January 31, 2012 • 31 mins
A Russian program to breed human/chimpanzee hybrids? Prisoners injected with animal testes? These grotesque tales shed light on the line between humans and chimpanzees. In this episode, Robert and Julie discuss humanity's attempts to create a humanzee.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
I think we can both agree to One of them
more troubling things to shamble out of the nineteen was
the possible human zee. Oh yeah, very very sad case
(00:28):
of a chimpanzee, sweet animal, very sweet, cigar smoking upright, walking, bald,
bald ish chimp that people thought was very is like,
eerily humanlike and and some people even thought that he
might have been the missing link between humans and great apes.
And Jim, yes, we hear about the missing link all
(00:50):
the time. And in the nineteen seventies genetic testing that
people were just so unnerved by this this little creature Oliver,
that I thought for sure that there wasn't part of
him that was human. And they saw it in his face, right,
they saw it in the way that he appeared to
walk around on two feet right right. And and supposedly
the smell as well, there's some accounts that say that
(01:12):
he didn't smell like a chimpanzee, ship that he smelled
like a little bit like a man and a little
bit like a chimp. Yeah, well, here's okay, here's the context.
Nineteen seventies, some a couple raises chimpanzees, uses them for
entertainment purposes, meaning you know, in commercials or parties or whatever.
They get this one peculiar chimpanzee, Oliver. Turns out that
(01:33):
nobody really wants to use them in commercials because he
is really unsettling, because he looks very human, and because
he keeps walking upright, like consistently. You see chimpsy this sometimes,
but this particular chimpanzee was you know, even though his
hips were splayed out, he would still walk up right.
People like, that's kind of weird. Um, And so they
began just to annotally say things like, oh, well, you know,
(01:55):
the other chimps don't like Oliver because he must have
a bad smell or they don't recognize a smell. So
we don't know for sure exactly what the deal was
with Oliver, but but they felt weird about using him.
They didn't think he looked like like star chimp material,
and and maybe just maybe they they found that he
looked at he was a little too human. That's the
(02:17):
problem that that it felt really weird to take this
this sort of human looking animal, uh and uh put
it in a cage, take it out of the cage,
make it run around for a commercial, and then reward
it with a carrot and a cigar. Well, especially especially
if it sits down next to you and start smoking
a cigar and maybe even making a pass at you,
(02:39):
because apparently this is something that he would do when
he turned sixteen and his hormones were raging. I guess um,
but he in fact was not a humanzy as much
as people wanted to believe or thought that he was.
Later on they did gitetic testing on him, they found
that he was, you know, chimp. That doesn't mean that
people uh still aren't fascinated by the idea that you
(03:02):
could create half man, half ape. Right, It's it's I mean,
it's a it is a troubling idea, as we uh,
it's the title of this podcast suggest you know. It's uh,
it's it's the the idea that there is this bridge
between us and the animal. It but blurs the line
between what it is to be human and what it
is to be this this other. And of course this
is something that we've explored in horror and science fiction
(03:26):
many times in the past, especially of the the end
of the eight hundreds beginning of the twentieth century, you
saw a number of very important stories that came around
that they really signified this. I mean one as early
as one you had the Murders in the Room Morgue
by Edgar Allan Poe, which you know spoilers. It involves
an orangutant with a straight raders there stuffing girls into chimneys,
(03:49):
and the idea that this this ape is going around
committing crimes against humans. So it's it's pretty troubling. But
but then it really kicks in a little later. Um
of course you have uh the Island of Dr Moreau,
um classic novel. Which movie are you referring to? Oh, yes,
(04:09):
the ninety six version, which you still have to admit
is pretty fun because you have you have Marlon Brando
and that whole get up apparently acting with a headset,
like barely acting like reading lines that are right. And
then he has the little The whole idea of the
mini me originates with the with the little person that
(04:29):
he had addressed up like him. Um Ron Perlman running
around as in an animal costume. You had Val Kilmer
doing god knows what, and uh it was kind of
a disaster. But there was also a nineteen seventies seven
film version that had Bert Lancaster and Michael York and
that one was always a favorite of mine because it
(04:50):
was like when I was a kid, I would watch
like like Grandpa Monster would host this like Saturday Morning Afternoon.
You know, he was a daytime horror TV host, and
he would host these awful movies that I was watching.
This was before Mystery Science Theater three thousand Stugs, But
but I would, I would. I would always check it
out and and they would, you know, show stuff like
them with the giant ants and and I particularly remember
(05:12):
being really into that seventy seven version of Dr Moreau.
All Right, I need to check that out. So yeah,
I mean, in case you guys haven't guessed out there,
we're talking about humanities, and we're gonna talk a little
bit more later about what we have already done in
the lab in terms of creating hybrid creatures of ourselves
and other animals. But first we should probably talk about cameras, right, Yes,
(05:35):
the camera. For you Greek mythology junkies, this was of
course a a monster with the lion's head, a goat's
body at dragon's tail. It breathes fire. It was born
in Lycia, on the southern coast of what's now modern Turkey.
And it would sweep down in the evenings and it
would carry off women, children, and livestock. It would literally
their bones all over the mountains. And uh, so you
know what, what are you gonna do? You gotta get
(05:57):
a hero to take care of this, this monster that's
made from different animal parts. So you bring in Bill
Eraphan And uh, of course he can't really just walk
up there and take care of his A. He needs spear,
and B he needs a pegasus. So I find it
amusing that um that he defeats the chimera mainly by
using a chimera, because the today that the word chimera
(06:19):
is often used to refer to any animal that has
two or more different sets of genetically distinct cells working together. Okay,
and so again this will bring me about two movies
and Clash of the Titans, right, yes, everyone, everyone's modern
understanding of mythology of course based and clash of the
type of course, right. But of course we actually do
have hybrids in nature, not necessarily like medusa like creatures
(06:43):
or otherwise they're generally not quite that facts. Yeah, yeah, minotaurs,
sirens on the banks calling you forth. But we've got
dogs and wolves not that exciting, but they have made
it right, lions and tigers, ligers a mule, which is
the progeny of a male donkey and a female horse. Yeah,
you get the all the value of a donkey, but
(07:04):
the size of a horse. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously
we've seen inner species love happenings in their products of
their love happenings. But I don't know why I'm choosing
to say it that way, that this is what happens right. Well, yeah,
they're related, um enough that they can actually breed with
one and they and produce the offspring that most of
these cases, though, cannot then breed with with other animals.
(07:26):
The mule for instances is generally sterile. Yes. And then
we have cross species in the lab. Right man made
three different types here that you'll see. One is called
the hybrid, and this is created by breeding across species,
and hybrids are generally the result of combining an egg
from one species with firm from another to form a
single embryo and hybrids contain recombined genetic material throughout their
(07:50):
genome and throughout all the tissues in their body, because
that's important to note. And then there's transgenics that's the
result of gene transfer, and typically transgenics contains transferred or
manipulated genes in addition to the host nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.
