Of Men, Playing God, and Cruel Grandeur
Was a hybrid ‘humanzee’ infant really brought to term in a 20th century research facility?
Human beings, as a species, have clear advantages over members of the animal kingdom.
We’re self-aware, can ruminate over the past, plan for the future, and have used the enormity of our collective consciousness to cultivate towering cities and complex societies. We craft clothes, shoes, elaborate cuisine, and private jets. Yachts and cruise ships pepper the oceans; commercial airliners sail through space, like elegant birds fashioned from aluminum and steel. We philosophize, theorize, and take communal refuge in an unseen creator.
We’re capable of all such undertakings because, as we reason to ourselves, human beings are superior to animals in every imaginable way.
Animals, we say, are mere brutes. They weren’t endowed with souls. The ‘Good Book’ dictates that we may take authority over them in any manner we see fit. That includes everything from training dogs to sniff out cancerous tumors to the factory farming of hundreds of millions of cattle every year for human consumption. We love animals, euthanize them, eat them, or abandon them. Either way, it’s the pattern of things. It’s people who are at the top of this imagined social-order. Insects and animals are nestled conveniently beneath us.
Why? Aside from the fact that we aren’t really sure, it seems to be just the way things are.
David Barash, a professor of psychology, claims in a 2018 article for the publication Nautilus:
“…the most hurtful, theologically-driven myth [is that] humans are discontinuous with the rest of the natural world.”
He also believes that not only is it scientifically possible to create a human-primate hybrid, but that doing so might also be necessary in order to put the idea of ‘human-separate-from-animals’ to rest for good.
But has it really been done?
American scientist Gordon G. Gallop, who’s now a researcher for the University of Albany, reveals a former professor confided in him that a female chimpanzee had been successfully impregnated with human spermatozoa in a clandestine experiment that supposedly occured in the 1920s. And that wasn’t the end of it: the confession also revealed that the chimpanzee carried this hybrid child to term, resulting in an infant that survived a few days or weeks before the troubled consciences of the researchers involved got the better of them.
Treading for a moment on the brief background of these grim ‘studies’, we find that scientists interested in hybridization have honed in on the chimpanzee for over a century. And Gallop, for his part, may not have been the only one privy to clandestine, hybridization secrets.
Ilya Ivanov, a Russian scientist, is said to have been the first to pioneer the creation of a chimp-human chimera. He inseminated three female chimpanzees with human sperm — also in the 1920s — but these attempts were unsuccessful. Ivanov was subsequently sentenced to exile in Kazakh SSR, where he spent the remainder of his days.
Some sixty years later in 1981, a certain Ji Yongxiang, who was the director of a hospital in Shenyang, China, came forward with a chimera report of his own. Ji explained that in 1967, he was present during a procedure in which a chimp was inseminated with human sperm successfully. But any hope for the full-term birth of the world’s first ‘humanzee’ was soon dashed by the ensuing Cultural Revolution, during which the scientists involved in the experiment were sent away to heavy farm labor. The poor chimp, claimed by Ji to have been about three months into her pregnancy, was left to languish and starved from neglect.
Whether or not this report is actually true can be left to the reader, though Ji’s report was based off of an article that appeared in Shanghai’s newspaper, the Wenhui Bao. A man named Li Guong, said to be a part of the Genetics Research Bureau at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was cited as confirming that the experiment did indeed take place before the formation of the People’s Republic of China.
We share approximately 95 percent of our nuclear DNA with chimpanzees. These primates look and behave uncannily like we do. They exhibit intricate social behaviors, create tools, laugh, weep, grieve, and reconcile after petty arguments. Entire clans of chimps have even waged bloody war against each other.
So in other words, chimps seem to be the animals who are most like ‘us’. Their almost-human designation has made them the target of many questionably-minded scientists, seeking either to satisfy morbid curiosities or, allegedly, to create a race of powerful ‘sub-humans’ which could serve as armies and aid countries in battle.
As reported by Gallup, the initial foray into a hybridization project occurred in what was then the first primate research center in Orange Park, Florida. There, in the early 1920s, the egg of a female chimpanzee was (again, allegedly) successfully fertilized with human sperm in the center’s research laboratory. In a documentary filmed in 2009, Gallup explained that the ‘credible’ researcher who spoke to him also claimed to have witnessed the birth of the hybrid infant himself. Some days or weeks later, after the scientists who’d created this tiny creature had had time to reflect upon the ramifications of this birth, the decision was made to euthanize the infant.
There were issues, though, with the veracity of Gordon Gallup’s story. Yerkes National Primate Research Center is the facility where the forbidden project was said to have taken place. Its founder, primatologist Robert Yerkes, established the center in 1930 — not the 1920s.
Timeline aside, trying to step back and scrutinize Gallup’s claims is tricky, like playing that old desktop computer game about the mines. I’d like to believe that he’s telling the truth: Gallop himself gained something of a scientific entourage in the 1970s due to his research regarding animals and self-awareness, for which he employed mirrors. With that in mind, and also the fact that he remains affiliated with Albany University in a researcher’s position, I think it unlikely that Gallop would concoct a far-fetched story that might blot his reputation and, potentially, end his career (though stranger things have happened).
Furthermore, if the account is true and Floridian researchers really did foster the creation of this hybrid infant, a whole host of horrifying issues converges at the forefront. The first would be the question of:
Why?
