The Existential Horror of the Humanzee

the possible human zee. Oh yeah, very very sad case of a chimpanzee, sweet animal, very sweet, cigar smoking upright, walking, bald, bald ish chimp that people thought was very is like, eerily humanlike and and some people even thought that he might have been the missing link between humans and great apes. And Jim, yes, we hear about the missing link all

the time. And in the nineteen seventies genetic testing that people were just so unnerved by this this little creature Oliver, that I thought for sure that there wasn't part of him that was human. And they saw it in his face, right, they saw it in the way that he appeared to walk around on two feet right right. And and supposedly the smell as well, there's some accounts that say that he didn't smell like a chimpanzee, ship that he smelled like a little bit like a man and a little

bit like a chimp. Yeah, well, here's okay, here's the context. Nineteen seventies, some a couple raises chimpanzees, uses them for entertainment purposes, meaning you know, in commercials or parties or whatever. They get this one peculiar chimpanzee, Oliver. Turns out that nobody really wants to use them in commercials because he is really unsettling, because he looks very human, and because

he keeps walking upright, like consistently. You see chimpsy this sometimes, but this particular chimpanzee was you know, even though his hips were splayed out, he would still walk up right. People like, that's kind of weird. Um, And so they began just to annotally say things like, oh, well, you know, the other chimps don't like Oliver because he must have

a bad smell or they don't recognize a smell. So we don't know for sure exactly what the deal was with Oliver, but but they felt weird about using him. They didn't think he looked like like star chimp material, and and maybe just maybe they they found that he looked at he was a little too human. That's the problem that that it felt really weird to take this this sort of human looking animal, uh and uh put it in a cage, take it out of the cage, make it run around for a commercial, and then reward

it with a carrot and a cigar. Well, especially especially if it sits down next to you and start smoking a cigar and maybe even making a pass at you, because apparently this is something that he would do when he turned sixteen and his hormones were raging. I guess um, but he in fact was not a humanzy as much as people wanted to believe or thought that he was. Later on they did gitetic testing on him, they found

that he was, you know, chimp. That doesn't mean that people uh still aren't fascinated by the idea that you could create half man, half ape. Right, It's it's I mean, it's a it is a troubling idea, as we uh, it's the title of this podcast suggest you know. It's uh, it's it's the the idea that there is this bridge between us and the animal. It but blurs the line between what it is to be human and what it

is to be this this other. And of course this is something that we've explored in horror and science fiction many times in the past, especially of the the end of the eight hundreds beginning of the twentieth century, you saw a number of very important stories that came around that they really signified this. I mean one as early as one you had the Murders in the Room Morgue

by Edgar Allan Poe, which you know spoilers. It involves an orangutant with a straight raders there stuffing girls into chimneys, and the idea that this this ape is going around committing crimes against humans. So it's it's pretty troubling. But but then it really kicks in a little later. Um of course you have uh the Island of Dr Moreau,

um classic novel. Which movie are you referring to? Oh, yes, the ninety six version, which you still have to admit is pretty fun because you have you have Marlon Brando and that whole get up apparently acting with a headset, like barely acting like reading lines that are right. And then he has the little The whole idea of the mini me originates with the with the little person that he had addressed up like him. Um Ron Perlman running

around as in an animal costume. You had Val Kilmer doing god knows what, and uh it was kind of a disaster. But there was also a nineteen seventies seven film version that had Bert Lancaster and Michael York and that one was always a favorite of mine because it was like when I was a kid, I would watch like like Grandpa Monster would host this like Saturday Morning Afternoon. You know, he was a daytime horror TV host, and he would host these awful movies that I was watching.

This was before Mystery Science Theater three thousand Stugs, But but I would, I would. I would always check it out and and they would, you know, show stuff like them with the giant ants and and I particularly remember being really into that seventy seven version of Dr Moreau.

