a huge role put on that New Swift album. You
(20:34):
know what I'm saying. So, so, as far as we know, officially,
these experiments during this time did not reach success. There
was not a viable offspring, and there will be. You know,
there are other reports of there was the one ape
that had lost some of its hair and its head
(20:57):
that exhibited human characteristics according to its observers. But none
of those, none of none of those experiments, none those creatures,
so far as we know, created a viable a viable example.
Oh that's right. It was a chimp called Oliver. A
chimpanzee called Oliver, Yeah, brought to brought to the US,
(21:21):
who people said he had a humanlike appearance, ability to
walk upright, and would rather hang out with humans versus chimps.
But uh, genetic testing confirmed he was a chimpanzee. And look,
chimpanzees are incredibly intelligent, very very smart. Don't mess with them,
don't try to outsmart them, don't definitely don't piss them off.
(21:45):
In Oliver's case, this chimpanzee was probably just very highly
acclimated to humans, right, had been raised with them. And this,
you know, this is its own unethical, sad thing. A
long story short, unless there is a huge secret UH.
In terms of Soviet hybridization experiments, we as a species
(22:10):
haven't seen a successful version of this. However, that doesn't
mean we stopped trying. You see, as it turns out,
fellow conspiracy realists, scientists across the planet have not only
continued these experiments, they have made striking, breath taking forays
(22:32):
into this world of human animal hybridization. We found several
strange and again we cannot emphasize this enough. Real genuine,
actual examples of chimera being created today. So let's just
jump through some of these. The first one, it's an
attempt to make an increasingly intelligent ape or monkey in
(22:57):
this case of some sort. So there are some researcher
is in both China and the United States that have
attempted to create UH, a version of a monkey that
also carries a human gene, and this particular gene plays
a role in the development of the brain. And if
there's a study as according to the study that was
published in Beijing's National Science Review, UH there this all
(23:19):
occurred when researchers from the kun Ming Institute of Zoology,
this is a Chinese academy of Sciences as and they're
working along with the University of North Carolina and some
other institutions. They reported that there were eleven transgenic that
is what they're called transgenic reesus monkeys, uh, that that
(23:39):
were created through the studies here. And that's pretty that's
pretty intense that we were already creating something like this
before working on this episode. Personally, I had no idea
that there was already some kind of chimeric testing done
to create an intelligent animal that had been allowed to serve, vibe,
(24:01):
to be born, because a lot of the experimentation that
we have read about or we have encountered occurs at
the embryo stage, embryonic stage, just and it's mostly to
see if it would be possible to then take that,
you know, creature to term, like if we were going
to we could, this would be a viable specimen, right right,
(24:21):
But then for insert ethical consideration A through Z here,
we are going to terminate the growth of this this
bundle of cells and do it before you know, before
organs form and like a brain stem and a nervous
system forms and so on. And that's the attempt to
to circumvent the ethical quandaries that might occur if it's
(24:42):
allowed to reach a later stage of development. Yes, specifically,
what they did with these eleven reciss monkeys as they
they gave them human copies of a gene called mcph
one mc p h one, As you said, Matt, plays
a plays big role in brain development. Two startling things
(25:07):
happened here. According to this study, this small change, this
little bit of extra cognitive gas, did make a discernible difference.
The monkeys that carried the human copy of this gene
exhibited better short term memory. They also had faster reaction
time when compared with a control group of wild Reesus
monkeys who had not had their skull hoods tampered with. Right. Well,
(25:32):
it's interesting too if you delve deep into the research
and all the documentation and that kind of thing, it
makes you wonder how much just keeping them as not
wild reesus monkeys, if that, if that had any effect.
That's a great point. Yes, that the Oliver effect, right,
since we'll just we'll just call it that. Here's the
startling thing. Though, you said there were eleven monkeys, right
(25:56):
who had this gene transferred to them. These eleven monkeys
were not created all in one go. Eight of these
monkeys were first generation. The other three we're second generation,
meaning that this trait transferred. Yeah, which of course is
(26:17):
how genes are supposed to work. But still knowing that
that's even possible. All you really have to do is
create one chimera and then you could have you could
have endless offspring, depending on which species are using and
how long you need is time and mate, you are
entering another dimension. Yeah, So there you have it, real
(26:41):
life super monkeys with some strong air quotes around there.
But the story doesn't stop there. We are had this
in our notes as piggy people question mark. I know
that a lot of us listening today are huge fan
of Animal Farm, right in the work of George Orwell,
(27:04):
and there is a incredibly bleak, incredibly well written part
of that book where the animals. That's well, quick spoiler
Animal Farm. If you are not familiar with the plot
and you don't want it spoiled for you, and you've
been waiting for a chance to read it or watch
one of the many adaptations, please consider this your spoiler warning.
(27:25):
Three to one spoilers. Alright, So an animal farm, the
human owners of the farm or the human authority figures
of the farm are are kicked out of power, right,
and the animals in the farm attempt to create a
utopian society wherein individuals contribute according to their ability and
(27:51):
are supported according to their need. Right. Sounds great on paper, Anyway,
it turns out that the pigs on the farm supplant
the former role of the humans, and they are real pills.
They're bad, and they betray all their all their ideals. Well,
and as it turns out, genetically. It's an interesting story too,
(28:13):
because humans and pigs are close enough on that mammalian
scale where you know the the what is the term
long pig yes to describe a human in certain ways
when consumed, when consumed, Yeah, we really aren't that different. No, no, no,
(28:34):
And pigs themselves, outside of war, while they're quite intelligent,
there's this very bleak moving segment of animal farm. I'm
sure a lot of us have already know what I'm
gonna say, where the surviving animals on the farm are
looking from the humans to the pigs and back and
forth and they cannot tell the difference. So this is
(28:56):
is a comment of course, orwell means it to be
a comment on the cycles of supplanting and replacing power
structures and uh, you know how the dangers of gaining power. Yeah,
and it's also to what you say, man, it's very
interesting comment on the biological similarities. So some people maybe
(29:21):
not inspired by or well maybe very much inspired by
or a well, they probably read it, almost certainly, they
read it in school. Almost certainly they had to. Uh.
They decided to see whether it was possible to leverage
the biological similarities between the pig and the human, uh,
and to create chimera for a very specific purpose. Based
(29:44):
on multiple interviews, the m I T Technology Review estimated
that in twenty fifteen there were about twenty pregnancies of
pig human or sheep human chimera. And again, they're not
these aren't being born out right. As far as we know,
we know that these come with a very specific goal
(30:07):
attached to them, a chimera of pig and human for
sign human chimera or the same product with cheap and
humans are attractive because pigs and sheep both have organs
that are about the right size for human ball park,
right size for transplantation into a human being. And if
(30:29):
you can get the human cells in there to grow
a human liver in particular inside one of these creatures.
Then well, there you go. You've got an organ factory,
my friend, you do. You do not a perfect organ
factory for a number of reasons. But this is again
just the beginning. Immediate questions, right skirt, immediate questions. Why
(30:50):
have we not seen grown up hybrids yet? Well, first,
the ratio of human to animal cells in this sort
of creature is very, very low. We're not at the
point of poor sign people yet, We're We're not we're
not reaching peak pig people, peak pig people. There we go.
(31:11):
We are instead seeing things that would look exactly like
a pig or a monkey or or a sheep. But
their internal ratio is what changes. So there's uh, it's
really just a few genes. It's just a few duman altars,
just a tweak, just a tweek. Matt and I are
(31:33):
both like holding our pointer fingers and our thumbs mere
centimeters from each other and then just sort of twisting
in the air just a little Yeah, there we go.
What could co wrong? Uh? Second, as as I think
you said earlier, Matt, in most cases these hybrids have
(31:54):
never been allowed to develop for more than a few
weeks they've been terminated before. We're actual organs, um nervous
systems and so on have been given the chance to form.
So when one expert put it thus lee, they said,
you know, we're essentially just creating groups of cells to
(32:14):
see whether they can work together, coexist, and then we're
ending them before anything gets into that murky ethical quagmire.
It's not. It's only in approaching the dark gray area,
if you know, you only get them a couple of
like a week or two further I say, further into
(32:36):
the darkness. You may have had your ears pricked up
a bit when you heard the concept of organ production.
What are we talking about? We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor and we're back. And one of
(32:57):
the big things we're gonna be really postulating or or
having thought experiments about a little later in the show,
just to give your heads up, is why do these things?
Why continue down these pathways? And as before the ad
break we talked about the organs are important. Human organs
are important. They are not enough human organs to be
(33:18):
transplanted for the needs of the humans on the earth
right now. And if we can make more, let's do it.
