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The Ethics of Enhancing Animals, Specifically the Great Apes

Guido David Núñez-Mujica

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In addressing the argument that apes are happy the way they are, it can be argued that enhancing apes will result in greater happiness for them because it will enable them to possibly Nunez quote experience life in a deeper way, with more emotion and intellectual richness. Some may argue that enhancing apes is too manipulative, but we have been manipulating dogs and cattle for thousands of years.

We cannot be sure that slavery will not result from enhanced apes, but we can enact laws to avoid that. Some worry that wars might break out if we create another species with a totally new cultural background. Here, we must take into account that we have fought slavery and racism and this might be a chance for us to become more sensible and accept more diversity.

Arguments For Enhancing the Great Apes
Enhancing the great apes will give another species the ability to choose their own future. If we manipulate them, that will be the last manipulation they will ever need from us. From then on, they will possess free will. They will be able to choose what to do.

Enhancing the apes will make us more aware that we share the world with other beings and make us more tolerant. It will help us to better understand ourselves and the nature of consciousness and intelligence. We will have the opportunity to enrich our lives with new, diverse points of view. We will have new art and new ways of thinking about the world.

Apes have brains modelled by natural selection to live in arboreal environments, unlike our bipedal ancestors that lived in savannah. Imagine if they were able to create architecture, paintings and sculpture - it would be totally different from anything that man has ever done.

A final argument is that it will give more rights to the enhanced species, so that no one can ever deny that they are smart. If a chimpanzee spoke perfectly about philosophy, law and art, there can be no way of claiming that they are not intelligent and therefore deserve no rights.

The final consideration is that it may just be unethical not to enhance. We in the West make it mandatory for children to go to school because education is the path for a sentient human being to reach his or her full potential. Avoiding enhancing is like preventing chimpanzees from reaching their full potential and preventing them from attaining greater rights.

Enhancing or Extinction?
Human populations are growing every year. Mankind is overtaking the natural habitats of the great apes and their population has decreased dramatically. There are only 7,300 orangutans left in Sumatra, a ten-fold decrease in the last century. There are only 250 individuals of the Gorilla subspecies, Gorilla diehli. Population of the chimpanzees has dropped from five million to 170,000 individuals in the last century. It is possible that in the next fifty or one hundred years, they could disappear completely except for in zoos. That is a poor destiny for such a smart species, to only be able to contemplate us behind bars. Instead, we should make them our peers.

Enhancing could be the only way to correct our previous mistakes to the apes. Extinction of the great apes would be a terrific loss of diversity and of several amazing species. If enhancing the apes will grant more rights to animals and possibly save them from extinction, it just might be unethical to prevent or avoid it.

Nunez

Guido Núñez-Mujica is an undergraduate Student of Biology and Computational Physics at the Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida, Venezuela. In 2001 Guido became the founder of the AREV, the first and only skeptical association of Venezuela, devoted to spreading critical thinking and rationalistic views. Núñez-Mujica is an active transhumanis and has become a speaker about Transhumanism in a course on Bioethics in the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad de Los Andes. He is currently trying to create a transhumanist group in Mérida.

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