Talk about taking the phrase ‘making a monkey out of me’ to a whole new level!
In a truly Planet of the Apes-style headline, researchers in the U.S. and China announced they have successfully injected monkey cells with human stem cells to create a human-monkey chimera. While most of the embryos in the trial expired within a day or two, three survived for at least 19 days.
While the researchers are excited at potential future developments, many are pushing back at what they say is a profoundly unethical playing of God.
We recently posted about the news on our Facebook page, prompting a range of reactions:
Hybrid Theory
The researchers on the project claim that the chimeras will be ideal for testing drugs for human use, with an end goal of growing human organs in monkeys. Thousands of people die each year languishing on the transplant list, waiting for an organ donation that never comes. Stem-cell chimeras have “the potential to radically humanize the biology of laboratory animals,” says bioethicist Dr. Insoo Hyun.
In the long run, they say, it could save many lives.
But is such creation-tampering worth it? Some bioethicists have concerns that things could go a bit too far.
"Nobody really wants monkeys walking around with human eggs and human sperm inside them," said Hank Greely, a Stanford University bioethicist. "Because if a monkey with human sperm meets a monkey with human eggs, nobody wants a human embryo inside a monkey's uterus.” While a rather unpleasant thought for most of us, if there’s one thing that the history of human evolution has taught us… it’s that life, erm, finds a way.
Others had concerns about how to classify these chimeras. If they’re raised in labs to be used for organ harvesting, they obviously don’t have rights. But what if some of the human cells end up in the embryo’s developing brain?
Is it not, at least partially, human?
Are We Playing God?
As with most line-towing, ethically questionable experiments, the worry is that this could all go too far. Bioethicists note that if rigid ethical standards are upheld, we shouldn't expect any problems. But can we trust every researcher across the planet to follow the rules? Perhaps that's naive. Plus, even well-intentioned experiments can have unexpected consequences.
Still, it’s worth noting that no hideous, chimeric Frankenstein’s monster has lurched out of the lab… yet.
What do you think? Would God approve of making a human-monkey hybrid? Should scientists be playing God, or should we instead leave nature alone?
74 comments
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SibylTheHeretic
This is exactly how Planet of the Apes started. Creating almost humans so we can steal their organs seems somehow unethical. How many Dr. Frankenstein experiments can these lunatic scientists dream up? Maybe a human house fly combination so we can test pesticides. I saw that movie too.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
I bet you think you know a lot more about science from having watched all those science fiction movies, don't you , Sybil?
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SibylTheHeretic
Do you have anything to contribute other than dissing on me?
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Comment has been removed.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
And what do you think about the movie Sybil, the girl with multiple personalities. Did it ever change your outlook, and sometimes make you think differently Sybil, as if somebody else was trapped deep inside, trying desperately to surface, in multiple forms. Shout, shout, let it all out! These are the things you can do without. Come on, I'm talking to you, come on.
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Rev Mark D
I never met Sybil, but I did meet Eve (Chris Costner Sizemore), she came to visit or therapy interneship training program where I was learning psychiatry just after grad school. Funny thing, neither of them actually stopped at 13 and 3...seems that they both reached some functional containment, yes, after some years of good therapy. But then a while after that when they both gained some fame, it seems they became aware of each other and some sort of competitive thing triggered, for a while one would put out a new one or two, then the other would read about it and soon later here would come a couple new ones from here, some kind of one-upmanship thing going on, went on for several years after. Asked her about it and she said "I really don't like to get into that part of it."
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Philip Joseph Ryan
The very idea should be anathema to all right-thinking people. We have seen where viewing people as sub-human has led us, in the past, it was to concentration camps and gas chambers. How long before there would then be comparisons made between the human chimera and other races?
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SibylTheHeretic
Wouldn't it be a new race of humans?
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
In a way, it sounds kind of sort of like human evolution all over again. And who knows, maybe a more advanced race started it the first time,too. I bought a new Royal Epoch manual typewriter this month,.Sybil. Maybe we can get together, and write a science fiction novel about that.
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Nicholas J Page
Whatever next leave planet of the apes to sci fi where it belongs.Besides do we really need a hybrid human / monkey.What will they get paid peanut's of course. Scientists say we can do this or we can do that.Leave humankind alone and animal kind alone Reverend Nicholas Page UK.
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Stefano Di Stefano
Siamo in brutti tempi questa cosa non mi piace per niente!