Let's find a way. I'm sorry, man, it's just I'm
smirking like that because halfway through I got this this
very vivid image of church organs. And so let's say
they're not enough church organs. We absolutely not. But but
(33:39):
to be clear, you're you're taught, you're making an incredibly
incredibly important point about things like hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, eyes, Sarah,
people all over this planet right now that need a transplant,
that cannot get one, or they're on a list and
they have to just wait and hopefully they will live
long enough to see that. You know, organ transplantation is
(34:02):
a miracle of sorts of modern science. And uh, I
don't think we can downplay that, just like we spoke
about with the bone marrow transplants that we who imagined
that that could happen a couple hundred years ago, there's
no way, um, But now we are at a place
where we can do that. We just need the organs.
So let's jump to two thousand, nineteen July in particular,
(34:26):
according to two places that we looked at, both the
academic journal Nature as well as the Ontario Canada paper
National Post. Apparently in July this year, a professor working
with the Institute of Medical Science with the University of
Tokyo and the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. This
professor received approval to begin inserting quote human stem cells
(34:51):
into rodents in an attempt to grow a human pancreas
in the animal. Okay, great, we're we're moving forward to
do this. Right though, it is not as easy both
in practice to make it happen, and it's also not
as easy to get approval for something like this. Right. However,
(35:12):
there is precedent because earlier experiments have shown the ability
to grow to grow rat mouice chime era. Yes, so
we know that, and those some of those have been
allowed to live. Yeah, exactly. So you may think, Okay, well,
why is this news. It's July nineteen. This stuff has
already been happening. We've probably you may have seen something
(35:35):
in one of these magazines like Scientific Americans, Popular Sciences.
Exactly where where over the past ten years or so
these things have been discussed. Well, here's where we get
into all this stuff. Because approval for this experiment, it's
headed by a man named here Meetsu Nakauchi. Uh Approval
(35:57):
for the experiment came from a group of scientists who
were working directly with the Japanese government. Okay, and in
years past, the Japanese government had limited the quote creation
and experimentation of animal embryos imbued with human cells uh
to be only fourteen days, So they're only allowed to
live for fourteen days before I guess you have to
(36:17):
terminate them. Um. Now, in March of this year, the
Japanese government announced that that fourteen day window for testing
is actually going to get expanded, and they're going to
allow for within certain approved studies, for human animal hybrids
to be permitted to be brought to full term. Now
here's where it gets exciting for science, I guess, right,
(36:41):
Because if you can create a hybrid human rat uh
being that can grow a full pancreas, then that's great, right,
that's amazing. But you would have to go to full
term and then live and continue to live for that
pancreas to develop big enough or long enough, are large
enough to be usable. But that's actually not the uh
(37:06):
the endgame of this study. This is just a first
step towards what. Well, first it's gonna be mice. He's
and we're talking about rats. He got approved to do rats,
right right, that are quite a bit larger than rats,
especially laboratory mice. So he's starting with mice just to
make sure that it will work. Then his group is
(37:28):
moving onto rats, and then eventually they're moving on up
to pigs. And pigs is kind of the endgame for
this experiment, because that is how they're going to be
able to successfully grow um, you know, a pancreas or
whatever other organ at the correct size, right, Okay, yeah,
this makes sense because previously they've been able to grow
(37:49):
the pancreas for a mouse inside of a rat, and
they used islet cells to cure diabetes and mice. This
then becomes uh a series of steps right there, progressively
building up and hopefully learning mistakes, making errors at the
(38:09):
less damaging stages of the process. Right, yeah, exactly. But
eventually the man pig is what they're going for. Pig person,
the big person. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
I don't know man pig has a ring to it, though,
surely that's is that a superhero yet? No? You just
throw a bear in there, and then you've really got something.
(38:30):
That's what I'm thinking of that's what I'm thinking of
man bear pig from South South Park. Yes, I'm so
surreal man pig. Ah, Sorry, I've gett always weird images
of like what's the difference between man pig and a
pig man? Is it like man bat and batman? Is
one of them? Uh, a very wealthy dude in in
(38:52):
a strange costume and the other kill me girl man? Yeah,
I feel highly insensitive to a lot of this stuff,
and I apologize to you, Ben, apologize to everyone, especially you. Paul. Uh. Yeah.
I think Paul back in twenties seventeen said he would
(39:15):
never forgive us, and I think he's holding to that. Paul,
Are you holding to that never forgive, always forget? Yeah,
he nodded solemnly. We are still in the dog house
of that guy is still in the pig man man
big dog house. This is getting complicated, but the science
here is important because one of the huge factors holding
(39:37):
this sort of experimentation back is not a matter of
technical expertise, nor is it a matter of um possessing
the correct technology. Instead, it is a matter of ethics exactly.
And one of the biggest issues here is, let's say
you're manipulating the genes and eventually a pig within this
(39:57):
study we've been referencing, or a sheep or what. Yeah,
but in in another animal, and you're generally manipulating genes
that are going to allow to create organs that are human. Right,
how do you prevent it from affecting the genes that
are going to affect brain development or intelligence? Because these animals,
(40:20):
whether you want to believe it or like it or not,
they are experiments. They are subjects of an experiment, and
they will be terminated most likely at some point. Even
if even if it's completely successful and they do grow
a pancreas, that that animal will be terminated most likely
in order to get that pancreas right, and if it's intelligent,
(40:44):
if it can understand what's occurring because it's been imbued
with human genes that have allowed for different brain growth. Uh,
that's where that's where things get really um just complicated. Father,
What is my purpose? Yeah? Why? Why you big child?
You are my replacement liver because I'll be damned devised
(41:08):
up drinking. Well. Yeah, then you get into the ethical
issues of does does this creature deserve rights of some
sort or are we dealing with human experimentation. That point,
how what percentage of human experimentation is occurring? Right now?
Right right right? Where is the tipping point genetically? Does
it need to be defined? Is an animal still for
(41:32):
legal purposes? An animal not deserving of rights if it
is only human? Right? And then it hits fifty one,
and it's like, oh now you can vote your conscience. Yeah,
I mean this is clearly that's a that's a made
up experiment there, but it is. It is intensely problematic,
(41:54):
and it does lead into stuff they don't want you
to know. They being private institutions fundy this research. They
be state actors that are playing fast and loose with
international conventions on how how to conduct experiments. Right, there's
there's a very interesting point that you raised off airmat
that we should explore before we we continue here, and
(42:18):
that is, let's say these things do happen, more creatures
get drawn into these experiments, what will they be used for? First?
Obviously organs? Right, Oh yeah, that's what we keep talking about.
It's just it's the thing we've been attempting to do
(42:38):
um as humans for quite a while now. Yeah, it's
a huge business. Does on both sides of the law.
Imagine how many people if we want to assume the
the utopian vision of the future, if we want to
be super optimistic about this, just imagine how many millions
(42:59):
of people could have their lives saved if medical researchers
are able to grow bespoke or custom replacement organs. Why
would you languish for years on a recipient waiting list
when a creature with the perfect liver for you could
be grown and mature and then harvested and have that
(43:21):
liver transplanted within a matter of months. It seems pretty compelling,
but you you get into the the questions that arise
when you're talking about cloning right, right, because technically speaking,
in theory, it is possible for you and for Paul
(43:43):
and I and all of us listening to have a
clone of ourselves grown. Right, do some uh do some
sort of very Dr Frankenstein asks stuff to prevent a
brain from forming or coming into the equation and then
just have your spare set or organs? Right expensive to maintain,
(44:04):
but at what price? At what price immortality? You know?
And what you know? Does that clone deserve any kind
of rights? Uh? So, the aim here would ultimately be
the ability to grow replacement organs for almost every single
original organ in a human body, minus, of course, one
(44:26):
would assume the brain. I don't you know, I don't know.
I was thinking about this too, like if if it
were possible, or if it would ever be possible for
certain parts of the brain to be replaced, which gets
us into that ship of thesis, experiment and problem very quickly.
(44:47):
I mean, you know, obviously, and our pal Damian Williams
love this. Obviously, we're already reaching a point where we
have to redefine what is considered consciousness in general. Um.
And I wondered when we were looking at this matter,
I wondered if there would ever be someone who just
(45:11):
to be edgy, you know, fifty years in the future
or something, says, my body is fine, but I want
a brain transplant. Just grow a new brain and put
it in this thing, and then, you know, just make
sure that's me. That's insane. I don't think it would.
I don't. I don't see it working unless we had
some way to sounds insane just to say it, Unless
(45:34):
we had some way to replicate the synaptic actions and
the neurochemical processes that function as the fingerprint of consciousness
if I mean, if that is truly what yo, Yes, yes,
you're right, you're absolutely right. But I do think at
(45:55):
some point we'll be able to have some kind of
technology that maps up rain so fully at such a
such a minute level that we can at least print
physically what what that thing looks like. But whether or
not it contains memories and experience and knowledge. Yeah, that's
(46:19):
that's one thing that's fascinating, right because now we were
at the top of the show said we would brack
at the conversation about the soul, But it inevitably creeps in,
doesn't it, Because now we're we're saying that, um, if
consciousness or essentience for each individual is something more than
what can be mapped in that one specific organ in
(46:40):
the human body, than just foxing around with that one organ. Uh,
It's it's a lot like, yeah, I mean, you're just
fixing part of the system. It's it's kind of like saying, um, okay,
let's say let's say the brain is just hardware right
where the processes electricity like a computer, and so you
(47:04):
can you can take apart the hardware. You can replace
the motherboard or the graphics process or something. But if
you don't have anything to plug it in to, that
change does not matter. It is nil. Is the difference
is nil. The problem is moot. So maybe you gotta
get nos in there, man, Right, Yeah, I knows sure.