One exception may be a transgenic embryo comprised of the
entire complement of nuclear DNA from one organizing organism fused
(08:14):
with an inunculated egg cell from another, and this will
become all sort of crystal clear, and we talk more
specifically about what's being created here. And then third cameras
right right and their number of cool lab grown examples
of this. Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Second Medical University
successfully fuse human cells with rabbit eggs. A year later,
there was a successful Chinese camera experiment where reachers that
(08:37):
researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota announced that they
created a pig with human blood pumping through its veins.
We made a sheep with human livers, a mouse with
the human liver, a stapler with the human liver cat
not really at the state cat human hybrid proteins, mouse
with a human brain, well with human with one percent
of its brain was the human brain cells. So but
(09:00):
anyone gets any crazy secret in them ideas there, But yeah,
it's it's a technology that's it's been around the block
a few times already, and these are all issue point
that people are not just making like sheep with human
livers just I think it's awesome, or they want to
sheep that can really hold its liquor. This is about
figuring out ways to potentially grow new organs for organ
transplants for humans. To better understand some of these systems,
(09:22):
I mean they're they're definitely medical, uh goals in mind
here are trying to understand life threatening diseases UM. In
two thousand and seven, British researchers created a human pig hybrid.
So this is where the egg comes from a pig
and then nucleus comes from a human and the idea
is to implant the nucleus of an egg from a
human being with a disease UM so he's something like
(09:43):
heart disease, and then you can watch how the DNA
from a person with this condition instructs cellular development in
its earliest stages, and so scientists really hope to find
out more about the inner workings about what's going on there, um,
specifically with heart disease. So yeah, there's all these different
examples of how we have tinkered with nature in order
(10:04):
to observe our maladies or even just how we have
progressed as human beings. So all this leads inevitably to
the tale of a Russian biologist by the name of
Iliya Ivanov who was doing that most of his work
in the nineteen twenties, and uh, really wasn't all that
heart about by the modern public until around and that's
when a number of Soviet documents became unclassified. The British
(10:26):
tabloid The Sun got ahold of some of this, and
they started running stories about the Red Frankenstein, who was
supposedly it traveled to French Guyana on a Bolsheviks sponsored
quest to bread a human ape hybrid to create some
sort of super mutant to aid Stalin and his conquest
of the world. Yeah, right, this was the Red Apeman
Army that they talked about, um, which you know, it's
(10:49):
probably good to note that Ivanov was working way before
the Russian Revolution began. And there are certain aspects of
this story that you can see they might have been
taken out of context. And uh, and it's a great
fun idea to run with this half man, half ape
army that Stalin wanted to defeat the world with. But
(11:09):
that is not in fact what happened, right, That's not
exactly what ivan Off was after the At the down
of the twentieth century, ivan Off was already a pretty
famous dude in his field for his pioneering work and
artificial intamination. Respected, yeah, well respected. He had done things
like he created a z donc which was a zebra
donkey hybrid, a zubron which is a European bison cow crossover. Uh,
(11:30):
you know, he was he was creating mashups with animals
like and kind of you know, islanded Dr morou wish,
I guess if you want to really take it and
run with it. But but he was well thought of.
And his next big thing was he wanted to see
about improving the bloodstock of Imperial Russia, so um around.
He puts in proposals with the government despite the disapproval
of the scientific establishment. He got to go ahead, and
(11:53):
the funds most important to mount a expedition to Africa
to collect apes so that he could see about creating
a hybrid between a human and its closest relative. That's right.
And he was getting his funds from the Soviet Academy
of Sciences and part and uh, and there was a
little crossover at the time, so he's working with a
lot of people who are really respected in their fields.
Of course, you know, the problem was that, uh, it
(12:16):
was a little bit diabolical, right, I mean, his his
idea here, yeah, his his best we can tell his
his real idea. His his notion here was not to
create a super soldier and thing stupid like that. But
he was a big believer in the theories of Darwin
that the idea that man evolved from these previous forms,
that that evolution was the driving force, natural selection was drive,
(12:38):
which is right. Yeah, But he he thought that the
way to really prove it, to just really just settle
the case once and for all, and the whole evolution
versus everything else, versus religion, you name it, was to
actually create a human chimp hybrid and then introduce you
to the world. And then people would say that he
would be like, what what's that? You got something else?
(12:58):
There's something about religion, eat my humansy his name is
Oliver and uh proof, Yeah, your entire argument is nil
at this point. So so he had you could say
he had a noble um, you know, scientific goal in mind.
It's kind of a I mean still kind of a
helish moves. He's kind of wants to stick it tip
to everyone, but it's still he has a definite goal
(13:19):
in mind. Here his his means of pulling an offer
just a little suspect. Well, yeah, it's in the execution, right,
So he decides that, um, he is going to try
to inseminate three females, right, which he does. Um, he tries,
I should say, and these are African women and uh
but then you know, eventually he's forced to abandon the
project because it's just not going that well. It doesn't
(13:41):
have a tent of support behind it, right, and he
has really had to try to get those ten dollarge
in the Soviet Financial Commission. He's really had to work
very hard at it. This it's not something that a
lot of people want to write. And it was kind
of touch and go, Like he went to Paris first
and then he went to French Guyana because they had
some chimps over there, but then they weren't yet old
enough to breed, so to come back to Paris. Nothing
(14:02):
was working in his favorite right and he gets really desperate,
and so what does he do? Something completely unconsciousable. He
decides that he's going to inseminate African women with the
chimpanzee sperm without their knowledge. Okay, so he's trying to
get forward with this is as much as possible, and
he's found out, and of course everybody starts to reject
(14:25):
this plan, and he spirals out of his his professional field.
I guess you could say, yeah, he starts hanging out
with the celebrated surgeon Sergey Voronoff, who at the time
was was really in fashion because he had a quote
unquote rejuvenation therapy that he would perform in which he
would graf slices of ape test ees onto those of
(14:47):
rich and aging men who were hoping to regain some
of their former vigor. And let's just all positive for
a moment think about that. Yeah, it's I mean, on
one hand, anyone who's ever read The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes is probably thinking of the Adventure of the Creeping
Man from nine three, which follows the same logic. The
idea you have somebody that's taking some sort of ape
(15:08):
or monkey related product, but in this case it's changing
him and making him crazy uh or possibly changing them
into a monster is one of the more sci fi
of the Carli Homes tales. It's important to keep in
mind that that Vornoff is not the only one doing
this uh in the twenties, this rejuvenation tests on your
cheek therapy. Yes, yes, he became notorious for performing in Algeria.
(15:29):
But at the same time several US surgeants were were
doing the same thing. There was Dr Victor D. Less
Pennises uh professor of genature urinary surgery at Northwestern University.
