Breaking the Species Barrier

[Skybird]

I tend to oppose genetical experiments with the human genome, being realistic enough at the same time to know for sure that experiments considered to be a taboo nevertheless will be carried out, and are being carried out right now, and that the general trend is towards genetically designing the babies that parents do desire. Legal rules and laws will not chnage that, and where it is not considered to be legal, it will be done illegally, or in other places where it is legal.

However, an even greater taboo is the creation of human-animal hybrides.

At the same time we live in a world dominated by the species of homo sapiens, whose reign over the planet kills plants and animals in apocalyptic dimensions and is on it's best way to devastate the biosphere to a degree where it cannot support many higher life forms anymore, including man.

This is due to the separation that many of man's ethical system make between man and the rest of nature, and man's life being so much more worthy than life of animals.

This attitude obviously has led us into a dead end where we still have not learned anything and still waste our time to garotte the rest of the planet and live on in a most destructive way, assuming that we must not change our way of living at all. Unforced and unneeded, we jump head over heels into the maelstrom - and party.


A German newspaper brought this small essay to my awareness, which made me think of my former opinion on genetic taboos, and I see myself in need to widen my former thinking and include the perspective it offers - not despite but right because of ethical reasons.

It should have become obvious that we are in need to raise our respect for the rest of natural creation, since it is our lack of respect for it that makes us destroying it so carelessly. The creation of human-animal hybride lifeforms maybe is a way to produce that additional respect, and to change man's thinking to abandon his murderous egocentrism and to include the interest of other life on planet Earth in our thinking as well.

I know the author's name will cause allergic reactions with some people, but ignore it and focus on the content of the essay. It's thought-provoking for sure - but does that make it necessarily wrong? It surely is an idea that has made me adjusting former, long held opinions of mine in no time.

http://www.edge.org/q2009/q09_16.html#dawkins