(47:27):
Perhaps that is Perhaps that is something approaching you know,
the seed of God, or you know the electricity that
comes when you plug it into an outlet or the
matrix or the matrix or the matrix. Yes, maybe that
is what volume four is about, right, That's what it is,
matrix volume for the hard intelligence problem. Perhaps perhaps perhaps uh,
(47:53):
there's there's another experiment too. While we're talking about the brain.
This is another use um possible you for hybrids. There
are many, many experiments, especially experiments evolving cognition, that we
cannot legally and officially conduct because we would have to
(48:16):
be humans experimenting on other humans. So Alzheimer's research, right,
is a huge field, and there's a lot of potential
for improvement in Alzheimer's is as anyone can attest a
debilitating tragic condition. When we make models of the decay
(48:36):
involved in Alzheimer's we could potentially make much more robust,
much more helpful models. If we used the brains of
human monkey hybrids, but we would have to allow them
to decay so many times, with so many you know,
(48:59):
sub to get that robust model, right, we could create
other brain disease models where it's possible to allow a
condition to progress beyond what would be ethical or legal
to do with a full human being. And even there,
isn't that sticky? Isn't that already? Doesn't that already make
you feel kind of gross? The fact that we had
(49:21):
to say full human because what everything we have learned
about our species throughout the span of recorded history, everything
we have learned indicates that we're really starting to screw
up when we start referring to any part of a
population as full human versus something else, you know what
(49:41):
I mean? So maybe we as a species simply don't
have the philosophical or ethical chops to address this, and
that goes to our concerns, right. James McDonald, writing for
j Store Daily, phrases this in a in a succinct fashion.
He says, in men ways, the ethical concerns are thornier
(50:02):
than the technical aspects. Direct transfer of tissue between animals
and humans raises concerns about animal diseases crossing over to humans,
potentially threatening a large population. I can see that absolutely.
Another concern, he says, is that animals developing with human
cells might somehow develop human physical or mental characteristics. The
(50:25):
idea of, say, a pig with a human mind being
used as an organ donor, is horrifying. Agreed. Luckily, so
far as we know this, human mind development probably would
not happen by accident. Emphasis I'm probably which bothers me.
I don't know about you, but certainly, But McDonald says,
(50:45):
even if human tissues somehow migrated to an animal's developing brain,
it would still probably develop his animal brain tissue. But
is probably enough. Yeah, it's you think so, But your
kidneys are fine. I know exactly. I don't. I don't
have a pressing. Well, I that's not true. I have.
(51:08):
There are members in my family that right now need
a heart I have I have. I'm thinking of a
person in particular that needs a heart transplant or his
you know, his life will be cut short almost certainly
so having this. If we had access to this, I
would have to I I would have to advocate for it.
(51:30):
It's sort of like at various times in the course
of stem cell research. Politicians who are very much against
it for usually for a re election or election purposes,
for anything. Yeah, they they pull to one eight when
they realized they could help a loved one. Yeah, or
just they have that one degree of separation with somebody
(51:52):
who it is fully impacting. Right, We've seen that over
and over and over with again with any issue. You absolutely,
and so now we end in media arrests. We end
in the middle of the story, and we have to
ask ourselves and ask you as well, what next. Again,
here is the situation as it stands. Barring some global catastrophe,
(52:18):
experimentation in this field will continue because the possible potential
benefits are just too impressive. They're too uh, too much
of a beneficial paradigm shift. And you know, we haven't
even gotten into some of the other really out their
ideas about what this could be or mean barely touched it.
(52:39):
Super soldiers possibly, yeah, super soldiers or superspies, because imagine
if if you could have a cat human hybrid that
looks just like a cat, but has the intelligence of
a human and can communicate in some way and it's
just spying on you know whatever, housing Maybe it's in
your house, you know what I mean. I mean, think
about that. I don't I have cat, so I don't
(53:00):
trust them anybody as everybody who as a cat as
a companion, don't trust them. I love them, just don't
trust them. I think that's the most prejudice thing I've
ever said, and stand behind it. I love the animals
that live with me, I do not trust them. That's
what dogs are for. They're already too smart. I mean,
(53:20):
if we're if we're gonna make a hybrid, it's that's dangerous.
You know, didn't we talk about how U S intelligence
agencies tried to make cyber cats before. Yeah, and then also, uh,
cats domesticated themselves, right, and they you know, you ever
look at a pug and you think tang could have
been a wolf. Cats did not undergo that same sort
(53:43):
of eugenic practice. They just showed up there. You'll have food,
Give me more of that food. Yeah. They said they
solved the rat problem, and they kind of did in
a lot of cases, but then they didn't leave. You
know what I mean, they solved the hard rat problem.
It's on the hard rap problems. But uh, speaking of
solving hard problems, we're faced with a geopolitical dilemma here too,
(54:08):
because countries and institutions that enforce ethical conventions in this
regard may end up falling behind. We're already seeing this
sort of splintering of of experimental heft and uh and
location of the pioneering research because these experiments are happening,
(54:31):
you know, the more extreme ones are happening in countries
where it's a little easier to bend certain regulations. Well,
we're talking about Japan, and you know that one in particular,
You're not necessary. It doesn't strike me as a country
that would bend these rules too much, unless, of course
you go back to World War two and Unite and
(54:51):
some of that kind of experimentation. But it's such a
different Yeah, absolutely right, Matt I was. I was specifically
thinking of China, but already the different scientific communities of
the country of trying to places based there are raising
hell with objections to what they see as lacks ethical
(55:14):
regulations and so on. There have been a number of
notable experiments in the past years that have pushed the
envelope there to various extreme degrees. The thing, the thing
that we'll run into here is that private entities that
are state sponsored can make enormous progress on this, and
(55:36):
it becomes scary when we realize that right now there's
very strong potential for this right, but there's not provable
precedent yet. As soon as provable precedent exists something that
can be reproduced with let's say, gosh, even a seventy
(56:00):
eight chance of success, then people and institutions will rethink
whatever existing ethical considerations they have, because then it becomes
a question of what do you place what what? What
is higher on your list of important things, your moral
(56:21):
code or your ability to live to see tomorrow, ability
to live to see tomorrow, as well as creating a
viable business plan true, oh my gosh, even worse. Yes,
So what what we'll see is going to be going
to be darkly fascinating. The There will either be a
(56:44):
see change in the way we approach ethical concerns of
the past or why possibly there will be very well
funded secret programs. I don't know how long they would
be able to remain secret. Well, we've already kind of
covered this before, especially when we were talking with Josh
Clark about his show The End of the World. The
(57:06):
experimentation that's going on in small labs that are just
you know, you pay for the time, nobody asked any
questions you do your experimentation. That's occurring across the world,
especially in the United States. True, if you have an
outfit that is working on something and you're being successful
at it and nobody is checking or approving your experiments,
(57:30):
especially in this environment where uh, certain things are certain
things like genes or the technology applying genes is allowed
to be patented. That comes troublingly close to a private
entity being able to own, for lack of a better word,
(57:53):
an entire form of life. Yeah, so imagine, you know,
imagine it's not just uh pig people or man pig,
it's uh Comcast pig people. Pig people powered by Comcast,
and they represent X number of viewers every week, they subscribers.
(58:14):
You know, I just picked Comcast because they have a
monopoly in certain parts of the US. I don't think
they're in the camary game yet. Dude, gosh, I just
had a really dark vision of web bots, you know,
and and all that kind of thing. But in this case,
it's some some company that has patented a certain human
(58:35):
type or a huge diversion of a human where they
just mass produced them and put them in housing somewhere
and then attached them to the television so they can
have a certain number of viewers for every episode of
whatever thing it is. Yeah, wow, that would not make
any sense. But did their their rights count? I don't know. Well,
let us let us know what you think. So long
(58:56):
and short of it is that something like this is
never doable because again, the potential benefits are just too
good for anyone to really walk away. But will this
end up being a dystopian nightmare? Will this end up
being the utopian answer to uh so many problems today?