All Right, I need to check that out. So yeah, I mean, in case you guys haven't guessed out there, we're talking about humanities, and we're gonna talk a little bit more later about what we have already done in the lab in terms of creating hybrid creatures of ourselves and other animals. But first we should probably talk about cameras, right, Yes, the camera. For you Greek mythology junkies, this was of course a a monster with the lion's head, a goat's

body at dragon's tail. It breathes fire. It was born in Lycia, on the southern coast of what's now modern Turkey. And it would sweep down in the evenings and it would carry off women, children, and livestock. It would literally their bones all over the mountains. And uh, so you know what, what are you gonna do? You gotta get a hero to take care of this, this monster that's

made from different animal parts. So you bring in Bill Eraphan And uh, of course he can't really just walk up there and take care of his A. He needs spear, and B he needs a pegasus. So I find it amusing that um that he defeats the chimera mainly by using a chimera, because the today that the word chimera is often used to refer to any animal that has

two or more different sets of genetically distinct cells working together. Okay, and so again this will bring me about two movies and Clash of the Titans, right, yes, everyone, everyone's modern understanding of mythology of course based and clash of the type of course, right. But of course we actually do have hybrids in nature, not necessarily like medusa like creatures or otherwise they're generally not quite that facts. Yeah, yeah, minotaurs,

sirens on the banks calling you forth. But we've got dogs and wolves not that exciting, but they have made it right, lions and tigers, ligers a mule, which is the progeny of a male donkey and a female horse. Yeah, you get the all the value of a donkey, but the size of a horse. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously we've seen inner species love happenings in their products of their love happenings. But I don't know why I'm choosing

to say it that way, that this is what happens right. Well, yeah, they're related, um enough that they can actually breed with one and they and produce the offspring that most of these cases, though, cannot then breed with with other animals. The mule for instances is generally sterile. Yes. And then we have cross species in the lab. Right man made

three different types here that you'll see. One is called the hybrid, and this is created by breeding across species, and hybrids are generally the result of combining an egg from one species with firm from another to form a single embryo and hybrids contain recombined genetic material throughout their genome and throughout all the tissues in their body, because

that's important to note. And then there's transgenics that's the result of gene transfer, and typically transgenics contains transferred or manipulated genes in addition to the host nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. One exception may be a transgenic embryo comprised of the entire complement of nuclear DNA from one organizing organism fused with an inunculated egg cell from another, and this will become all sort of crystal clear, and we talk more

specifically about what's being created here. And then third cameras right right and their number of cool lab grown examples of this. Chinese researchers at the Shanghai Second Medical University successfully fuse human cells with rabbit eggs. A year later, there was a successful Chinese camera experiment where reachers that researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota announced that they created a pig with human blood pumping through its veins.

We made a sheep with human livers, a mouse with the human liver, a stapler with the human liver cat not really at the state cat human hybrid proteins, mouse with a human brain, well with human with one percent

of its brain was the human brain cells. So but anyone gets any crazy secret in them ideas there, But yeah, it's it's a technology that's it's been around the block a few times already, and these are all issue point that people are not just making like sheep with human livers just I think it's awesome, or they want to sheep that can really hold its liquor. This is about figuring out ways to potentially grow new organs for organ

transplants for humans. To better understand some of these systems, I mean they're they're definitely medical, uh goals in mind here are trying to understand life threatening diseases UM. In two thousand and seven, British researchers created a human pig hybrid.

So this is where the egg comes from a pig and then nucleus comes from a human and the idea is to implant the nucleus of an egg from a human being with a disease UM so he's something like heart disease, and then you can watch how the DNA from a person with this condition instructs cellular development in its earliest stages, and so scientists really hope to find out more about the inner workings about what's going on there, um,

specifically with heart disease. So yeah, there's all these different examples of how we have tinkered with nature in order to observe our maladies or even just how we have progressed as human beings. So all this leads inevitably to the tale of a Russian biologist by the name of Iliya Ivanov who was doing that most of his work in the nineteen twenties, and uh, really wasn't all that heart about by the modern public until around and that's

when a number of Soviet documents became unclassified. The British tabloid The Sun got ahold of some of this, and they started running stories about the Red Frankenstein, who was supposedly it traveled to French Guyana on a Bolsheviks sponsored quest to bread a human ape hybrid to create some sort of super mutant to aid Stalin and his conquest