He was treating impotence with the use of glandular extracts
and then grafting slices of human cadaver tests uh in
into the rectus muscles for them that it meant which
(15:49):
but but again this was he was just human cadavertive
to humans, so there wasn't anything fishy going on. Um,
you know, and certainly what we do a lot of
today with a lot of transplant of an organ as
a cadab or twite. So so I don't want to
scandalize that too much. But then you had this guy Dr.
Leo Stanley, who between and this is another American, between
(16:09):
nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty two, he injected six hundred
and fifty six prisoners at San Quentin Prison with tests
in an attempt to slow a reverse aging. But he
used the testicles of goats, rams, boars, deer. He essentially
purade them like I assume in like a big smoothie
blender um purade the testicles so that they he could
(16:32):
put them in a needle and inject them under the
skin of the abdomen subcutaneous tests is what I'm hearing,
testy like slurpy, and and of course, um, you know,
there's not much you can really say about that, but
he reported that that that he had some success with it.
But I mean, ultimately, you have a situation where a
dude is performing horrible human experimentation. Uh, and you know,
(16:55):
within the walls of a prison. But back to ivanof all, right,
but I do think it's interesting to note that that
was the environment that Ivanov was working in. Say, yeah,
he's working in environment where, and certainly not everybody thought
that Ivanov was great. There were there were some scientists
that came to sort of investigate and poke around what
he was doing, because even I mean everyone, not everyone
was like, yeah, totally inject some people with ape stuff.
(17:15):
That's that's a great idea. Now, some some people were concerned,
but there was enough of it going around that not
as many eyebrows were raised. These were all hormonal approaches
to treating impotence made prior to the discovery of testosterone,
before the emergence of modern hormone science. So you cut
him a little slack there. I guess as far as
the mindset goes, not as much as some of the
(17:37):
actual acts that were performed, because certainly the stuff that
happened at San Quentin was indefensible. Yeah, and I mean
Ivanov sort of did get his uh come up. And
so I guess you could say for his ethical transgressions,
right with trying to impregnate women with chimpanzee sperm without
their knowledge. He was spanished to Kazakhstan, right, Yeah, the
French governor and guyana Um said none of that, get
(17:58):
out of here. Yeah, And then he tried to he
had plans to carry out more experiments in Russia, but
it was a pain to try and ship all these
these animals back all the way from Africa. They're dying
on the way, They're dying once they get back. It's
just a huge zoological headache. And yeah, indeed, he eventually
is sent to Kazakistan and he really he's released the
next year, but he dies soon after, which I mean,
(18:19):
on one hand yet sad, but then also but he
was kind of off the rails at that point. It
seems like in any case that we've looked at, there
there comes this moment where you look up your mad
you're essentially a mad scientist, but you you look up
and you realize that you would you would think you
would realize you've become a mad scientist, like whether you're
ivan off and you look up and you realize, wow,
(18:39):
I've lost all my funding, and uh, I have notes
here on how I'm going to um secretly impregnate a
woman with chimp steamen. Or you're someone like like Lily
the dolphin guy, and you're living in a flooded apartment
with dolphins and taking LSD in your isolation chamber. You
think you might realize, man, my funding was just cut
(19:00):
and I'm doing all this crazy stuff something that maybe
I'm not on the up and up anymore. Maybe I've
become Yeah, well was Isn't there some sort of phrase
about when you're living in the monkey house, you can't
smell the pooh. I've never heard that that that that
sounds basically here he was literally living in the monkey house.
Uh well maybe not literally, but but he was trying
to keep a monkey house uh in Russia and carry
(19:22):
out these experiments. So then that of course leads us
to the question couldn't actually be done? And we will
talk about that right after this message. All right, we're
back one more thing about ivan Off before we move
on there. We mentioned that his whole thing was to
prove Darmond right to stomp out religion, and that the
(19:44):
the humanity would be the icon of this h of
his victory. But there are also some theories that the
the aging Bolsheviks in in particular were very interested in
financing his research because they were aging men in an
age when there were some scientific minds that were that
that thought that you could slower reverse aging by injecting
(20:05):
things like like like puade tests into the body. You know,
that they thought that this was if not if these
techniques weren't working, they were at least leading to in
the right direction. So there's there are some theories that
state that while he while Ivanof was definitely um, you know,
go go dar dar when we're gonna prove religion wrong,
some of the Bolsheviks might be thinking, oh, let's get
(20:25):
this guy some money. Maybe he'll hook me up with
the sweet sweet injections and I can live forever. Okay.
So so they had their own little hidden agenda maybe
right again, Ivanof, you know, not under the direction of
Stalinik to raise this eight man army. So could we
do it? Could we could be well, this is kind
(20:45):
of an open question, um, because it's it's this was
this period we're talking about, like the nineteen twenties, you know,
the early twentieth century. This was the time to get
funding for this experiment. And and certainly as people managed
to get or at least one man managed to get
some funding, and it didn't come to fruition. So the
(21:07):
environment in the world today is certainly not such or
certainly in most places thankfully that this kind of thing
is going to get green lit. Yeah, that's right. Robin Bernstein,
the assistant professor of anthropology at George Washington University, says
that in a lab setting with a scientist, it's possible
to fertilize an egg with genetic material from a chimp.
But to your point, she says, who's going to fund
(21:28):
it and who's gonna be going to sanction it? Yeah,
and you're gonna have to I mean, you know, let's
let's not kid ourselves. As a scientist, tend to be
pretty bright people, but they are existing in a and
they're also existing in a culture of of their particular science.
So you would have to have someone in a culture
that advocated or tolerated, uh, this type of experiment. Uh,
(21:49):
you know, they're there have been. People often point to
the Second World War and you know, the experiments of
Joseph Mangela, you know, and the you know, the horrible
things that went on uh there under the regime because stuff,
because it was a situation where stuff was tolerated. You
release a gas and in a room and it will
eventually fill that volume of air. You know, you have
(22:09):
to have the space that will tolerate a certain level
of unethical science or more more, you know, outright evil,
however you want to raise it. So yeah, for for
this kind of experiment to to come around again, for
somebody actually make a go at it, you would you
would have to have that environment that that that culture
that tolerated this kind of scientific experimentation among actual scientists. Well,
(22:31):
and even though you know, the scientific community is largely
pretty self governing, there are people who are still worried
about it. Biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin said in a two
thousand interview with The Guardian, chimps shared percent of human genome,
and a fully mature chimp has the equivalentental abilities and
consciousness of a four year old human using human and
(22:52):
chimpanzee embryo, which researchers say is feasible. This is him
saying this could produce a creature so human that questions
regarding its moral and legal status would throw four thousand
years of ethics into chaos. Would such a creature enjoy
human rights? Would it have to pass some kind of
humanness test to win its freedom? Would it be forced
(23:12):
into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities?
