Hank Greely

I think that all these ethical issues work on at least two levels.

There's the individual level of do you want to be involved in this?

If you were offered a slice of bacon from a pig that was engineered to have no brain, would you decide to eat it or not?

And then at the group level, does the community, does the government, does this culture want to accept this or not?

Those aren't questions for me to answer.

Those are questions for individuals to answer and for collectives to answer.

But it's good for them to have people who've explored both the science side of it and the ethical ramifications.

So look, I live in Silicon Valley.

I'm used to people who are throwing money around on wild and crazy ideas, 90% of which will fail.

The 10% don't fail.

And there's no good way to know in advance which 10% won't fail or not.

I think that this is plausible enough that it is worth us thinking about.

Do I think it will happen?

I don't know.

I don't know how scientifically plausible it is, and I don't know how socially acceptable it would be, but I think we should be

beginning to have a conversation about whether we think this would be a good thing or a bad thing.

And that's a broad conversation.

It's not just scientists or ethicists or the person in the street.

It's also people with diseases who hope that animal research will help lead to the cures for their disease.

There are a lot of voices that will need to be heard.