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September 30, 2005

Man & The Monkey

A couple of weeks ago, scientists announced that they had sequenced the genome of the chimpanzee and found that it very similar to the human genome. How similar? They are 96% percent the same.

First of all, what does this mean? Well, I gave some thought to this as a person and as a software engineer, and I had mixed feelings.

I have two other siblings that share my genetic make-up as well as similar environmental conditions. While we share some basic physical similarities, my brothers and I have very different personalities and mannerisms.

As a software engineer, I started thinking about the whole 96% figure. In object-oriented programming, we have the concept of derivation - having a generic object which we derive from to create more specific objects. For example, the object Vehicle might have derived objects Car, Motorcycle, Moped, Truck, Airplane, etc. A well-build class will put as much of the "similar" vehicle-wide features in the base class Vehicle (All have wheels, seats, engine, fuel, etc). A more interesting example would be a base class LivingCreature and all it's derived classes... Ok, so I don't want to bore you with the technicalities, but here are my conclusions:

That 4% difference - Just like the small, tailored derivations from the Vehicle class to make the Car class so unique and specific, it's the details, the differences, that illustrate and define the chimp versus the human.

I think the software programming analogy also illustrates that there are lots of "shared" features amongst all living things. The basic building blocks are always there, and the features and functionality may vary, but from a generalized perspective, 96% starts sounding acceptable - all living things perform similar behaviors like eat, sleep, reproduce, etc. It's only the details. You soon realize you're asking questions like "How many eyes" instead of "Do they have eyes?"

Self-awareness seems to be the primary ability that leads people to think of a species as evolved or human-like. But what is self-awareness? How is it determined?

Scientists define an animal as "self-aware" if it touches a painted spot on its own face when it looks in a mirror. People start to recognize themselves in this way at around age 2. Apes and dolphins figure it out in adulthood. Most monkeys, on the other hand, ignore facial markings. They just don't understand that the image in the mirror is their own.

More at: Monkeys in the Mirror

So what's most fascinating about that 4% is that it must contain all that magical stuff that some people think separates us from the beasts... a reasoning you've probably guessed by now I do not adhere to.

Despite the similarities in human and chimp genomes, the scientists identified some 40 million differences among the three billion DNA molecules, or nucleotides, in each genome.

The vast majority of those differences are not biologically significant, but researchers were able to identify a couple thousand differences that are potentially important to the evolution of the human lineage.

More at: Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds

I find it very interesting that the first major issue to arise from the 96/4 announcement is not related to how that 4% must contain all sorts of interesting goodies, but instead that it has reignited the debate on the ethics of chimp bio-research. People are arguing that this proves that chimps are too much like humans and therefore should be treated more like them in terms of medical research.

Now, I am all for the ethical treatment of animals (including humans) in all situations - I really don't think I need genetic justification for it, though. We discover that we share some genetic makeup with some other animal and that get's them on the "ok" list? How arrogant that we needed that kind of justification before we would consider the ethical treatment of the animal? And why is 4% such an important number. What of the other creatures we find that are only 4% different from our new friends, the chimps? At what percentage is unethical conduct justified?

Chimp research proponents point out that important medical advances, such as the development of a hepatitis B vaccine, have been achieved through research with chimpanzees.

...

Other researchers, however, say that they have an ethical responsibility to treat chimps differently than other research animals. Critics point to the animals' genetic similarity to humans, their ability to use tools, and their sense of "self."

More At: Should Labs Treat Chimps More Like Humans?

I know people argue about what makes for ethical treatment - whether it's to people or animals. I am not saying that medical testing can't sometimes highly beneficial but I think that there are sounds reasons and unsound ones. Finding a cure for hepatitis is certainly a worthy concern, whereas manufacturing cosmetics is not.

Posted by sorsha at September 30, 2005 2:20 PM