Hi i just want know why we can or cannot modify (any sort of chimp/monkey) to develop and think like we do.?

Question

With monkeys or chimps why can we not give/take chromosones to make them like us. Or at most do a brain transplant, by holding a brain(died like 2 mins ago FOR EG) and putting it in the chimp the same way as the humans brain links in with our heads. I know there are moral issues but why can it not be tried...? It would be a massive advance for human technology. Why can we not genetically enhance the way that they develop or whatever. Trust me we know how to do it, but why cant we take the step. Just to try it?

Answer 1

I don't trust that it's possible. A total brain transplant is not a currently feasible procedure at all. Add to this the differing micro-anatomies (and there are differences).

This is the type of question asked by armchair philosophers with no knowledge of medicine.

Answer 2

If we could do brain transplants, we could help those with spinal injuries walk again.

The problem is that brain and spinal nerves do not heal when injured or cut.

Now as far as modifying the chimps to be smarter, they can add human genes to them to do it but no one will do it. It's a moral/ethical issue. We have added human genes to pigs and to mice so we can use them to test drugs on. Maybe they could do it with chimps for the same reason.

What advances could possibly come from it other than smart apes?

I've seen Planet of the Apes and I don't want that future for us. :-)

Answer 3

I believe your question is possibly proof that a chimp to human brain chromosone transplant has already been attempted...  Although I am inclined to believe that during the transmutiblenditation of the chromosonal deoxyribonucleicarniferous helixification there may have been some neuro-axional degredation.  Moreso the divergenification of your current Pan troglodytes traits inclines me to feel that evolution has made another mutantiification erroroneous.

Answer 4

Man lives a little above the animal level because man is conscious of being conscious. Animals do not sense time as does man, and even to man, because of his sectional and circumscribed view, time appears as a succession of events; but as man ascends, as he progresses inward, the enlarging view of this event procession is such that it is discerned more and more in its wholeness. That which formerly appeared as a succession of events then will be viewed as a whole and perfectly related cycle; in this way will circular simultaneity increasingly displace the onetime consciousness of the linear sequence of events.

P.1468 - §3 One day while resting at lunch, about halfway to Tarentum, Ganid asked Jesus a direct question as to what he thought of India's caste system. Said Jesus: "Though human beings differ in many ways, the one from another, before God and in the spiritual world all mortals stand on an equal footing. There are only two groups of mortals in the eyes of God: those who desire to do his will and those who do not. As the universe looks upon an inhabited world, it likewise discerns two great classes: those who know God and those who do not. Those who cannot know God are reckoned among the animals of any given realm. Mankind can appropriately be divided into many classes in accordance with differing qualifications, as they may be viewed physically, mentally, socially, vocationally, or morally, but as these different classes of mortals appear before the judgment bar of God, they stand on an equal footing; God is truly no respecter of persons. Although you cannot escape the recognition of differential human abilities and endowments in matters intellectual, social, and moral, you should make no such distinctions in the spiritual brotherhood of men when assembled for worship in the presence of God."

Answer 5

Not only are there moral issues, we really don't know how to do it.  The DNA of a chimp cannot be modified as easily as you say.  We don't even know what a lot of the DNA does, so there is no way we can modify a chimp to be a human.  Even if we do try to make it smarter, chances are we messed up somehow and it will probably die.  By the way, how do you know that we know how to do it?  I learned pretty quickly at school that this kind of thing is currently well beyond our reach.