of the world. Yeah, right, this was the Red Apeman Army that they talked about, um, which you know, it's probably good to note that Ivanov was working way before the Russian Revolution began. And there are certain aspects of this story that you can see they might have been taken out of context. And uh, and it's a great fun idea to run with this half man, half ape

army that Stalin wanted to defeat the world with. But that is not in fact what happened, right, That's not exactly what ivan Off was after the At the down of the twentieth century, ivan Off was already a pretty famous dude in his field for his pioneering work and artificial intamination. Respected, yeah, well respected. He had done things like he created a z donc which was a zebra

donkey hybrid, a zubron which is a European bison cow crossover. Uh, you know, he was he was creating mashups with animals like and kind of you know, islanded Dr morou wish, I guess if you want to really take it and run with it. But but he was well thought of. And his next big thing was he wanted to see about improving the bloodstock of Imperial Russia, so um around. He puts in proposals with the government despite the disapproval

of the scientific establishment. He got to go ahead, and the funds most important to mount a expedition to Africa to collect apes so that he could see about creating a hybrid between a human and its closest relative. That's right. And he was getting his funds from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and part and uh, and there was a little crossover at the time, so he's working with a lot of people who are really respected in their fields.

Of course, you know, the problem was that, uh, it was a little bit diabolical, right, I mean, his his idea here, yeah, his his best we can tell his his real idea. His his notion here was not to create a super soldier and thing stupid like that. But he was a big believer in the theories of Darwin that the idea that man evolved from these previous forms, that that evolution was the driving force, natural selection was drive,

which is right. Yeah, But he he thought that the way to really prove it, to just really just settle the case once and for all, and the whole evolution versus everything else, versus religion, you name it, was to actually create a human chimp hybrid and then introduce you to the world. And then people would say that he would be like, what what's that? You got something else? There's something about religion, eat my humansy his name is Oliver and uh proof, Yeah, your entire argument is nil

at this point. So so he had you could say he had a noble um, you know, scientific goal in mind. It's kind of a I mean still kind of a helish moves. He's kind of wants to stick it tip to everyone, but it's still he has a definite goal in mind. Here his his means of pulling an offer just a little suspect. Well, yeah, it's in the execution, right, So he decides that, um, he is going to try

to inseminate three females, right, which he does. Um, he tries, I should say, and these are African women and uh but then you know, eventually he's forced to abandon the project because it's just not going that well. It doesn't have a tent of support behind it, right, and he has really had to try to get those ten dollarge in the Soviet Financial Commission. He's really had to work very hard at it. This it's not something that a

lot of people want to write. And it was kind of touch and go, Like he went to Paris first and then he went to French Guyana because they had some chimps over there, but then they weren't yet old enough to breed, so to come back to Paris. Nothing was working in his favorite right and he gets really desperate, and so what does he do? Something completely unconsciousable. He decides that he's going to inseminate African women with the

chimpanzee sperm without their knowledge. Okay, so he's trying to get forward with this is as much as possible, and he's found out, and of course everybody starts to reject this plan, and he spirals out of his his professional field.

I guess you could say, yeah, he starts hanging out with the celebrated surgeon Sergey Voronoff, who at the time was was really in fashion because he had a quote unquote rejuvenation therapy that he would perform in which he would graf slices of ape test ees onto those of rich and aging men who were hoping to regain some of their former vigor. And let's just all positive for

a moment think about that. Yeah, it's I mean, on one hand, anyone who's ever read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is probably thinking of the Adventure of the Creeping Man from nine three, which follows the same logic. The idea you have somebody that's taking some sort of ape or monkey related product, but in this case it's changing him and making him crazy uh or possibly changing them into a monster is one of the more sci fi

of the Carli Homes tales. It's important to keep in mind that that Vornoff is not the only one doing this uh in the twenties, this rejuvenation tests on your cheek therapy. Yes, yes, he became notorious for performing in Algeria. But at the same time several US surgeants were were doing the same thing. There was Dr Victor D. Less Pennises uh professor of genature urinary surgery at Northwestern University.