(59:17):
Where is the answer, as it so often is, somewhere
disappointingly in between those two goal posts, where it ends
up being a great opportunity for anyone with a lot
of money to get a great organ, but for everybody
else or even worse, Look at the way medicine works
in many countries, especially in the US. Now, imagine that
you are able to buy let's say, of a replacement
(59:40):
uh kidney or something that that you need to live,
but because it is privatized, you are required to you know,
you're essentially renting or making you have an organ mortgage.
That's gonna happen organ mortgages, I know, and it sounds
like if you didn't speak English. Organ mortgage sounds like
(01:00:03):
a pretty cool phrase. It really does. But in the end,
it just means a lot of money coming out of
your paycheck every month. And then what happens if you
can't pay The bank buys your organ, right or it
just gets your organ And then do they decide how
you're how you concentrate your labor to pay them back? Tricky, tricky,
tricky stuff. Let us know you can. You can contact
(01:00:25):
us directly. We're on Facebook, We're on Instagram, We're on Twitter.
Please do check out our group page. Here's where it
gets crazy. Say hi to our favorite part of the show,
you and your fellow listeners, as well as our super moods.
All you have to do to join is no who
hosts this show? Remember my name is Matt. That guy's
usually know they call him Ben. You're you, so remember
(01:00:48):
you kind of host the show too. That's Mission Control. Yeah,
that's Mission Control. And any other superproducer that rules our way.
Name them come on in. You know you only have
to name one or two or whatever. Honestly, just just
between us, I mean don't tell anyone else I said this,
but if you could make us laugh, you're probably in
Oh yeah, please, Well, welcome to you of good you
(01:01:11):
of good humor. Hey, Matt, what if people hate the
social means, if people hate the social needs, well then
I applaud you and uh join me somewhere on the
streets of Atlanta and we will will chat uh and
be ben too. Obviously. Just head on over to a
dive bar near Pont City Market. You'll find us. You
(01:01:31):
can also call us. We have a phone number where
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All we ask is that if you do not want
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(01:01:54):
st d w y t K. That's the number. If
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are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they
(01:02:26):
don't want you to know is a production of I
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt Noel will
not be joining us today, but he is here in spirit.
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Paul Mission controlled dec and most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. Before we do
our usual check in, we have a special announcement. Happy birthday, Mike. Yeah,
(00:49):
Mr Mike Wolfe, were belated believe your birthday was Tuesday?
Was yesterday? Yeah, but hey, Mike is twenty four today.
Everybody pretty awesome, Kelly says Hi, and uh hey, let's
get on with the show. But happ your birthday, Mike,
and nice cooler. Good to be back man, long time. Yeah,
I know, it's been an entire week and sum since
(01:12):
I've seen you, especially since we've been in the studio together.
And you know I cherished these times. And we're we're
coming to the end of the big birthday month here
at how stuff works Slash. I heart podcast Network where
so many of us were born around this time, and
just as a check in, I just want to let
you know that I got to karaoke for the first
time in a long time, because yeah, because it was
(01:35):
Annie's birthday, and I did this thing that I thought
you would have been proud of, but since you were
away on an adventure, you didn't get to witness it. Um.
I attempted to do Hip to Be Square, you know,
by Huey Lewis and the News, and then there's an
instrumental section that occurs in that song, and I had
prepared essentially it's not fully a monologue, but the dialogue
(01:57):
from one of the characters in American Psycho where he's
discussing Huey Lewis in the News, and I was I
was going to perform it during the instrumental section. Now,
let me just also say this because Mission Control was
there too. Mission Control was rocking out to some Britney Spears,
to some classic new metal, all kinds of really great songs.
(02:21):
Everybody was feeling it is a pact room, and I
got up to start doing mine, and it felt like
not a single person in the room even knew what
the song was, or at least didn't care. So I
turned around at one point just to be like, all right, guys,
we do it. Does anybody understand what this song is
or where it comes from? Crickets? So it's real embarrassing.
(02:43):
Now you're talking about, I believe the moment in the
film adaptation of American Psycho where Christian Bale's character begins
at an increasingly manic clip, uh, sort of describing his
his his criticism of Huey Lewis in the news well,
and also about how they've evolved, about how this this album,
(03:05):
in particular with this song on it, it's showing this
consummate professionalism and all of these things, and about critiques
of the song itself and the meaning behind it. And
this is as he's amping himself up to commit a murder. Correct.
I think that's brilliant. Well done, Thanks man, I really
thought you would have liked it. That it's okay, But hey,
(03:26):
you weren't there because you were on an adventure and
also late, Happy anniversary to you, my friend. Thank you,
Thank you very much, Matt and and likewise, because you
and Annie and Noel and our own Casey Pegram Tyler
and Tyler Klang uh and and more. We're missing someone.
(03:47):
Chandler is like almost in the club Chandler's debate. Yeah,
but but we do have quite a few August birthdays. Uh.
Circumstances found me, you know, I hate to miss Senning
recording of this show. But circumstances found me in Japan,
place where that mission control is very familiar with. Uh.
(04:08):
So what do you think about meandering intros? Sorry about that?
Let us know you can reach us directly. We are
one eight three three s T d W y t K.
Leave us a message. Tell us about specifically that intro,
and and ask us about Ben's crow story when when
he was in a different place, because hopefully he'll tell
(04:29):
that one too. It's a great story. That's very kind that. Yeah,
I'm coming in hot. My body doesn't know what time
it is. I have a vague awareness that it is
probably a Monday here. My body is just a cage.
My friend for words, you're about to say, that's true. Uh,
Camari's right, Uh not not camaros Uh Camara c h
(04:51):
I M E R A. This This is an interesting,
fascinating and as we will learn today disturbing con sept Really,
the best way to approach this is to ask ourselves,
what's the line between humans and other animals? Right? Because technically,
(05:13):
if we cast, if we put all the metaphysical stuff
and the spirituality and the religious stuff aside, biologically speaking,
human beings are defined as animals. So what makes us different?
For a long long time we thought humans have sults,
and that's still what people will say. But again that's
that's more of a spiritual religious reasoning, not really provable
(05:38):
yet not really provable yet true. When we looked at
something more secular for centuries and centuries, we said, while
the big difference between humans and all other animals would
be intelligence. The problem is even now, our species has
a real difficult time defining intelligence. And the more we
(06:02):
examine this line between humans and other animals, the more
we see that this line fuzzes right. The demarcation is
not as stark as we would wish. Well, yeah, because
there are plenty of non human animals that display all
sorts of intelligence. Crows, yeah, absolutely, crow cetacetions to be
some of the most prominent ones. And elephants elephants, um,
(06:25):
what are octopus in cephalopods, cephalopods, Yeah, all, all kinds
of different animals show some form of at least and
an awareness beyond what we would usually contribute to an animal,
right right, uh sapience, sentience, wisdom. For years, you remember
this met For years, various organizations around the world have said,
(06:49):
you know what, some of these animals, the ones we
just named, are in fact so intelligent that they meet
the legal threshold of personhood, meaning that they're cognitive abilities
are high enough that they should be guaranteed some of
the same rights that we our species in theory gives
to every other human being. And today's episode approaches that
(07:13):
that same weird border. What is the line between human
and animal? And what happens when those lines even get
even further blurred, and where does it take us? Here
are the facts. You've probably heard the word chimera before.
The definition of chimera is is pretty cool. In folklore.
(07:35):
It's a very strange flex in mythology, specifically Greek mythology.
The chimera is this fire breathing monster. It's female, and
it's this strange anatomical mixtape. It's mostly a lion, right
at least in the front. It is a goat in
the middle, and it has a goat head coming out
(07:57):
of the back to the mid spine, and then it's
a dragon in the rear. Yeah right, I know most
of my chimeras from Magic the Gathering, I mean, as
well as Greek mythology. MTG has some some pretty great ones,
and they have some divergent takes, right, Oh, yeah, definitely.
I mean if you take the spell Heart chimera, that
(08:18):
was a big one for me back in the day.
I'm just kidding. We're not going to talk about this,
I want to hear at least there are a lot
of them, at least the card art and the way
they're described in the flavor text is very similar to
the traditional Greek mythology versions. So like three or more
usually distinct animals melded into a single creature. Sometimes it
(08:39):
gets down into you know, two fully separate heads. Sometimes
it's just one head with a body that's a little different,
but it's always a melding of creatures, right right, And
interestingly enough, in Greek mythology, the chimera is the child
of Typhon and Kidna, and it is also a sibling
of other multi headed creatures such as Cerebus, the three
(09:03):
headed canine that guards the underworld and the hydra. Oh yeah,
that's I didn't realize that it makes It doesn't make
perfect sense, but it makes better sense to have that
be the mythological order of of what is it, uh, childhood,
(09:24):
monster birth. For those to actually have this and this,
it's strange because again we see the intersection between folklore,
mythology and modern fact. You know, a lot of our
nomenclature and terminology comes from these ancient stories, and that's
why the word chimera still exists here in these our
(09:48):
modern days. We have a scientific definition of chimera. Oh yeah,
So if you look to science, it's gonna say a
chimera is a single organism, one distinct thing that's come
post of two or more distinct different populations. And this
is important of cells that originated from different zygotes involved
in sexual reproduction. So this is this is highly important
(10:12):
for today's episode. Two very specific sets of cells from uh,
from two different zygotes. Right, yeah, this is huge, This
is crucial. So far from the lion Goat, dragon Street
hit of ancient mythology, actual chimeras are more subtle, at
(10:36):
least the ones that you may have met sometime in
your life. Not only have you may have met them,
but you may have never noticed anything different about them.