It's interesting I was reading some stuff by Richard Dawkins,
and he was making pretty much the same argument that
if we were he was letting out some some various
situations that could come about that would change the way
we think about things. And he was arguing that if you,
if you were able to create a successful hybridization of
(23:32):
a human nish and fancy this this humanzy um, you
you would basically change everything that like his his argument
is kind of like ivanovs that if you had this creature.
So if he's not advocating the creation of it, but
he's saying if he's saying, could it be done? Maybe,
and if it were done, it would it would change
the way we think. I don't we were talking about
(23:53):
this earlier. I don't know if we actually agree with
that right right, because we we were actually pointing to
our podcast about the science of arguing and how sometimes
even when we have all the facts before has sometimes
and mostly this is ego driven usually, uh, we tend
to ignore those facts and still go with whatever it
(24:14):
is that we're rooting for. We're arguing against UM. So,
I mean it's possible that UM it wouldn't necessarily change
our idea of how the world was made, how we
came into being. If we were to create this creature
for some people, it would write, I mean, but someone
who firmly believes in intelligent design, they're very much set
in this mindset this is the right way, and the
(24:35):
rest it's just some sort of like liberal agenda. If
said liberals were to to roll out humansy, it's not
like they would drop everything and be like, well, what
have I've been wasting my time with this whole intelligent
design stuff, because there is the proof of the humansy.
They would say, no, that's just some weird monkey you found,
or any number of ideas that would just refute that
any any possibility that this is what they said it
(24:56):
was right. And you know, just just in case anybody's
worried about out this coming to fruition, Stewart Newman, a
developmental biologists sponsored UM by, of course, the biotech activist
Jeremy Rifkin, actually sought to preclude the creation of a
humanity by attempting to patent the relevant to technology so
(25:17):
that they would be able to restrict its use and
then promote an ethics debate UM, you know, on the
on the world wide platform UM. Because they felt like,
we just want to go ahead and bring this issue
to the forefront because people really aren't thinking about it. Um.
Even though the patent was rejected, they felt like it
was successful because now they had people talking about the
(25:38):
question about it. They the people were discussing the possibilities
and the ethics of creating said hybrid. Yeah, and so
I mean and in a sense, the government reacted the
way it was opposed to write, because it's not really
supposed to give a patent to anybody, you know, it
doesn't necessarily know someone's agenda, right, So they rejected this
pen on the grounds that although the Patent and Trade
(26:00):
Office UM has been permitted since the Supreme Court decision
in nineteen eighty to issue patents on living organisms. A
major ground for the rejection was their claim to have
no guidance from Congress as to how human an organism
can be before it is not patentable by the Thirteenth
Amendments prohibition of slavery. So you know, there's there's it's
(26:23):
still very much a gray area. And as rifkin Head
brought up, you know, at what point are we human?
What is humanness? What is you know, what are we
creating here? So, yeah, I mean, it's it's possible to
create this creature. But should we Yeah, I mean I'm
not saying yes we should, I'm just saying yeah, yeah,
(26:44):
that's all good stuff to think that. It also brings
to mind another tale from this uh, the same sort
of legacy I was discussing earlier with the Adventures of
the Creeping Man and I wanted Dr Moreau. You had
an HP Lovecraft story titled Facts concerning the late author
German and his Family, which is one that I I
always liked, um when when I was, you know, reading
(27:06):
a love Craft. But it's, uh, it's ultimately a it
it sort of brings the mind some of Lovecraft's racial paranoia,
which can at times be a little off putting. Um.
But what's amazing about the story, it's it's very much
just set in this post Darwinian world. So the story
involves a man coming, uh, a man who came back
from exploring in Africa, and it comes to light that
(27:26):
while he was there, he fell in love with a
white ape princess. You know think uh, I think the
movie Congo, the crazy gray apes that had the big
pet stone paddles that they bashed people with. Well, he
found this uh individual finds out that his uh uh
that a member of his family had had gone to
Africa have fallen in love, and that he was actually
descended partially from this white ape princess. So I just
(27:51):
find that a fascinating tale because it really it brings
to mind a lot of the problems that would come
to light if if we had a humans, the idea
that it would really rock our boat and make us
think long and hard about these differences between what it
is to be human and uh and what it is
to be this other and if there is and how
how firm that distinction really is? Of course in the
Lovecraft toy, it's just a little more, a little more horrific. Well,
(28:13):
and to bring up Richard Hawkins right selfish gene He
talks about how our genes are selfish. If all of
a sudden you do have genetic material that is created
with a chimpanzee and you have that offspring, how do
you feel towards that, right? Because that is part of you? Right?
You're do you you have a completely different idea of
of what it is to be human, to be sentient?
(28:34):
All right? Well, I think that about wraps it up.
Let's have the robot bring over some mail and we'll
read a quickly. Alright, this is from a listener by
the name of Tony, says, Hi, Robert and Julie, Greetings
from Melbourne, Australia. Enjoy really enjoy your podcast. I was
listening to your Bug Diet episode today when on my
way to meet some friends to lunch in our Chinatown district,
(28:54):
when I happen to pass a restaurant called Ant's Bistro.
Uh and that's spelled A and T Foster vs. I
had to take a photo and send it to you, guys.
I'm yet to sample their signature dish, but it's a
con except you could catch on. Here's the photo. Keep
up the great work. So yeah, we asked people for
examples of bug related cuisine and uh in their own
(29:16):
experiences and uh we had a few different people right
in and that was that was one of them. And
let's see what else we have here. We heard from
a listener by the name of Timothy. Hi, Robert and
Julie just wanted to weigh in on on the argument's episode.
Robert had mentioned philosophy and I wanted to stress how
important it really is and how sad it is that
philosophy isn't taken more seriously in American society. Ego is
(29:40):
like a colored lens. We may not even be aware
we are wearing. The argument is a fantastic opportunity for
someone else to point them out. Philosophy helps you learn
to look for those heirs yourself. I believe philosophy is
a large part of why my girlfriend and I are
able to turn our occasional argument into meaningful conversation. We're
both willing to be wrong because we both mind the
(30:00):
rational solution we agree upon to be much preferable to
a selfish win. I love the show. Uh, And for
the record, Julie, the male robot most definitely is not argumentative.
Oh you say that, but have you ever been stuck
in the break room with Arnie Now pretty he's in
(30:22):
there to talk to the robotic coffee machine. Yeah, yeah,
I can pay have a thing going. Yeah, well, all right,
if you have something you want to share with us
about past episode on bugs or arguing, or if you
have something some interesting stuff to share about this episode
on humansies, do let us know. There were a number
of I had other things in the notes, so I
didn't get around to mentioning. So I'm sure some of
(30:43):
you guys have some cool ports of fiction to bring
up and i'd i'd love to highlight them hand or
the exposed to them for the first time. Uh and
if you want to find us, you can find us
uh a on Facebook where we're Stuff Below your Mind.