He was treating impotence with the use of glandular extracts and then grafting slices of human cadaver tests uh in into the rectus muscles for them that it meant which but but again this was he was just human cadavertive to humans, so there wasn't anything fishy going on. Um, you know, and certainly what we do a lot of today with a lot of transplant of an organ as a cadab or twite. So so I don't want to

scandalize that too much. But then you had this guy Dr. Leo Stanley, who between and this is another American, between nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty two, he injected six hundred and fifty six prisoners at San Quentin Prison with tests in an attempt to slow a reverse aging. But he

used the testicles of goats, rams, boars, deer. He essentially purade them like I assume in like a big smoothie blender um purade the testicles so that they he could put them in a needle and inject them under the skin of the abdomen subcutaneous tests is what I'm hearing, testy like slurpy, and and of course, um, you know, there's not much you can really say about that, but he reported that that that he had some success with it. But I mean, ultimately, you have a situation where a

dude is performing horrible human experimentation. Uh, and you know, within the walls of a prison. But back to ivanof all, right, but I do think it's interesting to note that that was the environment that Ivanov was working in. Say, yeah, he's working in environment where, and certainly not everybody thought

that Ivanov was great. There were there were some scientists that came to sort of investigate and poke around what he was doing, because even I mean everyone, not everyone was like, yeah, totally inject some people with ape stuff. That's that's a great idea. Now, some some people were concerned, but there was enough of it going around that not as many eyebrows were raised. These were all hormonal approaches to treating impotence made prior to the discovery of testosterone,

before the emergence of modern hormone science. So you cut him a little slack there. I guess as far as the mindset goes, not as much as some of the actual acts that were performed, because certainly the stuff that happened at San Quentin was indefensible. Yeah, and I mean Ivanov sort of did get his uh come up. And so I guess you could say for his ethical transgressions, right with trying to impregnate women with chimpanzee sperm without

their knowledge. He was spanished to Kazakhstan, right, Yeah, the French governor and guyana Um said none of that, get out of here. Yeah, And then he tried to he had plans to carry out more experiments in Russia, but it was a pain to try and ship all these these animals back all the way from Africa. They're dying on the way, They're dying once they get back. It's

just a huge zoological headache. And yeah, indeed, he eventually is sent to Kazakistan and he really he's released the next year, but he dies soon after, which I mean, on one hand yet sad, but then also but he

was kind of off the rails at that point. It seems like in any case that we've looked at, there there comes this moment where you look up your mad you're essentially a mad scientist, but you you look up and you realize that you would you would think you would realize you've become a mad scientist, like whether you're ivan off and you look up and you realize, wow, I've lost all my funding, and uh, I have notes here on how I'm going to um secretly impregnate a

woman with chimp steamen. Or you're someone like like Lily the dolphin guy, and you're living in a flooded apartment with dolphins and taking LSD in your isolation chamber. You think you might realize, man, my funding was just cut and I'm doing all this crazy stuff something that maybe I'm not on the up and up anymore. Maybe I've become Yeah, well was Isn't there some sort of phrase about when you're living in the monkey house, you can't

smell the pooh. I've never heard that that that that sounds basically here he was literally living in the monkey house. Uh well maybe not literally, but but he was trying to keep a monkey house uh in Russia and carry out these experiments. So then that of course leads us to the question couldn't actually be done? And we will talk about that right after this message. All right, we're back one more thing about ivan Off before we move

on there. We mentioned that his whole thing was to prove Darmond right to stomp out religion, and that the the humanity would be the icon of this h of his victory. But there are also some theories that the the aging Bolsheviks in in particular were very interested in financing his research because they were aging men in an age when there were some scientific minds that were that that thought that you could slower reverse aging by injecting

things like like like puade tests into the body. You know, that they thought that this was if not if these techniques weren't working, they were at least leading to in the right direction. So there's there are some theories that state that while he while Ivanof was definitely um, you know, go go dar dar when we're gonna prove religion wrong, some of the Bolsheviks might be thinking, oh, let's get this guy some money. Maybe he'll hook me up with

the sweet sweet injections and I can live forever. Okay. So so they had their own little hidden agenda maybe right again, Ivanof, you know, not under the direction of Stalinik to raise this eight man army. So could we do it? Could we could be well, this is kind of an open question, um, because it's it's this was this period we're talking about, like the nineteen twenties, you know, the early twentieth century. This was the time to get

