Merging animal and human forms brought terror to our ancesto

File: db2b0b97bfc67d913c2e14a52424d2ac.jpg (272KB, 1100x825px) Image search: [Google]

272KB, 1100x825px

Merging animal and human forms brought terror to our ancestors – and this fear persists right the way into our modern age.

By Brock Bastian, Melbourne UniversityFromThe Conversation22 February 2017

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170222-the-uneasy-truth-about-human-animal-hybrids

In Greek mythology, theChimerais a monstrous fire-breathing creature, typically described as having the head of a lion, with a snake as a tail and the head of a goat emerging from its back.

Just as it terrorised the minds of the Greeks, this vision is also the cause of much consternation regarding the successful creation of the firsthuman-pig hybrid embryosat the Salk Institute in California. In fact, such human-animal hybrids are often referred to as “chimeras”.

While this scientific advance offers the prospect of growing human organs inside animals for use in transplants, it can also leave some people with a queasy feeling. It was precisely this queasiness that led to themoratorium on fundingfor this programme of research.

Against nature?

Many of us are like six-year-olds who turn their nose up at the idea of mixing their broccoli with their mashed potato. We prefer to keep things pure. Whether it is cross-bred animals or racially mixed children, people who see the world as defined by underlying essences tend toreject this “impurity”.

What is an “underlying essence”? It’s the idea that things have certain necessary properties that are essential to them being what they are. So there is a kind of “pigness” that is exclusive to pigs, and a “humanness” that is exclusive to us.

Mixing human and animal biology is perceived as being unnatural

But in biology, at least, there is no actual essence to anything in this sense. We’re all made of different combinations of the same kinds of stuff, like proteins and amino acids.