You can find us be on Twitter, uh where or
we are Blow the Mind and uh see where else
(31:04):
can you find us? You can find us at Blow
the Mind at Discovery and take note of that new
email address please Discovery dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
I think we can both agree to One of them
more troubling things to shamble out of the nineteen was
the possible human zee. Oh yeah, very very sad case
(00:28):
of a chimpanzee, sweet animal, very sweet, cigar smoking upright, walking, bald,
bald ish chimp that people thought was very is like,
eerily humanlike and and some people even thought that he
might have been the missing link between humans and great apes.
And Jim, yes, we hear about the missing link all
(00:50):
the time. And in the nineteen seventies genetic testing that
people were just so unnerved by this this little creature Oliver,
that I thought for sure that there wasn't part of
him that was human. And they saw it in his face, right,
they saw it in the way that he appeared to
walk around on two feet right right. And and supposedly
the smell as well, there's some accounts that say that
(01:12):
he didn't smell like a chimpanzee, ship that he smelled
like a little bit like a man and a little
bit like a chimp. Yeah, well, here's okay, here's the context.
Nineteen seventies, some a couple raises chimpanzees, uses them for
entertainment purposes, meaning you know, in commercials or parties or whatever.
They get this one peculiar chimpanzee, Oliver. Turns out that
(01:33):
nobody really wants to use them in commercials because he
is really unsettling, because he looks very human, and because
he keeps walking upright, like consistently. You see chimpsy this sometimes,
but this particular chimpanzee was you know, even though his
hips were splayed out, he would still walk up right.
People like, that's kind of weird. Um, And so they
began just to annotally say things like, oh, well, you know,
(01:55):
the other chimps don't like Oliver because he must have
a bad smell or they don't recognize a smell. So
we don't know for sure exactly what the deal was
with Oliver, but but they felt weird about using him.
They didn't think he looked like like star chimp material,
and and maybe just maybe they they found that he
looked at he was a little too human. That's the
(02:17):
problem that that it felt really weird to take this
this sort of human looking animal, uh and uh put
it in a cage, take it out of the cage,
make it run around for a commercial, and then reward
it with a carrot and a cigar. Well, especially especially
if it sits down next to you and start smoking
a cigar and maybe even making a pass at you,
(02:39):
because apparently this is something that he would do when
he turned sixteen and his hormones were raging. I guess um,
but he in fact was not a humanzy as much
as people wanted to believe or thought that he was.
Later on they did gitetic testing on him, they found
that he was, you know, chimp. That doesn't mean that
people uh still aren't fascinated by the idea that you
(03:02):
could create half man, half ape. Right, It's it's I mean,
it's a it is a troubling idea, as we uh,
it's the title of this podcast suggest you know. It's uh,
it's it's the the idea that there is this bridge
between us and the animal. It but blurs the line
between what it is to be human and what it
is to be this this other. And of course this
is something that we've explored in horror and science fiction
(03:26):
many times in the past, especially of the the end
of the eight hundreds beginning of the twentieth century, you
saw a number of very important stories that came around
that they really signified this. I mean one as early
as one you had the Murders in the Room Morgue
by Edgar Allan Poe, which you know spoilers. It involves
an orangutant with a straight raders there stuffing girls into chimneys,
(03:49):
and the idea that this this ape is going around
committing crimes against humans. So it's it's pretty troubling. But
but then it really kicks in a little later. Um
of course you have uh the Island of Dr Moreau,
um classic novel. Which movie are you referring to? Oh, yes,
(04:09):
the ninety six version, which you still have to admit
is pretty fun because you have you have Marlon Brando
and that whole get up apparently acting with a headset,
like barely acting like reading lines that are right. And
then he has the little The whole idea of the
mini me originates with the with the little person that
(04:29):
he had addressed up like him. Um Ron Perlman running
around as in an animal costume. You had Val Kilmer
doing god knows what, and uh it was kind of
a disaster. But there was also a nineteen seventies seven
film version that had Bert Lancaster and Michael York and
that one was always a favorite of mine because it
(04:50):
was like when I was a kid, I would watch
like like Grandpa Monster would host this like Saturday Morning Afternoon.
You know, he was a daytime horror TV host, and
he would host these awful movies that I was watching.
This was before Mystery Science Theater three thousand Stugs, But
but I would, I would. I would always check it
out and and they would, you know, show stuff like
them with the giant ants and and I particularly remember
(05:12):
being really into that seventy seven version of Dr Moreau.
All Right, I need to check that out. So yeah,
I mean, in case you guys haven't guessed out there,
we're talking about humanities, and we're gonna talk a little
bit more later about what we have already done in
the lab in terms of creating hybrid creatures of ourselves
and other animals. But first we should probably talk about cameras, right, Yes,
(05:35):
the camera. For you Greek mythology junkies, this was of
course a a monster with the lion's head, a goat's
body at dragon's tail. It breathes fire. It was born
in Lycia, on the southern coast of what's now modern Turkey.
And it would sweep down in the evenings and it
would carry off women, children, and livestock. It would literally
their bones all over the mountains. And uh, so you
know what, what are you gonna do? You gotta get
(05:57):
a hero to take care of this, this monster that's
made from different animal parts. So you bring in Bill
Eraphan And uh, of course he can't really just walk
up there and take care of his A. He needs spear,
and B he needs a pegasus. So I find it
amusing that um that he defeats the chimera mainly by
using a chimera, because the today that the word chimera
(06:19):
is often used to refer to any animal that has
two or more different sets of genetically distinct cells working together. Okay,
and so again this will bring me about two movies
and Clash of the Titans, right, yes, everyone, everyone's modern
understanding of mythology of course based and clash of the
type of course, right. But of course we actually do
have hybrids in nature, not necessarily like medusa like creatures
(06:43):
or otherwise they're generally not quite that facts. Yeah, yeah, minotaurs,
sirens on the banks calling you forth. But we've got
dogs and wolves not that exciting, but they have made
it right, lions and tigers, ligers a mule, which is
the progeny of a male donkey and a female horse. Yeah,
you get the all the value of a donkey, but
(07:04):
the size of a horse. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously
we've seen inner species love happenings in their products of
their love happenings. But I don't know why I'm choosing
to say it that way, that this is what happens right. Well, yeah,
they're related, um enough that they can actually breed with
one and they and produce the offspring that most of
these cases, though, cannot then breed with with other animals.
(07:26):
The mule for instances is generally sterile. Yes. And then
we have cross species in the lab. Right man made
three different types here that you'll see. One is called
the hybrid, and this is created by breeding across species,
and hybrids are generally the result of combining an egg
from one species with firm from another to form a
single embryo and hybrids contain recombined genetic material throughout their
(07:50):
genome and throughout all the tissues in their body, because
that's important to note. And then there's transgenics that's the
result of gene transfer, and typically transgenics contains transferred or
manipulated genes in addition to the host nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.