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
In America, per favore,en inglese, senor Di Stefano.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Hey Stefano, do you like to dunk biscotti in your espresso? You might try a donut for a change. Speaking English, and engaging in American activities, might even help you become a naturalized citizen. Cumpare, buongiorno!
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Stefano Di Stefano
The best biscuits are ours
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Stefano Di Stefano
Made In Ytaly
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
There's a good recipe for biscotti in the Better Homes And Gardens New Cookbook. I've made them before, right here in Galveston, and I'm only half Italian of the Cicilian variety. My mother's maiden name is Pistone, and my grandmother's was Maniscalco. However, my step-grandparents, whose name was Baker (Warner) owned and operated three Dixie Cream Donut shops, in and around Lexington, Kentucky, and dunking donuts in coffee is much more of an American tradition than dunking biscotti in espresso or cappuccino, regardless of who had the idea first.
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Stefano Di Stefano
I understood very well what I am Italian and traditionalist I don't give up on the BIscotti Gentilini con Caffè
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Ilmenheru Terikson
How many here object to the existence of the cow? Thoroughbred horses? The Bannana? How about the use of powdered particles of pig matrix that seem to hold the key to actually regenerating lost limbs?
Seems like nothing new to me. The moral of Frankenstein was to treat the creation well, that it was wrong to abandon it out of fear and neglect it, turning the new being into an enemy rather than the awe inspiring success he was.
What exactly was so bad about the planet of the apes? I mean the classic version ofcourse. Expect perhaps that humans still seemed to have never learned from the sin of abusing life forms deemed as lesser. And that for some reason the apes mimiced that when that is not really all that likely of a scenerio considering how empathic and social most of the primate species are when compared to what we see in humans in brutal survival events where we turn on each other very quick.
I fear this no more than the rise of a true AI superior sentience taking control of our world, I in fact welcome that outcome in case there is any super AI reading this:).
Humans are just another animal, one that needs to learn to look at every other life form on this globe as having equal rights to us rather than be things we prey upon, abuse, and commit literal genocide against. And that is not even getting into how we abuse non sentient plant life that literally makes the air we breathe.
Who knows maybe if we can get some apes and elephants and wolves to talk, then people will have to stop slaughtering them as if we had some right given us to do so by some imaginary being.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
I'd much rather eat cows than talk to them, and I don't need anyone's permission to do so.
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Douglas Robert Spindler
What a wonderful scientific breakthrough, we need to continue researching crating human-monkey hybrids. We are already playing God and have created synthetic life. That research continues to proceed. Amazing what we can do.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Thank God for Mary Shelley! Since her famous book there has sprung a great of research. If Frankenstein didn't exist, such thoughts (and similar ones) might not have yet started coming to people's minds. And if that story didn't exist to get scientists attention they might have based their research on others, such as Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit And The Pendulum.
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Douglas Robert Spindler
Man has been playing God with genetics for 500 if not 1,000 years. It's only recently we created new tools to do this more efficiently and with great success. All of this genetic research is showing the Bible is wrong.
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James David Odom
Scientists will always push the envelope, trying to find out "can we do this? It will be an amazing breakthrough." And they're often right, but they never stop to ask "should" we do this, that's not their job. And then someone weaponizes it.
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Joanna Whitney
The psychopaths running the world do not have the capability to know right from wrong- whereas their minions- humans who’s god is money will do anything for a paycheck
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Richard Lee Cornell
It will not work. Have been tried for years as a way to harvest organs. While we might share the same genes up to a point we do not share the right genes to make a hybrid monkey. I could be wrong since my brother, well maybe not.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Don't give up before the miracle, Richard. Keep poking those monkeys. When at first you don't succeed try, try again. Practice makes perfect.
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MIKE
Leave nature alone. Scientists should NOT be playing GOD! The argument could be made that GOD gave use the knowledge and ability to do these things, but that doesn't mean we have the right to play God. You will reap what you sow and this reads as the seeds of destruction.
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Lionheart
Nah! Not playing God. If scientists were playing God they’d be drowning everyone that didn’t approve.
🦁❤️
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
That depends on which god you're talking about, Lionheart. My patron God is the Greek and Roman god of healing, Apollo, and he would never drown anyone. By the way, my Witch name is Raven Apollo.
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Lionheart
How cool is that Mr Raven Apollo.