Chimerican occur naturally in humans. So let's say that you
or your loved one are carrying a child, and there
(10:58):
are two two kids, and the fetus is right, not
not quite you know, kids, but but fetuses that will
become human beings. And one of the fetuses dies or
is absorbed by its twin, leaving the surviving fetus with
two distinct sets of cells. So like identical twins maybe
(11:23):
doesn't matter as much, but fraternal twins this does matter.
Genetically they are different, and it's hard to really comprehend
what that means unless you apply it to a story
or an example exactly exactly. So usually, not only would
you not know the person you met is a chimera,
they probably don't know either, And typically people find out
(11:45):
about this by accident. In two thousand and two, there
was a woman named Karen Keegan. Karen Keegan needed a
kidney transplant, and so she underwent genetic testing to see
whether one of her family members could be a potential donor.
This is clear standard operating procedure. You check with the
family first, right in this situation, they did conduct the
(12:08):
test and what they found, Um, they found something that
completely caught them off guard, something they were not looking for. Yeah,
sometimes you'll hear no, you're not the father, but you
know what, you never hear no you are not the mother.
Uh See. The genetic testing that Karen and her family
(12:30):
underwent indicated that technically speaking, she could not be the
mother of her children that she birthed, that she birthed, yes,
her biological children. This through everyone for a loop. It
was like the end of usual suspects. What's going on here?
The doctors eventually learned that Karen, in fact was a
(12:53):
human chimera. This this is just one example, and they
probably would never have caught this unless that kidney transplant
need came up. Bone marrow transplants can also create chimera. Uh.
Bone marrow transplants, by the way, really interesting. There are
a couple of unidentified people who were more or less
(13:15):
cured of HIV by bone marrow transplants. In this case,
you don't need to have something freakish happen. Bone marrow
contains the cells that later develop into red blood cells.
Ye old stem cells, ye old stem cells, the old
stem cell. So what happens when someone has a bone
(13:38):
marrow transplant is that their own bone marrow is destroyed
somehow and it's replaced with marrow from this donor, and
this marrow, this stranger's marrow creates these new blood cells.
They continually are created. And that means that if you
receive a successful bone marrow transplant, for the rest of
(13:59):
your now trull life, you will carry genetically distinct cells
within your body that reproduce. You will become a chimera. Wow,
I've never thought of it that way. I didn't, I
had no idea. I haven't thought about it that way
because I guess you and I have been fortunate enough
in our lives to not have to delve into bone
(14:24):
marrow transplants. So very true, very true, We've been very fortunate.
But you know, when you're thinking about in this way,
it's in that particular example, it's a very good thing.
Like being a chimera is is great. You've got the
blood of someone else's since essentially in your body because
they helped you survive or they have to help you
continue on. Right, a chimera in this way, in a
(14:47):
scientific way just isn't scary at least, it's not nearly
as creepy as the Greek mythology monsters that existed because
of this word or this word was used to describe.
It's much. It's it's much. Um, it's much more inspirational.
It really look at us humans, go medicine, go science.
(15:11):
They Yeah, these camera don't seem near as frightening. You
wouldn't notice it. And here's another thing. While we're talking
about pregnancy for a time, there's a study from I
want to say years so that indicates women during pregnancy
may function as chimera for a limited amount of time
(15:34):
because the fetus is creating, it's it's developing its own
cells and blood and everything is being shared in that
one that goes back to fetal cells. But oh, you
know what that makes dude, That makes total sense. Um,
My wife and I had had all these discussions. She
was learning a lot during our pregnancy. But how the
(15:56):
hormones in her body as well as having this know,
this being existing inside of her that she's sharing fluids with,
with all these stem cells in young blood and all
this her she was so ridiculously healthy during her pregnancy
so much more so than before or after. Not to
say she's unhealthy, it's just there was like it was
(16:17):
like she was had superpowers or something. It's kind of evolutions. Um,
get out of jail free pass. You know. Yeah, we've
we've seen we've seen different indicators of that. Wow, we
could do it in entire series of episodes on the
stuff that we as a species don't yet fully understand
about pregnancy. Oh yeah, but what if the idea of
(16:45):
being a kmaro. What if camaricism doesn't stop their Camaricism
is a word that I just made up. I accept it,
thank you. What if breakthroughs in medical technology can enable
us to create real life creatures closer and closer and
closer to the monsters described in Greek mythology. What if
(17:08):
we could create a melding of various animals or even
some sort of human animal hybrid. Could this be possible
and if so, what would we do? Will explore this
after a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy.
(17:34):
The answer to the first part of the question is
emphatically yes. Not only can we as a species do this,
we are already doing this. This is already happening. Pandora's
jars twisted open and there is no twisting it back.
Oh yeah, we're we're heading towards the land of the centaurs. Everybody,
(17:55):
Just if we take it back to mythology, yeah, because
I mean, really think about it. Humans in our storytelling,
in our legends, we've been pretty obsessed with humans and
animals becoming one thing. If you think about think about werewolves,
think about the skin walkers, like the version of skin walker,
those a little different thing, or sulky, you know, or
(18:20):
mermaids mermaids perfect where jaguar there. There's so many stories
of people through one means or another. Weirdly enough, it
wasn't evil for a long time. It just became evil later,
but through one means or another, people acquiring the attributes
(18:42):
of different animals, if not the ability to completely become
those animals. Yeah, for either advantageous means or perhaps because
they were um cursed in some way, right, some sort
of divine interventions. Usually how it starts, this obsession carry
Dawn for thousands and thousands of years in fact, and
(19:04):
an earlier episode, I don't know how long ago, now, Matt,
you and I explored the strange true story of the
so called human z Do you remember that, I do.
Was this a Soviet experiment back in the day, Yes,
but it was, it was. I can't remember if we
decided it was proven or not. I know for sure
(19:27):
that there were a ton of rumors. I think the
big question back in the day was was this propaganda
of some sort from either side? Um? But there appeared,
at least on the surface, to be experiments in the
Soviet Union to create a human chimpanzee hybrid. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it was Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov in the nineteen twenties. The
(19:50):
idea was that one could combine the intelligence, or at
least the potential for intelligence, of the human being with
the physical prowess of a primate. And they said, well,
out of all the great apes, the chimp is the
closest that we can find to the humans. So let's
(20:13):
get them together. Play some R and B, you know, lights,
some candles, put on some shot a see what happens. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Solely because it was not around in the the only
part of that, okay, all right, yeah, they they just
didn't have the music right. And you got it definitelyas
a huge role put on that New Swift album. You
(20:34):
know what I'm saying. So, so, as far as we know, officially,
these experiments during this time did not reach success. There
was not a viable offspring, and there will be. You know,
there are other reports of there was the one ape
that had lost some of its hair and its head
(20:57):
that exhibited human characteristics according to its observers. But none
of those, none of none of those experiments, none those creatures,
so far as we know, created a viable a viable example.
Oh that's right. It was a chimp called Oliver. A
chimpanzee called Oliver, Yeah, brought to brought to the US,
(21:21):
who people said he had a humanlike appearance, ability to
walk upright, and would rather hang out with humans versus chimps.
But uh, genetic testing confirmed he was a chimpanzee. And look,
chimpanzees are incredibly intelligent, very very smart. Don't mess with them,
don't try to outsmart them, don't definitely don't piss them off.
(21:45):
In Oliver's case, this chimpanzee was probably just very highly
acclimated to humans, right, had been raised with them. And this,
you know, this is its own unethical, sad thing. A
long story short, unless there is a huge secret UH.