One exception may be a transgenic embryo comprised of the
entire complement of nuclear DNA from one organizing organism fused
(08:14):
with an inunculated egg cell from another, and this will
become all sort of crystal clear, and we talk more
specifically about what's being created here. And then third cameras
right right and their number of cool lab grown examples
of this. Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Second Medical University
successfully fuse human cells with rabbit eggs. A year later,
there was a successful Chinese camera experiment where reachers that
(08:37):
researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota announced that they
created a pig with human blood pumping through its veins.
We made a sheep with human livers, a mouse with
the human liver, a stapler with the human liver cat
not really at the state cat human hybrid proteins, mouse
with a human brain, well with human with one percent
of its brain was the human brain cells. So but
(09:00):
anyone gets any crazy secret in them ideas there, But yeah,
it's it's a technology that's it's been around the block
a few times already, and these are all issue point
that people are not just making like sheep with human
livers just I think it's awesome, or they want to
sheep that can really hold its liquor. This is about
figuring out ways to potentially grow new organs for organ
transplants for humans. To better understand some of these systems,
(09:22):
I mean they're they're definitely medical, uh goals in mind
here are trying to understand life threatening diseases UM. In
two thousand and seven, British researchers created a human pig hybrid.
So this is where the egg comes from a pig
and then nucleus comes from a human and the idea
is to implant the nucleus of an egg from a
human being with a disease UM so he's something like
(09:43):
heart disease, and then you can watch how the DNA
from a person with this condition instructs cellular development in
its earliest stages, and so scientists really hope to find
out more about the inner workings about what's going on there, um,
specifically with heart disease. So yeah, there's all these different
examples of how we have tinkered with nature in order
(10:04):
to observe our maladies or even just how we have
progressed as human beings. So all this leads inevitably to
the tale of a Russian biologist by the name of
Iliya Ivanov who was doing that most of his work
in the nineteen twenties, and uh, really wasn't all that
heart about by the modern public until around and that's
when a number of Soviet documents became unclassified. The British
(10:26):
tabloid The Sun got ahold of some of this, and
they started running stories about the Red Frankenstein, who was
supposedly it traveled to French Guyana on a Bolsheviks sponsored
quest to bread a human ape hybrid to create some
sort of super mutant to aid Stalin and his conquest
of the world. Yeah, right, this was the Red Apeman
Army that they talked about, um, which you know, it's
(10:49):
probably good to note that Ivanov was working way before
the Russian Revolution began. And there are certain aspects of
this story that you can see they might have been
taken out of context. And uh, and it's a great
fun idea to run with this half man, half ape
army that Stalin wanted to defeat the world with. But
(11:09):
that is not in fact what happened, right, That's not
exactly what ivan Off was after the At the down
of the twentieth century, ivan Off was already a pretty
famous dude in his field for his pioneering work and
artificial intamination. Respected, yeah, well respected. He had done things
like he created a z donc which was a zebra
donkey hybrid, a zubron which is a European bison cow crossover. Uh,
(11:30):
you know, he was he was creating mashups with animals
like and kind of you know, islanded Dr morou wish,
I guess if you want to really take it and
run with it. But but he was well thought of.
And his next big thing was he wanted to see
about improving the bloodstock of Imperial Russia, so um around.
He puts in proposals with the government despite the disapproval
of the scientific establishment. He got to go ahead, and
(11:53):
the funds most important to mount a expedition to Africa
to collect apes so that he could see about creating
a hybrid between a human and its closest relative. That's right.
And he was getting his funds from the Soviet Academy
of Sciences and part and uh, and there was a
little crossover at the time, so he's working with a
lot of people who are really respected in their fields.
Of course, you know, the problem was that, uh, it
(12:16):
was a little bit diabolical, right, I mean, his his
idea here, yeah, his his best we can tell his
his real idea. His his notion here was not to
create a super soldier and thing stupid like that. But
he was a big believer in the theories of Darwin
that the idea that man evolved from these previous forms,
that that evolution was the driving force, natural selection was drive,
(12:38):
which is right. Yeah, But he he thought that the
way to really prove it, to just really just settle
the case once and for all, and the whole evolution
versus everything else, versus religion, you name it, was to
actually create a human chimp hybrid and then introduce you
to the world. And then people would say that he
would be like, what what's that? You got something else?
(12:58):
There's something about religion, eat my humansy his name is
Oliver and uh proof, Yeah, your entire argument is nil
at this point. So so he had you could say
he had a noble um, you know, scientific goal in mind.
It's kind of a I mean still kind of a
helish moves. He's kind of wants to stick it tip
to everyone, but it's still he has a definite goal
(13:19):
in mind. Here his his means of pulling an offer
just a little suspect. Well, yeah, it's in the execution, right,
So he decides that, um, he is going to try
to inseminate three females, right, which he does. Um, he tries,
I should say, and these are African women and uh
but then you know, eventually he's forced to abandon the
project because it's just not going that well. It doesn't
(13:41):
have a tent of support behind it, right, and he
has really had to try to get those ten dollarge
in the Soviet Financial Commission. He's really had to work
very hard at it. This it's not something that a
lot of people want to write. And it was kind
of touch and go, Like he went to Paris first
and then he went to French Guyana because they had
some chimps over there, but then they weren't yet old
enough to breed, so to come back to Paris. Nothing
(14:02):
was working in his favorite right and he gets really desperate,
and so what does he do? Something completely unconsciousable. He
decides that he's going to inseminate African women with the
chimpanzee sperm without their knowledge. Okay, so he's trying to
get forward with this is as much as possible, and
he's found out, and of course everybody starts to reject
(14:25):
this plan, and he spirals out of his his professional field.
I guess you could say, yeah, he starts hanging out
with the celebrated surgeon Sergey Voronoff, who at the time
was was really in fashion because he had a quote
unquote rejuvenation therapy that he would perform in which he
would graf slices of ape test ees onto those of
(14:47):
rich and aging men who were hoping to regain some
of their former vigor. And let's just all positive for
a moment think about that. Yeah, it's I mean, on
one hand, anyone who's ever read The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes is probably thinking of the Adventure of the Creeping
Man from nine three, which follows the same logic. The
idea you have somebody that's taking some sort of ape
(15:08):
or monkey related product, but in this case it's changing
him and making him crazy uh or possibly changing them
into a monster is one of the more sci fi
of the Carli Homes tales. It's important to keep in
mind that that Vornoff is not the only one doing
this uh in the twenties, this rejuvenation tests on your
cheek therapy. Yes, yes, he became notorious for performing in Algeria.
(15:29):
But at the same time several US surgeants were were
doing the same thing. There was Dr Victor D. Less
Pennises uh professor of genature urinary surgery at Northwestern University.
