Ethics

Ethical discussions about the development and use of chimeras and hybrids (hereafter: “chimbrids”) are faced with a series of weighty problems. 1) First, not enough is known about either the research aims or the technical, political and social implications of this kind of research to evaluate the benefits, risks and moral implications of the research in the short- or long-term. 2) Second, the debate about chimbrids touches on a variety of important, but very diverse bioethical debates that need to be factored into a discussion of the moral permissibility of this work (e.g., xenotransplantation, animal ethics, human subjects’ research, embryo research, abortion, etc.). 3) Third, there is no general, accepted normative framework in place for the evaluation of these novel technologies. And finally, 4) the conventional standards for moral evaluation of work involving human beings and animals presuppose a significant moral distinction between the status of animals and human beings; this distinction is infused throughout public moral discourse and legal regulation, as well as in normative ethical theories, regardless of the particular substantive moral claims defended by any one camp. But with chimbrid research, it is this very distinction between human beings and animals that is at stake.