Humans have pored into the field of zoology and sought the manipulation of thousands of different animal species throughout the course of milennia, but perhaps the line should be drawn at trying to integrate human ova and spermatozoa with those of animals, no matter how compatible the DNA seems to be. There’s simply no good reason for doing so, and every possible reason to avoid even the notion. We are not dealing with prized stallions, purebred Cocker Spaniels, zebra finches, fish, or Himalayan cats here: it is human genetic material that is at stake.
We, as people, don’t have the best track record when it comes to how we treat each other — let alone members of the animal kingdom — and the last thing we should want is to tamper with what exactly makes a human being ‘human’. (Note: this has nothing whatsoever to do with alleged human ‘superiority’.)
Then, there are ethics. Assuming that the story is true, we can say with certainty that not a single scientist involved thought of ethics at all. Yet Barash implies that forming a primate-human hybrid would be beneficial for science, as it would put to rest the notion that many devout people hold of human beings having been created in God’s image.
As it happens, modern-day scientists aren’t the only ones morbidly concerned with human-primate procreation.
The Bogando people are among many indigenous tribes of the African Congo. They keep to themselves and try to live the best lives they can amidst infighting and guerrilla warfare, placing the well-being of their women as high as the boughs of their magnificent iroko trees.
But warfare isn’t the only concern of Bogando elders. Its people share the lush African bush with yet another primate species: the bonobo.
Bonobos differ from chimpanzees in myriad ways. They share 98.5 percent of our DNA, and have been observed to forge almost human-like ‘cultures’ when kept in captivity. Bonobos — also known as ‘pygmy chimps’ — have been studied in depth. They use tools, enjoy music, and have a more upright skeletal structure than their chimp relatives. Bonobos have long legs, narrow shoulders, and have even been observed to walk in a bipedal fashion, albeit under restricted conditions.
That isn’t all. Their faces are flatter and their foreheads higher than those of chimps. The entirety of the Bonobo skeleton uncannily resembles that of an ancient human ancestor: the Australopithecus.
Bonobos enjoy matriarchal community structures with as many as 100 individuals. They are much more harmonious in their mannerisms as opposed to chimps. They also live as vegetarians, and after babies are born they remain close with their mothers for five years or more.
Because of their human-like characteristics, the Bogando people do everything they can to prevent contact between bonobos and their women. They believe that human-bonobo primates have indeed been born and exist somewhere in deeper portions of the Congo, and are terrified of the prospect of a woman falling ‘prey’ to a male bonobo.
In this respect, I believe that the Bogando people are ultimately correct to be fearful of primate-human hybridization — not necessarily because they think it might happen, but because they recognize that there are serious ethical problems with the idea.
So why are scientists seemingly obsessed? Is creating a human-primate hybrid possible?
Although 99% of human and primate coding sequences are the same, the crucial way in which human DNA is packed into chromosomes differs. In addition, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in our DNA. Chimpanzees have only 22.
Still, the rumors trickle in. In 2019 it was revealed that a Professor Juan Carlos of Izupisua Belmonte had allegedly managed a team that successfully created the world’s first human-primate chimeras. In order to avoid the elephant of ethics in the lab, research on the chimeras was supposedly forged in China. But Robin Lovell-Barge, a developmental biologist from London’s Francis Chick Institute, says that actually bringing these chimeras to term would be very unlikely.
The chimeras created in the lab currently are forbidden growth ‘beyond a ball of cells,’ says Lovell-Barge.
But how long, exactly, is that discretion going to last?
Where is the morality in tampering with human genetics just to prove a point, or to do so just because we can? Assuming that the Florida shennanigans were true and that there really was a primate-hybrid infant for a few short days, in my opinion there was a breach of scientific ethical standard and a desecration of humanity. It would mean that a tender, fragile human being was conjured into the world for mere biological curiosity. It would also mean that the tiny creature’s life was then snuffed out at the whims of its creators’ discomfort, when the situation could have been avoided completely by NOT initiating the gruesome experiment.
Where was the concern for this child’s physical, emotional, and physiological well-being?
Researchers a hundred years ago obviously had no access to the scientific innovations of today. Professor Barash believes that with CRISPR — a new gene-editing tool — scientists can add or subtract any genes necessary in their quest to make a human-primate hybrid ‘work’, but successful results will never be an example of scientific advancement. The confirmed existence of a primate-human hybrid even now (much less 100 years ago) would do little more than divide the planet. Those who cling to the view that God made humans in His image would be flung into turmoil, likely turning this innocent being into the target of contempt, disdain, and absolute hatred. The faith of hundreds of millions would promptly collapse; the infant would be simultaneously coveted, despised, and subjected to scientific probing from morning to night.
What about the human rights of such a hybrid? Would she be granted human rights at all, or would her primatemother be the deciding factor in denying her the right to privacy with regards to her body, freedom from constant testing and photography, the right to not having her genitalia poked and to rip off the leads pasted onto her head to try and read the thoughts in her tortured mind?
Let us hope this doesn’t happen any time in the near future. Both human beings and chimpanzees are comfortable just as they are.
Sources: Live Science, Nautilus Magazine, Wikipedia, All That’s Interesting, Daily Mail, EvolutionNews.org, ResearchGate.net