funding for this experiment. And and certainly as people managed to get or at least one man managed to get some funding, and it didn't come to fruition. So the environment in the world today is certainly not such or certainly in most places thankfully that this kind of thing

is going to get green lit. Yeah, that's right. Robin Bernstein, the assistant professor of anthropology at George Washington University, says that in a lab setting with a scientist, it's possible to fertilize an egg with genetic material from a chimp. But to your point, she says, who's going to fund it and who's gonna be going to sanction it? Yeah, and you're gonna have to I mean, you know, let's

let's not kid ourselves. As a scientist, tend to be pretty bright people, but they are existing in a and they're also existing in a culture of of their particular science. So you would have to have someone in a culture that advocated or tolerated, uh, this type of experiment. Uh,

you know, they're there have been. People often point to the Second World War and you know, the experiments of Joseph Mangela, you know, and the you know, the horrible things that went on uh there under the regime because stuff, because it was a situation where stuff was tolerated. You release a gas and in a room and it will eventually fill that volume of air. You know, you have to have the space that will tolerate a certain level of unethical science or more more, you know, outright evil,

however you want to raise it. So yeah, for for this kind of experiment to to come around again, for somebody actually make a go at it, you would you would have to have that environment that that that culture that tolerated this kind of scientific experimentation among actual scientists. Well, and even though you know, the scientific community is largely pretty self governing, there are people who are still worried

about it. Biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin said in a two thousand interview with The Guardian, chimps shared percent of human genome, and a fully mature chimp has the equivalentental abilities and consciousness of a four year old human using human and chimpanzee embryo, which researchers say is feasible. This is him saying this could produce a creature so human that questions regarding its moral and legal status would throw four thousand years of ethics into chaos. Would such a creature enjoy

human rights? Would it have to pass some kind of humanness test to win its freedom? Would it be forced into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities? It's interesting I was reading some stuff by Richard Dawkins, and he was making pretty much the same argument that if we were he was letting out some some various situations that could come about that would change the way

we think about things. And he was arguing that if you, if you were able to create a successful hybridization of a human nish and fancy this this humanzy um, you you would basically change everything that like his his argument is kind of like ivanovs that if you had this creature. So if he's not advocating the creation of it, but he's saying if he's saying, could it be done? Maybe, and if it were done, it would it would change the way we think. I don't we were talking about

this earlier. I don't know if we actually agree with that right right, because we we were actually pointing to our podcast about the science of arguing and how sometimes even when we have all the facts before has sometimes and mostly this is ego driven usually, uh, we tend to ignore those facts and still go with whatever it is that we're rooting for. We're arguing against UM. So, I mean it's possible that UM it wouldn't necessarily change our idea of how the world was made, how we

came into being. If we were to create this creature for some people, it would write, I mean, but someone who firmly believes in intelligent design, they're very much set in this mindset this is the right way, and the rest it's just some sort of like liberal agenda. If said liberals were to to roll out humansy, it's not like they would drop everything and be like, well, what have I've been wasting my time with this whole intelligent design stuff, because there is the proof of the humansy.

They would say, no, that's just some weird monkey you found, or any number of ideas that would just refute that any any possibility that this is what they said it

was right. And you know, just just in case anybody's worried about out this coming to fruition, Stewart Newman, a developmental biologists sponsored UM by, of course, the biotech activist Jeremy Rifkin, actually sought to preclude the creation of a humanity by attempting to patent the relevant to technology so that they would be able to restrict its use and then promote an ethics debate UM, you know, on the

on the world wide platform UM. Because they felt like, we just want to go ahead and bring this issue to the forefront because people really aren't thinking about it. Um. Even though the patent was rejected, they felt like it was successful because now they had people talking about the question about it. They the people were discussing the possibilities

and the ethics of creating said hybrid. Yeah, and so I mean and in a sense, the government reacted the way it was opposed to write, because it's not really supposed to give a patent to anybody, you know, it doesn't necessarily know someone's agenda, right, So they rejected this pen on the grounds that although the Patent and Trade Office UM has been permitted since the Supreme Court decision