In terms of Soviet hybridization experiments, we as a species
(22:10):
haven't seen a successful version of this. However, that doesn't
mean we stopped trying. You see, as it turns out,
fellow conspiracy realists, scientists across the planet have not only
continued these experiments, they have made striking, breath taking forays
(22:32):
into this world of human animal hybridization. We found several
strange and again we cannot emphasize this enough. Real genuine,
actual examples of chimera being created today. So let's just
jump through some of these. The first one, it's an
attempt to make an increasingly intelligent ape or monkey in
(22:57):
this case of some sort. So there are some researcher
is in both China and the United States that have
attempted to create UH, a version of a monkey that
also carries a human gene, and this particular gene plays
a role in the development of the brain. And if
there's a study as according to the study that was
published in Beijing's National Science Review, UH there this all
(23:19):
occurred when researchers from the kun Ming Institute of Zoology,
this is a Chinese academy of Sciences as and they're
working along with the University of North Carolina and some
other institutions. They reported that there were eleven transgenic that
is what they're called transgenic reesus monkeys, uh, that that
(23:39):
were created through the studies here. And that's pretty that's
pretty intense that we were already creating something like this
before working on this episode. Personally, I had no idea
that there was already some kind of chimeric testing done
to create an intelligent animal that had been allowed to serve, vibe,
(24:01):
to be born, because a lot of the experimentation that
we have read about or we have encountered occurs at
the embryo stage, embryonic stage, just and it's mostly to
see if it would be possible to then take that,
you know, creature to term, like if we were going
to we could, this would be a viable specimen, right right,
(24:21):
But then for insert ethical consideration A through Z here,
we are going to terminate the growth of this this
bundle of cells and do it before you know, before
organs form and like a brain stem and a nervous
system forms and so on. And that's the attempt to
to circumvent the ethical quandaries that might occur if it's
(24:42):
allowed to reach a later stage of development. Yes, specifically,
what they did with these eleven reciss monkeys as they
they gave them human copies of a gene called mcph
one mc p h one, As you said, Matt, plays
a plays big role in brain development. Two startling things
(25:07):
happened here. According to this study, this small change, this
little bit of extra cognitive gas, did make a discernible difference.
The monkeys that carried the human copy of this gene
exhibited better short term memory. They also had faster reaction
time when compared with a control group of wild Reesus
monkeys who had not had their skull hoods tampered with. Right. Well,
(25:32):
it's interesting too if you delve deep into the research
and all the documentation and that kind of thing, it
makes you wonder how much just keeping them as not
wild reesus monkeys, if that, if that had any effect.
That's a great point. Yes, that the Oliver effect, right,
since we'll just we'll just call it that. Here's the
startling thing. Though, you said there were eleven monkeys, right
(25:56):
who had this gene transferred to them. These eleven monkeys
were not created all in one go. Eight of these
monkeys were first generation. The other three we're second generation,
meaning that this trait transferred. Yeah, which of course is
(26:17):
how genes are supposed to work. But still knowing that
that's even possible. All you really have to do is
create one chimera and then you could have you could
have endless offspring, depending on which species are using and
how long you need is time and mate, you are
entering another dimension. Yeah, So there you have it, real
(26:41):
life super monkeys with some strong air quotes around there.
But the story doesn't stop there. We are had this
in our notes as piggy people question mark. I know
that a lot of us listening today are huge fan
of Animal Farm, right in the work of George Orwell,
(27:04):
and there is a incredibly bleak, incredibly well written part
of that book where the animals. That's well, quick spoiler
Animal Farm. If you are not familiar with the plot
and you don't want it spoiled for you, and you've
been waiting for a chance to read it or watch
one of the many adaptations, please consider this your spoiler warning.
(27:25):
Three to one spoilers. Alright, So an animal farm, the
human owners of the farm or the human authority figures
of the farm are are kicked out of power, right,
and the animals in the farm attempt to create a
utopian society wherein individuals contribute according to their ability and
(27:51):
are supported according to their need. Right. Sounds great on paper, Anyway,
it turns out that the pigs on the farm supplant
the former role of the humans, and they are real pills.
They're bad, and they betray all their all their ideals. Well,
and as it turns out, genetically. It's an interesting story too,
(28:13):
because humans and pigs are close enough on that mammalian
scale where you know the the what is the term
long pig yes to describe a human in certain ways
when consumed, when consumed, Yeah, we really aren't that different. No, no, no,
(28:34):
And pigs themselves, outside of war, while they're quite intelligent,
there's this very bleak moving segment of animal farm. I'm
sure a lot of us have already know what I'm
gonna say, where the surviving animals on the farm are
looking from the humans to the pigs and back and
forth and they cannot tell the difference. So this is
(28:56):
is a comment of course, orwell means it to be
a comment on the cycles of supplanting and replacing power
structures and uh, you know how the dangers of gaining power. Yeah,
and it's also to what you say, man, it's very
interesting comment on the biological similarities. So some people maybe
(29:21):
not inspired by or well maybe very much inspired by
or a well, they probably read it, almost certainly, they
read it in school. Almost certainly they had to. Uh.
They decided to see whether it was possible to leverage
the biological similarities between the pig and the human, uh,
and to create chimera for a very specific purpose. Based
(29:44):
on multiple interviews, the m I T Technology Review estimated
that in twenty fifteen there were about twenty pregnancies of
pig human or sheep human chimera. And again, they're not
these aren't being born out right. As far as we know,
we know that these come with a very specific goal
(30:07):
attached to them, a chimera of pig and human for
sign human chimera or the same product with cheap and
humans are attractive because pigs and sheep both have organs
that are about the right size for human ball park,
right size for transplantation into a human being. And if
(30:29):
you can get the human cells in there to grow
a human liver in particular inside one of these creatures.
Then well, there you go. You've got an organ factory,
my friend, you do. You do not a perfect organ
factory for a number of reasons. But this is again
just the beginning. Immediate questions, right skirt, immediate questions. Why
(30:50):
have we not seen grown up hybrids yet? Well, first,
the ratio of human to animal cells in this sort
of creature is very, very low. We're not at the
point of poor sign people yet, We're We're not we're
not reaching peak pig people, peak pig people. There we go.
(31:11):
We are instead seeing things that would look exactly like
a pig or a monkey or or a sheep. But
their internal ratio is what changes. So there's uh, it's
really just a few genes. It's just a few duman altars,
just a tweak, just a tweek. Matt and I are
(31:33):
both like holding our pointer fingers and our thumbs mere
centimeters from each other and then just sort of twisting
in the air just a little Yeah, there we go.
What could co wrong? Uh? Second, as as I think
you said earlier, Matt, in most cases these hybrids have
(31:54):
never been allowed to develop for more than a few
weeks they've been terminated before. We're actual organs, um nervous
systems and so on have been given the chance to form.
So when one expert put it thus lee, they said,
you know, we're essentially just creating groups of cells to
(32:14):
see whether they can work together, coexist, and then we're
ending them before anything gets into that murky ethical quagmire.
It's not. It's only in approaching the dark gray area,
if you know, you only get them a couple of
like a week or two further I say, further into
(32:36):
the darkness. You may have had your ears pricked up
a bit when you heard the concept of organ production.
What are we talking about? We'll tell you after a
word from our sponsor and we're back. And one of
(32:57):
the big things we're gonna be really postulating or or
having thought experiments about a little later in the show,
just to give your heads up, is why do these things?
Why continue down these pathways? And as before the ad
break we talked about the organs are important. Human organs
are important. They are not enough human organs to be
(33:18):
transplanted for the needs of the humans on the earth
right now. And if we can make more, let's do it.
Let's find a way. I'm sorry, man, it's just I'm
smirking like that because halfway through I got this this
very vivid image of church organs. And so let's say
they're not enough church organs. We absolutely not. But but
(33:39):
to be clear, you're you're taught, you're making an incredibly
incredibly important point about things like hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, eyes, Sarah,
people all over this planet right now that need a transplant,
that cannot get one, or they're on a list and
they have to just wait and hopefully they will live
long enough to see that. You know, organ transplantation is
(34:02):
a miracle of sorts of modern science. And uh, I
don't think we can downplay that, just like we spoke
about with the bone marrow transplants that we who imagined
that that could happen a couple hundred years ago, there's
no way, um, But now we are at a place
where we can do that. We just need the organs.
So let's jump to two thousand, nineteen July in particular,
(34:26):
according to two places that we looked at, both the
academic journal Nature as well as the Ontario Canada paper
National Post. Apparently in July this year, a professor working
with the Institute of Medical Science with the University of
Tokyo and the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. This
professor received approval to begin inserting quote human stem cells
(34:51):
into rodents in an attempt to grow a human pancreas
in the animal. Okay, great, we're we're moving forward to
do this. Right though, it is not as easy both
in practice to make it happen, and it's also not
as easy to get approval for something like this. Right. However,
(35:12):
there is precedent because earlier experiments have shown the ability
to grow to grow rat mouice chime era. Yes, so
we know that, and those some of those have been
allowed to live. Yeah, exactly. So you may think, Okay, well,
why is this news. It's July nineteen. This stuff has
already been happening. We've probably you may have seen something
(35:35):
in one of these magazines like Scientific Americans, Popular Sciences.