He was treating impotence with the use of glandular extracts
and then grafting slices of human cadaver tests uh in
into the rectus muscles for them that it meant which
(15:49):
but but again this was he was just human cadavertive
to humans, so there wasn't anything fishy going on. Um,
you know, and certainly what we do a lot of
today with a lot of transplant of an organ as
a cadab or twite. So so I don't want to
scandalize that too much. But then you had this guy Dr.
Leo Stanley, who between and this is another American, between
(16:09):
nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty two, he injected six hundred
and fifty six prisoners at San Quentin Prison with tests
in an attempt to slow a reverse aging. But he
used the testicles of goats, rams, boars, deer. He essentially
purade them like I assume in like a big smoothie
blender um purade the testicles so that they he could
(16:32):
put them in a needle and inject them under the
skin of the abdomen subcutaneous tests is what I'm hearing,
testy like slurpy, and and of course, um, you know,
there's not much you can really say about that, but
he reported that that that he had some success with it.
But I mean, ultimately, you have a situation where a
dude is performing horrible human experimentation. Uh, and you know,
(16:55):
within the walls of a prison. But back to ivanof all, right,
but I do think it's interesting to note that that
was the environment that Ivanov was working in. Say, yeah,
he's working in environment where, and certainly not everybody thought
that Ivanov was great. There were there were some scientists
that came to sort of investigate and poke around what
he was doing, because even I mean everyone, not everyone
was like, yeah, totally inject some people with ape stuff.
(17:15):
That's that's a great idea. Now, some some people were concerned,
but there was enough of it going around that not
as many eyebrows were raised. These were all hormonal approaches
to treating impotence made prior to the discovery of testosterone,
before the emergence of modern hormone science. So you cut
him a little slack there. I guess as far as
the mindset goes, not as much as some of the
(17:37):
actual acts that were performed, because certainly the stuff that
happened at San Quentin was indefensible. Yeah, and I mean
Ivanov sort of did get his uh come up. And
so I guess you could say for his ethical transgressions,
right with trying to impregnate women with chimpanzee sperm without
their knowledge. He was spanished to Kazakhstan, right, Yeah, the
French governor and guyana Um said none of that, get
(17:58):
out of here. Yeah, And then he tried to he
had plans to carry out more experiments in Russia, but
it was a pain to try and ship all these
these animals back all the way from Africa. They're dying
on the way, They're dying once they get back. It's
just a huge zoological headache. And yeah, indeed, he eventually
is sent to Kazakistan and he really he's released the
next year, but he dies soon after, which I mean,
(18:19):
on one hand yet sad, but then also but he
was kind of off the rails at that point. It
seems like in any case that we've looked at, there
there comes this moment where you look up your mad
you're essentially a mad scientist, but you you look up
and you realize that you would you would think you
would realize you've become a mad scientist, like whether you're
ivan off and you look up and you realize, wow,
(18:39):
I've lost all my funding, and uh, I have notes
here on how I'm going to um secretly impregnate a
woman with chimp steamen. Or you're someone like like Lily
the dolphin guy, and you're living in a flooded apartment
with dolphins and taking LSD in your isolation chamber. You
think you might realize, man, my funding was just cut
(19:00):
and I'm doing all this crazy stuff something that maybe
I'm not on the up and up anymore. Maybe I've
become Yeah, well was Isn't there some sort of phrase
about when you're living in the monkey house, you can't
smell the pooh. I've never heard that that that that
sounds basically here he was literally living in the monkey house.
Uh well maybe not literally, but but he was trying
to keep a monkey house uh in Russia and carry
(19:22):
out these experiments. So then that of course leads us
to the question couldn't actually be done? And we will
talk about that right after this message. All right, we're
back one more thing about ivan Off before we move
on there. We mentioned that his whole thing was to
prove Darmond right to stomp out religion, and that the
(19:44):
the humanity would be the icon of this h of
his victory. But there are also some theories that the
the aging Bolsheviks in in particular were very interested in
financing his research because they were aging men in an
age when there were some scientific minds that were that
that thought that you could slower reverse aging by injecting
(20:05):
things like like like puade tests into the body. You know,
that they thought that this was if not if these
techniques weren't working, they were at least leading to in
the right direction. So there's there are some theories that
state that while he while Ivanof was definitely um, you know,
go go dar dar when we're gonna prove religion wrong,
some of the Bolsheviks might be thinking, oh, let's get
(20:25):
this guy some money. Maybe he'll hook me up with
the sweet sweet injections and I can live forever. Okay.
So so they had their own little hidden agenda maybe
right again, Ivanof, you know, not under the direction of
Stalinik to raise this eight man army. So could we
do it? Could we could be well, this is kind
(20:45):
of an open question, um, because it's it's this was
this period we're talking about, like the nineteen twenties, you know,
the early twentieth century. This was the time to get
funding for this experiment. And and certainly as people managed
to get or at least one man managed to get
some funding, and it didn't come to fruition. So the
(21:07):
environment in the world today is certainly not such or
certainly in most places thankfully that this kind of thing
is going to get green lit. Yeah, that's right. Robin Bernstein,
the assistant professor of anthropology at George Washington University, says
that in a lab setting with a scientist, it's possible
to fertilize an egg with genetic material from a chimp.
But to your point, she says, who's going to fund
(21:28):
it and who's gonna be going to sanction it? Yeah,
and you're gonna have to I mean, you know, let's
let's not kid ourselves. As a scientist, tend to be
pretty bright people, but they are existing in a and
they're also existing in a culture of of their particular science.
So you would have to have someone in a culture
that advocated or tolerated, uh, this type of experiment. Uh,
(21:49):
you know, they're there have been. People often point to
the Second World War and you know, the experiments of
Joseph Mangela, you know, and the you know, the horrible
things that went on uh there under the regime because stuff,
because it was a situation where stuff was tolerated. You
release a gas and in a room and it will
eventually fill that volume of air. You know, you have
(22:09):
to have the space that will tolerate a certain level
of unethical science or more more, you know, outright evil,
however you want to raise it. So yeah, for for
this kind of experiment to to come around again, for
somebody actually make a go at it, you would you
would have to have that environment that that that culture
that tolerated this kind of scientific experimentation among actual scientists. Well,
(22:31):
and even though you know, the scientific community is largely
pretty self governing, there are people who are still worried
about it. Biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin said in a two
thousand interview with The Guardian, chimps shared percent of human genome,
and a fully mature chimp has the equivalentental abilities and
consciousness of a four year old human using human and
(22:52):
chimpanzee embryo, which researchers say is feasible. This is him
saying this could produce a creature so human that questions
regarding its moral and legal status would throw four thousand
years of ethics into chaos. Would such a creature enjoy
human rights? Would it have to pass some kind of
humanness test to win its freedom? Would it be forced
(23:12):
into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities?
It's interesting I was reading some stuff by Richard Dawkins,
and he was making pretty much the same argument that
if we were he was letting out some some various
situations that could come about that would change the way
we think about things. And he was arguing that if you,
if you were able to create a successful hybridization of
(23:32):
a human nish and fancy this this humanzy um, you
you would basically change everything that like his his argument
is kind of like ivanovs that if you had this creature.
