Meerkat: "I believe that a lab of this variety would be much harder to move and maintain, requiring much money and space, compared to a meth lab."
I'm not sure about the space. Remember, what they're working with is very small. I've been in genetics labs, and there are pictures online. The equipment is innocuous. Ever see the lab where Dolly the Sheep was cloned? It didn't look like much. Honestly, it looked like a back room at a vet clinic: Microscopes. Petri dishes. Hoods.
Meth labs really need hoods too (and those who are serious have them).
Regarding expense, I'm sure of it, but I'm talking about people with all the money in the world.
Regarding bans, what's the point of laws that are impossible to enforce? Granted, I'll agree that there should be laws against assaults of actual victims, things like murder, mutilation, rape, theft, etc. But we can't even enforce those (if you've ever been robbed you know we can't), so if you're going to have laws at all, doesn't it make sense to concentrate them where they benefit humanity the most?
Critics would argue that the hybrid or chimera is a victim, but that's not automatically so. The question really is, should it be exploitable? Bacteria with human genes are already amongst the patented intellectual property of corporate giants, so where do you draw the line? If a walkin', talkin' sentient hybrid pops up, do you kill it?
We need to be thinking in terms of defining sentience, and recognizing the rights of all sentient creatures. It's a hairy question, because I have known parrots who passed every test I devised. They not only talked, they passed the Turing test (if it responds so you can't tell you're talking to a parrot {except for the squawky voice, which it cannot help}, it's thinking). They laughed. They cried (not quite like we do it, although the overall body language is the same). They displayed love and affection. They reasoned. They got ticked off. They could be jerks.
We don't need to be banning stuff like the ignorant villagers in Frankenstein. We need to be humbly acknowledging our responsibility for the monsters we create, because God knows we've already created a bunch of 'em.
I'm no PETA member. I'm a carnivore, and proud of it. There's nothing wrong with eating meat. It is how the world was made. But I do think we need to be drawing an ethical line. I've worked around animals for most of my life, and as far as I'm concerned, great apes, psittacines and cetaceans are people. If you molest one of them, it's not qualitatively different from harming a person. You're hurting a thinking, feeling, self-aware creature.
Legislatures should be working on ensuring the rights of artificial creatures, including human clones, because sooner or later the subject is going to come up. Actually, it already has: in 2004, the Raëlians said they had produced a human clone. The Pope went ballistic. The State of Florida said, "If this turns out to be true we're taking the baby." The Raëlians kinda went, "Uh, never mind."
The State of Florida should have no right to take the baby.