Exactly where where over the past ten years or so
these things have been discussed. Well, here's where we get
into all this stuff. Because approval for this experiment, it's
headed by a man named here Meetsu Nakauchi. Uh Approval
(35:57):
for the experiment came from a group of scientists who
were working directly with the Japanese government. Okay, and in
years past, the Japanese government had limited the quote creation
and experimentation of animal embryos imbued with human cells uh
to be only fourteen days, So they're only allowed to
live for fourteen days before I guess you have to
(36:17):
terminate them. Um. Now, in March of this year, the
Japanese government announced that that fourteen day window for testing
is actually going to get expanded, and they're going to
allow for within certain approved studies, for human animal hybrids
to be permitted to be brought to full term. Now
here's where it gets exciting for science, I guess, right,
(36:41):
Because if you can create a hybrid human rat uh
being that can grow a full pancreas, then that's great, right,
that's amazing. But you would have to go to full
term and then live and continue to live for that
pancreas to develop big enough or long enough, are large
enough to be usable. But that's actually not the uh
(37:06):
the endgame of this study. This is just a first
step towards what. Well, first it's gonna be mice. He's
and we're talking about rats. He got approved to do rats,
right right, that are quite a bit larger than rats,
especially laboratory mice. So he's starting with mice just to
make sure that it will work. Then his group is
(37:28):
moving onto rats, and then eventually they're moving on up
to pigs. And pigs is kind of the endgame for
this experiment, because that is how they're going to be
able to successfully grow um, you know, a pancreas or
whatever other organ at the correct size, right, Okay, yeah,
this makes sense because previously they've been able to grow
(37:49):
the pancreas for a mouse inside of a rat, and
they used islet cells to cure diabetes and mice. This
then becomes uh a series of steps right there, progressively
building up and hopefully learning mistakes, making errors at the
(38:09):
less damaging stages of the process. Right, yeah, exactly. But
eventually the man pig is what they're going for. Pig person,
the big person. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.
I don't know man pig has a ring to it, though,
surely that's is that a superhero yet? No? You just
throw a bear in there, and then you've really got something.
(38:30):
That's what I'm thinking of that's what I'm thinking of
man bear pig from South South Park. Yes, I'm so
surreal man pig. Ah, Sorry, I've gett always weird images
of like what's the difference between man pig and a
pig man? Is it like man bat and batman? Is
one of them? Uh, a very wealthy dude in in
(38:52):
a strange costume and the other kill me girl man? Yeah,
I feel highly insensitive to a lot of this stuff,
and I apologize to you, Ben, apologize to everyone, especially you. Paul. Uh. Yeah.
I think Paul back in twenties seventeen said he would
(39:15):
never forgive us, and I think he's holding to that. Paul,
Are you holding to that never forgive, always forget? Yeah,
he nodded solemnly. We are still in the dog house
of that guy is still in the pig man man
big dog house. This is getting complicated, but the science
here is important because one of the huge factors holding
(39:37):
this sort of experimentation back is not a matter of
technical expertise, nor is it a matter of um possessing
the correct technology. Instead, it is a matter of ethics exactly.
And one of the biggest issues here is, let's say
you're manipulating the genes and eventually a pig within this
(39:57):
study we've been referencing, or a sheep or what. Yeah,
but in in another animal, and you're generally manipulating genes
that are going to allow to create organs that are human. Right,
how do you prevent it from affecting the genes that
are going to affect brain development or intelligence? Because these animals,
(40:20):
whether you want to believe it or like it or not,
they are experiments. They are subjects of an experiment, and
they will be terminated most likely at some point. Even
if even if it's completely successful and they do grow
a pancreas, that that animal will be terminated most likely
in order to get that pancreas right, and if it's intelligent,
(40:44):
if it can understand what's occurring because it's been imbued
with human genes that have allowed for different brain growth. Uh,
that's where that's where things get really um just complicated. Father,
What is my purpose? Yeah? Why? Why you big child?
You are my replacement liver because I'll be damned devised
(41:08):
up drinking. Well. Yeah, then you get into the ethical
issues of does does this creature deserve rights of some
sort or are we dealing with human experimentation. That point,
how what percentage of human experimentation is occurring? Right now?
Right right right? Where is the tipping point genetically? Does
it need to be defined? Is an animal still for
(41:32):
legal purposes? An animal not deserving of rights if it
is only human? Right? And then it hits fifty one,
and it's like, oh now you can vote your conscience. Yeah,
I mean this is clearly that's a that's a made
up experiment there, but it is. It is intensely problematic,
(41:54):
and it does lead into stuff they don't want you
to know. They being private institutions fundy this research. They
be state actors that are playing fast and loose with
international conventions on how how to conduct experiments. Right, there's
there's a very interesting point that you raised off airmat
that we should explore before we we continue here, and
(42:18):
that is, let's say these things do happen, more creatures
get drawn into these experiments, what will they be used for? First?
Obviously organs? Right, Oh yeah, that's what we keep talking about.
It's just it's the thing we've been attempting to do
(42:38):
um as humans for quite a while now. Yeah, it's
a huge business. Does on both sides of the law.
Imagine how many people if we want to assume the
the utopian vision of the future, if we want to
be super optimistic about this, just imagine how many millions
(42:59):
of people could have their lives saved if medical researchers
are able to grow bespoke or custom replacement organs. Why
would you languish for years on a recipient waiting list
when a creature with the perfect liver for you could
be grown and mature and then harvested and have that
(43:21):
liver transplanted within a matter of months. It seems pretty compelling,
but you you get into the the questions that arise
when you're talking about cloning right, right, because technically speaking,
in theory, it is possible for you and for Paul
(43:43):
and I and all of us listening to have a
clone of ourselves grown. Right, do some uh do some
sort of very Dr Frankenstein asks stuff to prevent a
brain from forming or coming into the equation and then
just have your spare set or organs? Right expensive to maintain,
(44:04):
but at what price? At what price immortality? You know?
And what you know? Does that clone deserve any kind
of rights? Uh? So, the aim here would ultimately be
the ability to grow replacement organs for almost every single
original organ in a human body, minus, of course, one
(44:26):
would assume the brain. I don't you know, I don't know.
I was thinking about this too, like if if it
were possible, or if it would ever be possible for
certain parts of the brain to be replaced, which gets
us into that ship of thesis, experiment and problem very quickly.
(44:47):
I mean, you know, obviously, and our pal Damian Williams
love this. Obviously, we're already reaching a point where we
have to redefine what is considered consciousness in general. Um.
And I wondered when we were looking at this matter,
I wondered if there would ever be someone who just
(45:11):
to be edgy, you know, fifty years in the future
or something, says, my body is fine, but I want
a brain transplant. Just grow a new brain and put
it in this thing, and then, you know, just make
sure that's me. That's insane. I don't think it would.
I don't. I don't see it working unless we had
some way to sounds insane just to say it, Unless
(45:34):
we had some way to replicate the synaptic actions and
the neurochemical processes that function as the fingerprint of consciousness
if I mean, if that is truly what yo, Yes, yes,
you're right, you're absolutely right. But I do think at
(45:55):
some point we'll be able to have some kind of
technology that maps up rain so fully at such a
such a minute level that we can at least print
physically what what that thing looks like. But whether or
not it contains memories and experience and knowledge. Yeah, that's
(46:19):
that's one thing that's fascinating, right because now we were
at the top of the show said we would brack
at the conversation about the soul, But it inevitably creeps in,
doesn't it, Because now we're we're saying that, um, if
consciousness or essentience for each individual is something more than
what can be mapped in that one specific organ in
(46:40):
the human body, than just foxing around with that one organ. Uh,
It's it's a lot like, yeah, I mean, you're just
fixing part of the system. It's it's kind of like saying, um, okay,
let's say let's say the brain is just hardware right
where the processes electricity like a computer, and so you
(47:04):
can you can take apart the hardware. You can replace
the motherboard or the graphics process or something. But if
you don't have anything to plug it in to, that
change does not matter. It is nil. Is the difference
is nil. The problem is moot. So maybe you gotta
get nos in there, man, Right, Yeah, I knows sure.
(47:27):
Perhaps that is Perhaps that is something approaching you know,
the seed of God, or you know the electricity that
comes when you plug it into an outlet or the
matrix or the matrix or the matrix. Yes, maybe that
is what volume four is about, right, That's what it is,
matrix volume for the hard intelligence problem. Perhaps perhaps perhaps uh,
(47:53):
there's there's another experiment too. While we're talking about the brain.
This is another use um possible you for hybrids. There
are many, many experiments, especially experiments evolving cognition, that we
cannot legally and officially conduct because we would have to
(48:16):
be humans experimenting on other humans. So Alzheimer's research, right,
is a huge field, and there's a lot of potential
for improvement in Alzheimer's is as anyone can attest a
debilitating tragic condition. When we make models of the decay
(48:36):
involved in Alzheimer's we could potentially make much more robust,
much more helpful models. If we used the brains of
human monkey hybrids, but we would have to allow them
to decay so many times, with so many you know,
(48:59):
sub to get that robust model, right, we could create
other brain disease models where it's possible to allow a
condition to progress beyond what would be ethical or legal
to do with a full human being. And even there,
isn't that sticky? Isn't that already? Doesn't that already make
you feel kind of gross? The fact that we had
(49:21):
to say full human because what everything we have learned
about our species throughout the span of recorded history, everything
we have learned indicates that we're really starting to screw
up when we start referring to any part of a
population as full human versus something else, you know what
(49:41):
I mean? So maybe we as a species simply don't
have the philosophical or ethical chops to address this, and
that goes to our concerns, right. James McDonald, writing for
j Store Daily, phrases this in a in a succinct fashion.