So if he's not advocating the creation of it, but
he's saying if he's saying, could it be done? Maybe,
and if it were done, it would it would change
the way we think. I don't we were talking about
(23:53):
this earlier. I don't know if we actually agree with
that right right, because we we were actually pointing to
our podcast about the science of arguing and how sometimes
even when we have all the facts before has sometimes
and mostly this is ego driven usually, uh, we tend
to ignore those facts and still go with whatever it
(24:14):
is that we're rooting for. We're arguing against UM. So,
I mean it's possible that UM it wouldn't necessarily change
our idea of how the world was made, how we
came into being. If we were to create this creature
for some people, it would write, I mean, but someone
who firmly believes in intelligent design, they're very much set
in this mindset this is the right way, and the
(24:35):
rest it's just some sort of like liberal agenda. If
said liberals were to to roll out humansy, it's not
like they would drop everything and be like, well, what
have I've been wasting my time with this whole intelligent
design stuff, because there is the proof of the humansy.
They would say, no, that's just some weird monkey you found,
or any number of ideas that would just refute that
any any possibility that this is what they said it
(24:56):
was right. And you know, just just in case anybody's
worried about out this coming to fruition, Stewart Newman, a
developmental biologists sponsored UM by, of course, the biotech activist
Jeremy Rifkin, actually sought to preclude the creation of a
humanity by attempting to patent the relevant to technology so
(25:17):
that they would be able to restrict its use and
then promote an ethics debate UM, you know, on the
on the world wide platform UM. Because they felt like,
we just want to go ahead and bring this issue
to the forefront because people really aren't thinking about it. Um.
Even though the patent was rejected, they felt like it
was successful because now they had people talking about the
(25:38):
question about it. They the people were discussing the possibilities
and the ethics of creating said hybrid. Yeah, and so
I mean and in a sense, the government reacted the
way it was opposed to write, because it's not really
supposed to give a patent to anybody, you know, it
doesn't necessarily know someone's agenda, right, So they rejected this
pen on the grounds that although the Patent and Trade
(26:00):
Office UM has been permitted since the Supreme Court decision
in nineteen eighty to issue patents on living organisms. A
major ground for the rejection was their claim to have
no guidance from Congress as to how human an organism
can be before it is not patentable by the Thirteenth
Amendments prohibition of slavery. So you know, there's there's it's
(26:23):
still very much a gray area. And as rifkin Head
brought up, you know, at what point are we human?
What is humanness? What is you know, what are we
creating here? So, yeah, I mean, it's it's possible to
create this creature. But should we Yeah, I mean I'm
not saying yes we should, I'm just saying yeah, yeah,
(26:44):
that's all good stuff to think that. It also brings
to mind another tale from this uh, the same sort
of legacy I was discussing earlier with the Adventures of
the Creeping Man and I wanted Dr Moreau. You had
an HP Lovecraft story titled Facts concerning the late author
German and his Family, which is one that I I
always liked, um when when I was, you know, reading
(27:06):
a love Craft. But it's, uh, it's ultimately a it
it sort of brings the mind some of Lovecraft's racial paranoia,
which can at times be a little off putting. Um.
But what's amazing about the story, it's it's very much
just set in this post Darwinian world. So the story
involves a man coming, uh, a man who came back
from exploring in Africa, and it comes to light that
(27:26):
while he was there, he fell in love with a
white ape princess. You know think uh, I think the
movie Congo, the crazy gray apes that had the big
pet stone paddles that they bashed people with. Well, he
found this uh individual finds out that his uh uh
that a member of his family had had gone to
Africa have fallen in love, and that he was actually
descended partially from this white ape princess. So I just
(27:51):
find that a fascinating tale because it really it brings
to mind a lot of the problems that would come
to light if if we had a humans, the idea
that it would really rock our boat and make us
think long and hard about these differences between what it
is to be human and uh and what it is
to be this other and if there is and how
how firm that distinction really is? Of course in the
Lovecraft toy, it's just a little more, a little more horrific. Well,
(28:13):
and to bring up Richard Hawkins right selfish gene He
talks about how our genes are selfish. If all of
a sudden you do have genetic material that is created
with a chimpanzee and you have that offspring, how do
you feel towards that, right? Because that is part of you? Right?
You're do you you have a completely different idea of
of what it is to be human, to be sentient?
(28:34):
All right? Well, I think that about wraps it up.
Let's have the robot bring over some mail and we'll
read a quickly. Alright, this is from a listener by
the name of Tony, says, Hi, Robert and Julie, Greetings
from Melbourne, Australia. Enjoy really enjoy your podcast. I was
listening to your Bug Diet episode today when on my
way to meet some friends to lunch in our Chinatown district,
(28:54):
when I happen to pass a restaurant called Ant's Bistro.
Uh and that's spelled A and T Foster vs. I
had to take a photo and send it to you, guys.
I'm yet to sample their signature dish, but it's a
con except you could catch on. Here's the photo. Keep
up the great work. So yeah, we asked people for
examples of bug related cuisine and uh in their own
(29:16):
experiences and uh we had a few different people right
in and that was that was one of them. And
let's see what else we have here. We heard from
a listener by the name of Timothy. Hi, Robert and
Julie just wanted to weigh in on on the argument's episode.
Robert had mentioned philosophy and I wanted to stress how
important it really is and how sad it is that
philosophy isn't taken more seriously in American society. Ego is
(29:40):
like a colored lens. We may not even be aware
we are wearing. The argument is a fantastic opportunity for
someone else to point them out. Philosophy helps you learn
to look for those heirs yourself. I believe philosophy is
a large part of why my girlfriend and I are
able to turn our occasional argument into meaningful conversation. We're
both willing to be wrong because we both mind the
(30:00):
rational solution we agree upon to be much preferable to
a selfish win. I love the show. Uh, And for
the record, Julie, the male robot most definitely is not argumentative.
Oh you say that, but have you ever been stuck
in the break room with Arnie Now pretty he's in
(30:22):
there to talk to the robotic coffee machine. Yeah, yeah,
I can pay have a thing going. Yeah, well, all right,
if you have something you want to share with us
about past episode on bugs or arguing, or if you
have something some interesting stuff to share about this episode
on humansies, do let us know. There were a number
of I had other things in the notes, so I
didn't get around to mentioning. So I'm sure some of
(30:43):
you guys have some cool ports of fiction to bring
up and i'd i'd love to highlight them hand or
the exposed to them for the first time. Uh and
if you want to find us, you can find us
uh a on Facebook where we're Stuff Below your Mind.
You can find us be on Twitter, uh where or
we are Blow the Mind and uh see where else
(31:04):
can you find us? You can find us at Blow
the Mind at Discovery and take note of that new
email address please Discovery dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com