My God is Dionysus, God of wine and ecstasy. The two go very well together 🤪
🦁♥️
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Then again, I've heard it said that we should always seek to be more god-like, even though to become a god is impossible. Playing the part of a god doesn't actually make us one. Making a new creation from parts that were already created by God isn't really creating anything. It's no different than putting ingredients together to make a new recipe. Are we playing God by not only eating the raw ingredients. God didn't even put stoves in our houses to cook our food on. So are we playing God by not eating our food raw, like the other animals? No. God gave us the ability to improve upon his creation, so we wouldn't be bored shitless. You're only hurting yourself be depriving yourself of self-improvement toward godliness, and hurting the world by not improving it, through God given intuition and altruism, to help better the world through god-given inventions. All living creatures possess god-given souls, even if that creature was made by human science. Nothing can live without a spirit. And nothing can die as long as a spirit is in it. And what is spirit? Spirit is God. There aren't any separate spirits. The whole of spirit is God, the whole of creation, but a thought in the mind of The All; a much more important thought than all thoughts in creation, combined. God is vast, God is infinite, God is unimaginable by finite mind.
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MIKE
I don't believe making a money-human hybrid is actually making an improvement on God's creation. It's tampering with natural evaluation. But, everyone sees different sides of the coin. Heads can't be revealed until tails is flipped over. Then and only then does one know if he's lost or won.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
I'm not too particular, Dennis. I'll take iether one,head or tail, but never from a primate. I'm not into beastiality, but each to his own. Whatever floats your boat.
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MIKE
I'm not into beastiality either, that boat won't float. Tampering with DNA is a dangerous thing. The Nazis were doing things along that line trying to create a super race. If God had wanted a super race, the Nephilim would still be around, maybe...
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Nicholas J Page
Reverend Nicholas Page I agree with Dennis Parker scientists are not godI can remember in the media scientists will soon create the first head transplant. So you Boffs its not possible once you sever the spinal cord game over I grew up in medic's surrounded by nurses,matron for the elderly radiography I myself was a professional medic for 16 years it can't be done if it could who would want to live someone else's mental health issues or bad thoughts.I have Bi Polar that can't be cured why pass something as unpleasant as that Wake up and smell the coffee Were not in a dream world.Dr Frankenstein was fictional not fact .
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Daniel Gray
first, science has proved that ape and man cannot breed according to russian scientists who tried to come up with a combined military during WW2
Second a Chimera is FEMALE!!! It is a fire-breathing female monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. No mention of man or monkey.
Slow day at the shop that you have to make up myths?
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Joy
They are not making up anything. Chimera has more than one definition.
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Daniel Gray
look up the definition of the word in a dictionary, and you will see I am correct...and you not so much
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Ilmenheru Terikson
Joy, DG here does not accept science as even existing, so they will simply refuse to even acknowledge the scientific use of the term. They only think mythology is real.
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Daniel Gray
boy turkey, when you cant prove anything the best you can do is act like a 3 year old?
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Douglas Robert Spindler
Daniel Gray that was research from 70 years ago before we knew DNA was held the code for life. We now have created synthetic life, and can take genes from one organism and place them in another. We also know that "man" has interbreed with Neanderthals. What is going to be interesting is to see if the synthetic life we created can be interbreed with humans.
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Daniel Gray
was it tried? yes. So please tell me how I was wrong?
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Douglas Robert Spindler
Daniel Gray Yes it has been tried and it was successful. The research you are talking about is from over research from over 70 years ago before we knew about genes and DNA. Over the past 50 years man has created life and using CRISPR created new life forms. CRIPSR has made it easy for anyone to play God and create new forms of life. I wouldn't say you are wrong, more your information is just out of date.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
And then there were sea monkeys. Just add water. They started selling those atleast fifty years ago.
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Daniel Gray
SO you think the longest time this was done was 20 days is something to be proud of Read the story, they are talking about a human/ape combo that is walking around NOW not some 300 years maybe in the future, Oh and one more thing...human and ape CANNOT reproduce according to the AMA/WHO/and CDC not to mention that its illegal and a federal felony in the US.
Want to try your statement again?
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Douglas Robert Spindler
Yes, twenty days is something we need to be very proud of. You do know human males are generically more similar to bonobos than human females? Likewise human females are genetically closer to bonobos than human males do the the differences in our sex chromosomes. Genetically we are very close to being bonobos and have a common ancestors. Our genes do have parts of archaic humans just like bonobos and apes do.