in nineteen eighty to issue patents on living organisms. A major ground for the rejection was their claim to have no guidance from Congress as to how human an organism can be before it is not patentable by the Thirteenth Amendments prohibition of slavery. So you know, there's there's it's still very much a gray area. And as rifkin Head brought up, you know, at what point are we human? What is humanness? What is you know, what are we creating here? So, yeah, I mean, it's it's possible to

create this creature. But should we Yeah, I mean I'm not saying yes we should, I'm just saying yeah, yeah, that's all good stuff to think that. It also brings to mind another tale from this uh, the same sort of legacy I was discussing earlier with the Adventures of the Creeping Man and I wanted Dr Moreau. You had an HP Lovecraft story titled Facts concerning the late author German and his Family, which is one that I I always liked, um when when I was, you know, reading

a love Craft. But it's, uh, it's ultimately a it it sort of brings the mind some of Lovecraft's racial paranoia, which can at times be a little off putting. Um. But what's amazing about the story, it's it's very much just set in this post Darwinian world. So the story involves a man coming, uh, a man who came back from exploring in Africa, and it comes to light that while he was there, he fell in love with a

white ape princess. You know think uh, I think the movie Congo, the crazy gray apes that had the big pet stone paddles that they bashed people with. Well, he found this uh individual finds out that his uh uh that a member of his family had had gone to Africa have fallen in love, and that he was actually

descended partially from this white ape princess. So I just find that a fascinating tale because it really it brings to mind a lot of the problems that would come to light if if we had a humans, the idea that it would really rock our boat and make us think long and hard about these differences between what it is to be human and uh and what it is to be this other and if there is and how how firm that distinction really is? Of course in the

Lovecraft toy, it's just a little more, a little more horrific. Well, and to bring up Richard Hawkins right selfish gene He talks about how our genes are selfish. If all of a sudden you do have genetic material that is created with a chimpanzee and you have that offspring, how do you feel towards that, right? Because that is part of you? Right? You're do you you have a completely different idea of of what it is to be human, to be sentient? All right? Well, I think that about wraps it up.

Let's have the robot bring over some mail and we'll read a quickly. Alright, this is from a listener by the name of Tony, says, Hi, Robert and Julie, Greetings from Melbourne, Australia. Enjoy really enjoy your podcast. I was listening to your Bug Diet episode today when on my way to meet some friends to lunch in our Chinatown district, when I happen to pass a restaurant called Ant's Bistro. Uh and that's spelled A and T Foster vs. I had to take a photo and send it to you, guys.

I'm yet to sample their signature dish, but it's a con except you could catch on. Here's the photo. Keep up the great work. So yeah, we asked people for examples of bug related cuisine and uh in their own experiences and uh we had a few different people right in and that was that was one of them. And let's see what else we have here. We heard from a listener by the name of Timothy. Hi, Robert and Julie just wanted to weigh in on on the argument's episode.

Robert had mentioned philosophy and I wanted to stress how important it really is and how sad it is that philosophy isn't taken more seriously in American society. Ego is like a colored lens. We may not even be aware we are wearing. The argument is a fantastic opportunity for someone else to point them out. Philosophy helps you learn to look for those heirs yourself. I believe philosophy is a large part of why my girlfriend and I are

able to turn our occasional argument into meaningful conversation. We're both willing to be wrong because we both mind the rational solution we agree upon to be much preferable to a selfish win. I love the show. Uh, And for the record, Julie, the male robot most definitely is not argumentative. Oh you say that, but have you ever been stuck in the break room with Arnie Now pretty he's in there to talk to the robotic coffee machine. Yeah, yeah,

I can pay have a thing going. Yeah, well, all right, if you have something you want to share with us about past episode on bugs or arguing, or if you have something some interesting stuff to share about this episode on humansies, do let us know. There were a number of I had other things in the notes, so I didn't get around to mentioning. So I'm sure some of you guys have some cool ports of fiction to bring up and i'd i'd love to highlight them hand or

the exposed to them for the first time. Uh and if you want to find us, you can find us uh a on Facebook where we're Stuff Below your Mind. You can find us be on Twitter, uh where or we are Blow the Mind and uh see where else can you find us? You can find us at Blow the Mind at Discovery and take note of that new email address please Discovery dot com. Be sure to check

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