Robert Streiffer

At the Edge of Humanity: Human Stem Cells, Chimeras, and Moral Status

Experiments involving the transplantation of human stem cells and their derivatives into early fetal or embryonic nonhuman animals raise novel ethical issues due to their possible implications for enhancing the moral status of the chimeric individual. Although status-enhancing research is not necessarily objectionable from the perspective of the chimeric individual, there are grounds for objecting to it in the conditions in which it is likely to occur. Translating this ethical conclusion into a policy recommendation, however, is complicated by the fact that substantial empirical and ethical uncertainties remain about which transplants, if any, would significantly enhance the chimeric individuals moral status. Considerations of moral status justify either an early-termination policy on chimeric embryos, or, in the absence of such a policy, restrictions on the introduction of pluripotent human stem cells into early-stage developing animals, pending the resolution of those uncertainties.

INFORMED CONSENT and FEDERAL FUNDING for Stem Cell Research

A review of the consent forms signed by those who donated embryos for the NIH-approved embryonic stem cell lines reveals several problems, providing ethical as well as scientific reasons to overturn the Bush administration’s restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research.

In Defense of the Moral Relevance of Species Boundaries

Jason Scott Robert and Françoise Baylis (2003) hypothesize that what explains public worries about human-toanimal embryonic chimeras (henceforth, “chimeras”) is the concern that “the existence of such beings would introduce inexorable moral confusion in our existing relationships with nonhuman animals and in our future relationships with part-human hybrids and chimaeras.” Thus, what worries people is a consequentialist concern, namely, that the creation of chimeras will undermine the usefulness of perceived, even if actitious, boundaries. Robert and Baylis offer no empirical evidence to support this claim, and there is substantial evidence against it. The U.S. Oface of Technology Assessment’s (OTA) report on public perceptions of biotechnology, which remains the most comprehensive study of its kind, found that consequentialist concerns were cited by only a meager 1% (for environmental concerns) to 8% (for unforeseen consequences) of the respondents who believed that creating cross-species plants or animals was morally wrong (OTA 1987). Concerns about playing God and tampering with nature were much more prevalent, and the concern Robert and Baylis hypothesize apparently didn’t even merit reporting by the OTA. At any rate, it would be both surprising and disappointing if oversight bodies gave weight to the concern about moral confusion that Robert and Baylis say is at the heart of the public controversy. To prevent scientiac research on the grounds that it would force people to reexamine a particular moral view by demonstrating the falsity of its underlying factual assumptions would be to prevent not only scientiac progress but moral progress as well.

Academic Freedom and Academic-Industry Relationships in Biotechnology

Commercial academic-industry relationships (AIRs) are widespread in biotechnology and have resulted in a wide array of restrictions on academic research. Objections to such restrictions have centered on the charge that they violate academic freedom. I argue that these objections are almost invariably unsuccessful. On a consequentialist understanding of the value of academic freedom, they rely on unfounded empirical claims about the overall effects that AIRs have on academic research. And on a rights-based understanding of the value of academic freedom, they rely on excessively lavish assumptions about the kinds of activities that academic freedom protects.

Chimeras, moral status, and public policy: implications of the abortion debate for public policy on human/nonhuman chimera research.

Researchers are increasingly interested in creating chimeras by transplanting human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into animals early in development. One concern is that such research could confer upon an animal the moral status of a normal human adult but then impermissibly fail to accord it the protections it merits in virtue of its enhanced moral status. Understanding the public policy implications of this ethical conclusion, though, is complicated by the fact that claims about moral status cannot play an unfettered role in public policy. Arguments like those employed in the abortion debate for the conclusion that abortion should be legally permissible even if abortion is not morally permissible also support, to a more limited degree, a liberal policy on hESC research involving the creation of chimeras.

Animal Biotechnology and the Non-Identity Problem

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Animals in Research: Enviropigs

A cooperative learning ethics case study for guiding discussions of ethical concerns about the genetic modification of farm animals.

Animal confinement and use

ABSTRACT We distinguish two conceptions of confinement – the agential conception and the comparative conception – and show that the former is intimately related to use in a way that the latter is not. Specifically, in certain conditions, agential confinement constitutes use and creates a special relationship that makes neglect or abuse especially egregious. This allows us to develop and defend an account of one important way in which agential confinement can be morally wrong. We then discuss some of the account’s practical implications, including its usefulness for decision-making in real-world contexts in which animals are confined.

The Ethics of Agricultural Animal Biotechnology

In this chapter, Robert Streiffer and John Basl consider the potential for biotechnology to address two prominent ethical concerns regarding concentrated animal agriculture: its detrimental ecological impacts and the amount of animal suffering that is involved. With respect to animal welfare, they focus on capacity diminishment — e.g. engineering blind chickens or microencephalic pigs. Streiffer and Basl raise significant doubts about whether diminishment would in fact decrease animal suffering and improve the quality of animal lives. With respect to the environment, they focus on the case of Enviropig — the attempt to engineer pigs that have less phosphorous in their manure. They argue that if Enviropigs were engineered successfully, they would have lower environmental impacts than non-engineered pigs on a per-pig basis. However, whether they would be ecologically beneficial overall depends on several other factors, including whether they enabled an increase in the number of animals used. Therefore, Enviropigs (and other animals engineered to reduced ecological impacts) may not in the end be ecologically beneficial.