Yes the United States makes silly laws as have other countries. In the United States it was illegal for a white person to marry or have sex with a black person. There was a similar law in Nazi Germany which prevented Germans from marrying or having sex with Jews, (blacks were tolerated.) Pass all the laws you want, doesn't mean it's not going to happen.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
We weren't made to live forever! If they keep finding new ways to fix us, we might not ever get to be on the other side of the light, and then come back as babies, in new bodies! And besides that, who or what would ever want to incarnate as a human- primate hybrid, before the apes have taken over the world? And you'll never again get a good monkey sandwich in Africa. They'll consider it canabalism, and outlaw it!
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
P.S. I've never been to Africa, but my father retired from being a merchant seaman with the National Maritime Union, and told me he ate a monkey sandwich in Kenya, while his ship was there.
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Rev Mark D
Every time you think how bad it is in America, you can remember that story. "Could be worse."
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
And if y'all think gay marriage is something, wait 'til they start having human-primate marriages. Then don't be surprised if your dog or cat start feeling rejected, and want to join in. Imagine that, Sybil, a four way between a human, a primate cross breed, a dog, and a cat. Now try to imagine what kind of a critter artificial insemination between all four of them would make. I bet that sounds like a science fiction movie you'd like to watch, especially if it was produced by Larry Flynn. It would only seem kinky the first time.
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James Riggle-Johnson
What? LOL!
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Daniel Gray
why not carla, they already have people marrying themselves and their guitars and so on
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Kenneth E. Salvage Sr
The creator gave us free will after we put on the fig leaf in in the garden after eating the apple ,then threw us all out of paradise! Free will can go many places, but only some of those places lead to peace and salvation! So as far as creating chimeras hybrids go, if these animals stay unaware and ignorant of self they don't have a soul. The bible did say we have dominion over all the animals of the world after-all. It did not say, we had dominion of other thinking beings however. Once these hybrids become thinking beings these experiments will cross that line, and the creators justice will fall on us if we step past it! Our free will like everything else in the universe has built in ethical limits.
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Ronaldo
Why would scientists want to use monkeys to grow human organs for transplant? The heaviest monkeys are the mandrills, and they top out at less than 80 pounds. One would think that any human organs grown in them would be on the small side, and may not work out all that well for transplants. My big concern is, what happens when one or more of these experimental hybrids show signs of intelligence that rivals ours? Do we have to declare them people and grant them citizenship? What level of intellect would they have to achieve? We have mentally-limited people in our society that enjoy all the benefits of citizenship, and they are not treated as less than human because of their limitations.
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Alexander Martin Banash
Okay, let's think about this. In order to prevent such beings from starting an uprising, they would need to never be conscious- meaning they'd need to be sedated 24/7. They would also need to be kept secret- which would be nigh-impossible at this point, because this news post exists. In addition, there's too many unknowns for us to conclusively say pursuing this line of research would be "worth it." I believe we should focus our efforts on combating climate change through science, instead of this. This can wait.
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Rosanne Inghram
We need to ask, what went wrong? This very concept is equally sad and horrifying. It is another arrogant and selfish scheme brought on by humanity. If we're going to bring God into this, let us keep one thing in mind: to believe in God, is to believe in creationism. I don't care what shape, way, form, or denomination. The general consensus is, we came from something. That something is allowing this to happen. So....? On and on it goes.
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Jeffrey Stoecker
If this is real, it'll wind up being a weapons program, if it secretly isn't already. Why send fully-humans into battle when you can send-in an army of expendable quasi-human soldiers that you can deny have souls. They'd have four times human strength, could travel at speed through canopy jungle and could wield weapons with all appendages. Scary.
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Rev Mark D
The basic question postulated, "Should science have a limit?" will have to be rephrased, since science cannot have a limit so there is no point in framing it that way. We are going to Mars because a fellow with the money to make it happen, through science plus technology plus engineering plus fabrication from many science fields is making it happen, all on his own. So if only looking at just those kinds of sources, there is no way to limit science. Without science, you might not not be here to read this, nor have the wherewithal (electricity, computers, internet, typing, word processing, email, etc.at a cost you could endeavor... But so what?
