It seems that many posters, and I’m one of them, regard gene-altering without consent as a form of coercion.
What about animals that we use today that involve no gene-alteration at all? Dogs are put to work in all kinds of fields. Police dogs, seeing-eye dogs, sled dogs, hunting dogs, etc. Yea, they may enjoy it, or in the least, not mind it, but we’re still using them to do our bidding.
And, of course, what we did to dogs did require gene altering…it just happened naturally through selective breeding.
If such creatures existed, and had a genuine desire to be helpful, that’s great, they enjoy their job. But people who enjoy their job are not exempt from the minimum wage laws. If they want to be ditchdiggers, they can be, in which case they’re paid the same as any other ditchdigger.
And with all of the literary references, I’m surprised nobody else has mentioned Heinlein’s “Jerry was a man”, which deals with almost this exact situation (except that I don’t think the laborers in that story actually had any human DNA, just other apes).
What if I edited your brain so that you naturally enjoyed helping me without being coerced? And I also edited your brain to make it so you’re happy that I edited your brain, and when the cops come to arrest me for assault you tell them you gave consent for me to operate on your brain. Sure, you don’t want to be turned into a slave NOW, but after I turn you into a slave you’ll be glad I did.
Would that be wrong? I’m guessing you’d think so.
How about if I took a human zygote in the one cell stage and edited it such that the resulting human baby would grow up to be a natural slave? This procedure avoids one of the ethical problems of the first scenario, namely that there never was a sentient human being who didn’t want to be turned into a slave that has now been turned into a slave. This genetically altered baby was never a human being with free will, just a single cell with no rights.
Anything wrong with creating human beings who are natural slaves?
What’s the ethical difference between creating a human natural slave, a semihuman natural slave, and creating a nonhuman natural slave? It seems to me that the method of creating the natural slave is irrelevant.
What sort of moral affect will it have on normal humans to interact regularly with natural slaves? Nothing good it seems to me.
Well in all honesty I think you would be arrested either way. If you beat your kid, and someone comes to arrest you or take the kid away from you, but the kid says, “Hey, I told my dad that I wanted to be beaten,” that just wouldn’t fly.
And hey, I’m totally against the idea of slavery, but the human race enslaves other animals all the time. It’s not necessarily right, but it’s so common that it doesn’t stick out, bother, or upset most people.
Paging Dr. Moreau…
I think the best explanation for the intuition that this would be wrong is Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.” Breeding someone for the sole purpose of making them a slave is treating them as a mere means to an end.
We’re not talking about making insulin, we’re talking about making a dumb human.
Who would give consent? I think the OP proposed starting from the ground up and making a new life form, part human, part bonobo, etc.
Or a smart chimpanzee-dog.
The only ethical use is to create cows that actually want to be eaten, and are capable of saying so, clearly and distinctly.
Nobody would consent, that’s the issue. It’d just be people making slaves for their own benefit.
I don’t see this as analogous to having work animals, either. Particularly not when you bring human DNA into it.
And I suspect that if we lived in a dogless society and came up with the idea of engineering a subspecies of wolves to be act as expendable laborers, household companions and defensive and offensive weapons, it would be the subject of serious debate, and rightly so. Now, as a matter of fact, I like having a dog in the house, but I’m sure that has everything to do with the fact that I’ve lived with dogs my entire life. I’m also confident the dog likes me, or at least appreciates me as a source of food and occasional walks. If I had to weigh the costs and benefits - to the wolves as well as human society - without being influenced by personal experience, I’m not sure on which side I’d fall.
And, of course, we didn’t build dogs from scratch or begin with human material.
Except, these wouldn’t be humans, any more than the bacteria with the insulin producing producing gene is a human. They both just have some human genome sequences in them.
It’s like a sort of a related question…what if we don’t create these creatures, but find them naturally? What if we find a surving population of Homo erectus? Are they “humans”? Would use of them for labor be slavery?
Or, for that matter, a nonliving AI natural slave?
Not letting them work or please us would be abusive.
Kinda like not letting a dog out for a run.
And with the mixing of the dog genes in the resulting sub-human would likely be genetically more different than a ape in relation to our own genes.
It is just a really good dog.
I would think you would have some special wisdom to bring on the subject of creating a being with DNA from more than one species.
Back To The OP
As a mad scientist, I’m for it. But as a human being, I’m against it. OTOH, creation of human chimeras is illegal in the USA so I don’t need to worry about it.
I personally think the answer to this question hinges on the definition of sentience.
We all agree that a dog is not sentient. (okay maybe not everybody but most agree)
We all agree that an ape is not sentient.
How do we define where sentience begins?