He says, in men ways, the ethical concerns are thornier
(50:02):
than the technical aspects. Direct transfer of tissue between animals
and humans raises concerns about animal diseases crossing over to humans,
potentially threatening a large population. I can see that absolutely.
Another concern, he says, is that animals developing with human
cells might somehow develop human physical or mental characteristics. The
(50:25):
idea of, say, a pig with a human mind being
used as an organ donor, is horrifying. Agreed. Luckily, so
far as we know this, human mind development probably would
not happen by accident. Emphasis I'm probably which bothers me.
I don't know about you, but certainly, But McDonald says,
(50:45):
even if human tissues somehow migrated to an animal's developing brain,
it would still probably develop his animal brain tissue. But
is probably enough. Yeah, it's you think so, But your
kidneys are fine. I know exactly. I don't. I don't
have a pressing. Well, I that's not true. I have.
(51:08):
There are members in my family that right now need
a heart I have I have. I'm thinking of a
person in particular that needs a heart transplant or his
you know, his life will be cut short almost certainly
so having this. If we had access to this, I
would have to I I would have to advocate for it.
(51:30):
It's sort of like at various times in the course
of stem cell research. Politicians who are very much against
it for usually for a re election or election purposes,
for anything. Yeah, they they pull to one eight when
they realized they could help a loved one. Yeah, or
just they have that one degree of separation with somebody
(51:52):
who it is fully impacting. Right, We've seen that over
and over and over with again with any issue. You absolutely,
and so now we end in media arrests. We end
in the middle of the story, and we have to
ask ourselves and ask you as well, what next. Again,
here is the situation as it stands. Barring some global catastrophe,
(52:18):
experimentation in this field will continue because the possible potential
benefits are just too impressive. They're too uh, too much
of a beneficial paradigm shift. And you know, we haven't
even gotten into some of the other really out their
ideas about what this could be or mean barely touched it.
(52:39):
Super soldiers possibly, yeah, super soldiers or superspies, because imagine
if if you could have a cat human hybrid that
looks just like a cat, but has the intelligence of
a human and can communicate in some way and it's
just spying on you know whatever, housing Maybe it's in
your house, you know what I mean. I mean, think
about that. I don't I have cat, so I don't
(53:00):
trust them anybody as everybody who as a cat as
a companion, don't trust them. I love them, just don't
trust them. I think that's the most prejudice thing I've
ever said, and stand behind it. I love the animals
that live with me, I do not trust them. That's
what dogs are for. They're already too smart. I mean,
(53:20):
if we're if we're gonna make a hybrid, it's that's dangerous.
You know, didn't we talk about how U S intelligence
agencies tried to make cyber cats before. Yeah, and then also, uh,
cats domesticated themselves, right, and they you know, you ever
look at a pug and you think tang could have
been a wolf. Cats did not undergo that same sort
(53:43):
of eugenic practice. They just showed up there. You'll have food,
Give me more of that food. Yeah. They said they
solved the rat problem, and they kind of did in
a lot of cases, but then they didn't leave. You
know what I mean, they solved the hard rat problem.
It's on the hard rap problems. But uh, speaking of
solving hard problems, we're faced with a geopolitical dilemma here too,
(54:08):
because countries and institutions that enforce ethical conventions in this
regard may end up falling behind. We're already seeing this
sort of splintering of of experimental heft and uh and
location of the pioneering research because these experiments are happening,
(54:31):
you know, the more extreme ones are happening in countries
where it's a little easier to bend certain regulations. Well,
we're talking about Japan, and you know that one in particular,
You're not necessary. It doesn't strike me as a country
that would bend these rules too much, unless, of course
you go back to World War two and Unite and
(54:51):
some of that kind of experimentation. But it's such a
different Yeah, absolutely right, Matt I was. I was specifically
thinking of China, but already the different scientific communities of
the country of trying to places based there are raising
hell with objections to what they see as lacks ethical
(55:14):
regulations and so on. There have been a number of
notable experiments in the past years that have pushed the
envelope there to various extreme degrees. The thing, the thing
that we'll run into here is that private entities that
are state sponsored can make enormous progress on this, and
(55:36):
it becomes scary when we realize that right now there's
very strong potential for this right, but there's not provable
precedent yet. As soon as provable precedent exists something that
can be reproduced with let's say, gosh, even a seventy
(56:00):
eight chance of success, then people and institutions will rethink
whatever existing ethical considerations they have, because then it becomes
a question of what do you place what what? What
is higher on your list of important things, your moral
(56:21):
code or your ability to live to see tomorrow, ability
to live to see tomorrow, as well as creating a
viable business plan true, oh my gosh, even worse. Yes,
So what what we'll see is going to be going
to be darkly fascinating. The There will either be a
(56:44):
see change in the way we approach ethical concerns of
the past or why possibly there will be very well
funded secret programs. I don't know how long they would
be able to remain secret. Well, we've already kind of
covered this before, especially when we were talking with Josh
Clark about his show The End of the World. The
(57:06):
experimentation that's going on in small labs that are just
you know, you pay for the time, nobody asked any
questions you do your experimentation. That's occurring across the world,
especially in the United States. True, if you have an
outfit that is working on something and you're being successful
at it and nobody is checking or approving your experiments,
(57:30):
especially in this environment where uh, certain things are certain
things like genes or the technology applying genes is allowed
to be patented. That comes troublingly close to a private
entity being able to own, for lack of a better word,
(57:53):
an entire form of life. Yeah, so imagine, you know,
imagine it's not just uh pig people or man pig,
it's uh Comcast pig people. Pig people powered by Comcast,
and they represent X number of viewers every week, they subscribers.
(58:14):
You know, I just picked Comcast because they have a
monopoly in certain parts of the US. I don't think
they're in the camary game yet. Dude, gosh, I just
had a really dark vision of web bots, you know,
and and all that kind of thing. But in this case,
it's some some company that has patented a certain human
(58:35):
type or a huge diversion of a human where they
just mass produced them and put them in housing somewhere
and then attached them to the television so they can
have a certain number of viewers for every episode of
whatever thing it is. Yeah, wow, that would not make
any sense. But did their their rights count? I don't know. Well,
let us let us know what you think. So long
(58:56):
and short of it is that something like this is
never doable because again, the potential benefits are just too
good for anyone to really walk away. But will this
end up being a dystopian nightmare? Will this end up
being the utopian answer to uh so many problems today?
(59:17):
Where is the answer, as it so often is, somewhere
disappointingly in between those two goal posts, where it ends
up being a great opportunity for anyone with a lot
of money to get a great organ, but for everybody
else or even worse, Look at the way medicine works
in many countries, especially in the US. Now, imagine that
you are able to buy let's say, of a replacement
(59:40):
uh kidney or something that that you need to live,
but because it is privatized, you are required to you know,
you're essentially renting or making you have an organ mortgage.
That's gonna happen organ mortgages, I know, and it sounds
like if you didn't speak English. Organ mortgage sounds like
(01:00:03):
a pretty cool phrase. It really does. But in the end,
it just means a lot of money coming out of
your paycheck every month. And then what happens if you
can't pay The bank buys your organ, right or it
just gets your organ And then do they decide how
you're how you concentrate your labor to pay them back? Tricky, tricky,
tricky stuff. Let us know you can. You can contact
(01:00:25):
us directly. We're on Facebook, We're on Instagram, We're on Twitter.
Please do check out our group page. Here's where it
gets crazy. Say hi to our favorite part of the show,
you and your fellow listeners, as well as our super moods.
All you have to do to join is no who
hosts this show? Remember my name is Matt. That guy's
usually know they call him Ben. You're you, so remember
(01:00:48):
you kind of host the show too. That's Mission Control. Yeah,
that's Mission Control. And any other superproducer that rules our way.
Name them come on in. You know you only have
to name one or two or whatever. Honestly, just just
between us, I mean don't tell anyone else I said this,
but if you could make us laugh, you're probably in
Oh yeah, please, Well, welcome to you of good you
(01:01:11):
of good humor. Hey, Matt, what if people hate the
social means, if people hate the social needs, well then
I applaud you and uh join me somewhere on the
streets of Atlanta and we will will chat uh and
be ben too. Obviously. Just head on over to a
dive bar near Pont City Market. You'll find us. You
(01:01:31):
can also call us. We have a phone number where
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All we ask is that if you do not want
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(01:01:54):
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(01:02:26):
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