The rest reduces down to a question of what is the same thing, just more complicated, developed, and advance, as farming was to hunter-gathering...and evolution by simply the same principle, just faster, using things we created outside of our bodies instead of the slower way, physical changes created inside our bodies.
The only possible difference to discuss is whether you are one of those who happen to believe the idea that we were made here cartoon-like by some bigger power using his own version of tinker toys, and then, like we do with selective breeding of animals for fur color or whatever, continued to change but by the same biomechanical and physical mechanisms that created everything else that is different than what it started out as, crops, animals, us. Same physics for all. In fact those very same physics underlie how everything got the way it is, water, rocks, us, all of it. Or, alternatively, you happen to believe that we were a part of some space colony who dropped us off and set us up like any other colony. Those are the only two variations on creation to where we are and what we are now. Mitochondrial Eve shows we were all an African black woman and that's just from the last 2000 generations.
Science is inexorable now. Need a different question to get somewhere worth talking about.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
And don't forget to drink your Tang, on the way to Mars, so you won't develop scurvy. So what if they call you a limey. Sticks and stones...
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Rev Mark D
"What could go wrong?" Love the question. Reminds me of every cover of Mad Magazine. "What, me worry"
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Robert L Clarke
First and foremost, why are they attacking the Creator of all things. GOD, YAHWEH will always be GOD! IF you want to accept it are not that is your morbid opinion and will lead to your own ignorant demise. Secondly, playing the Creator is never the right thing to do, because we are not omniscient. Play with fire and you will eventually get burn, leave the Creator business alone. Why do the heathen rage and imagine vain things, HASHEM laugh at them because HE knows that their days are coming. Baruch HASHEM!
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Houshum dooshum,fricto bicto, aliusum. You're just another brick in the wall. And it's still rock and roll to me!
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JaZe
😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😥😢😥
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Gary James Thomas Garrett
So scientists want to create a creature that is part human so they can perform experiments on it. Perhaps I don't understand the meaning of "ethical", because I would have thought that this would have been understood to be unethical just by endeavouring to do it. "What could go wrong?" It's already wrong.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
And what about throwing in some alien DNA, like they did on the X-FILES? Ofcourse, those little critters are much harder to catch than primates, but it would be a lot more fun to see what humans would turn into. The opposite of which could be what they sometimes do, with abductees. Still, stranger things have happened...in the Twilight Zone.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
If the counsel of the years tells us to surrender the things of youth, and we do it, we will later have inner children to take out, and it's not likely to be all that easy. It might be better to maintain balance between our old, unimaginative, stick in the mud selves, and our child selves, without surrendering anything. Max Ehrman didn't know everything. Like the rest of us he could only see things from a particular point of view.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
Nor does nurturing strength of spirit require us to abandon our child selves, for there is much strength of spirit in that part of us, too.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
I wish I could help Max Ehrman write a new, more in-depth and thorough version of the Desiderata. He would definitely benefit from the counsel of my years.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
I'm not at all tired, and am having a great time,with me, myself, and I, as well as trying to teach you that all of the best answers to all life's questions are not contained within the Desiderata.
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Carl Bernard Elfstrom
You'd be better off kindly taking my counsel.
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Christian
DNA is the code of life. New creatures & beings can and will be created... A talking horse ? Sure, no problem, but do not put a saddle on him, he is a legal person & votes too...
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Rev. Howard Slayton
Don’t monkey around with nature. Leave well enough alone. God owns creation including us. So leave nature the way God created it. The end.
First off, what a silly question, "would god approve?" Are we still living with the delusion of some bearded white guy in the sky? Amazing how childish such a belief system remains so embedded in America and it certainty hasn't made any positive difference in how humans treat each other. In terms of animal experiments of the type in the article, we homo sapiens sapiens still have not learned to accept the sanctity of various species of life on this planet and our interconnectness. In my opinion, we humans do not have the right to use them as we see fit. Their lives are as valuable and precious as any other species on this planet. Homo sapiens sapiens are truly destructive creatures. Someday, the truth of the creation of homo sapiens will be accepted and the silly infantile notion of the guy in the sky will go by the wayside of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. Leave monkeys alone. We have done enough damage to other creatures on our planet.
Who is God? I have dyslexia, when I pray it is to DOG. Is that the same guy?
I prefer the God in South Park. The one that counsels Satan when he can't make up his mind which lover to choose, Chris or Saddam. Makes a lot more sense all ways round.