Should We Experiment On Apes To Make Them Smarter?

August 05, 2011

It's strange to think that it's been 43 years since Charlton Heston uttered that immortal line of dialogue, "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" Nevertheless, the inevitable reboot of the Planet of the Apes movie franchise is now upon us, with the debut of the seventh film in the series. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a reworking of the original story that explains how humans came to cede dominance of the planet to other, more hirsute members of the family Hominidae and de-evolved into a speechless lower species of roaming scavengers. That metamorphosis, of course, gave the great apes license to build cities, arm themselves with crude weapons, chisel grandiose marble statues, and create a cruelly repressive, authoritarian theocracy to suppress scientific and social progress -- thus roughly approximating Western civilization circa A.D. 1600.

Chartlon Heston in the 1968 classic, "Planet of the Apes."

The original Planet of the Apes movie series depicted simian supremacy as the result of the sort of Einsteinian parlor tricks pondered by David Lewis in his seminal 1976 essay, "The Paradoxes of Time Travel." The evolved, highly intelligent apes Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Milo escaped from Earth just as it was about to be destroyed by a doomsday nuclear device and utilized a convenient warp in space-time to return to the 1970s, where they were imprisoned in a zoo and eventually killed, but not before leaving behind an offspring to spread their brainy genes.

Doomsday, From Cold War Nukes To Modern-Day Frankensteins

This time, though, the screenwriters offer a different explanation, one that doesn't require any time travel and that replaces the old Cold War bogeyman -- nuclear annihilation -- with the post modern fear of gene alteration. Instead of Frankenfood, human researchers create Caesar, the first ape with superior intelligence, in an effort to make some sort of miraculous breakthrough in repairing damaged human brains. But instead of serving as a docile tool for jacking up stock prices in the biomedical technology sector, Caesar becomes the leader of a far-ranging simian rebellion. (Picture him as John Connor of the Terminator saga, except with fur and bigger canine teeth.) Will it strike a chord among moviegoers, as the original nuclear-Armageddon-themed 1968 movie did? As Terrence Rafferty notes in this excellent New York Times article.

This reinvention of pop scripture is, of course, a risk: "Planet of the Apes" fundamentalists may reject it as heresy. But it's probably inevitable. Show business, like evolution, is an inexorable and unforgiving process: those who fail to adapt are doomed to extinction. The real danger lies less in rethinking the story than in violating the basic nature of the original series' kind of science fiction.

But let's leave the cinematic critique to others and look at a different question. Will scientists ever find a way to increase dramatically the intelligence of non human hominids? And if so, should we do it?

You may be surprised to learn that some medical experts are concerned that someone may actually attempt to upgrade simian intelligence. The British Academy of Medical Sciences' just-released report, "Animals Containing Human Material," warns that recent advances in genetic manipulation make conceivable this scenario:

Extensive modification of the brain of an animal, by implantation of human-derived cells, which might result in cognitive capacity approaching human ‘consciousness' or ‘sentience' or ‘human-like' behavioral qualities.

An article in that esteemed British publication the Telegraph goes on to quote Thomas Baldwin, one of the report's authors:

The fear is that if you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into the brains of primates suddenly you might transform the primate into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human ... speech, or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to us. These possibilities that are at the moment largely explored in fiction we need to start thinking about now.

Not to be outdone, the Daily Mail, a U.K. tabloid, reported the next day that over the past three years, 150 human-animal hybrid embryos have been produced "secretly" in British labs. Granted, the ostensible purpose was to harvest embryonic stem cells that might be used to treat a range of diseases, and the cultures were destroyed after 14 days. But you know how naively idealistic those genetic researchers are. Sooner or later, one of them is going to implant a chimera in a chimpanzee womb, and then take the infant home, just like James Franco's character does in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. After a few years of listening to Baby Einstein CDs and home schooling, a knuckle-walking genius in a Che Guevara beret and diapers is going to emerge, walk over to the primate house at the nearest zoo, and start raising bloody hell. Let's just hope that they don't modify chimpanzees' opposable thumbs to enable them to exert as much torque as humans' thumbs, which would enable them, among other things, to grip a handgun properly.

Would Intelligent Apes Like Us?

But maybe that's needlessly alarmist. After all, we're assuming that intelligent apes would feel bitter resentment and perhaps even a murderous hatred of humans, just because we've wiped out most of their natural habitat, imprisoned them in zoos for our amusement, and forced them to dress in ridiculous outfits and pose for greeting cards. Sure, that's how we might feel, if we were in their place. But maybe apes are better than that. Also, in the Planet of the Apes movies, the violent ape rebellion is portrayed as the result of intelligent apes being exploited as a servile underclass. In the 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, they become radicalized because they're forced to perform all the menial duties that humans no longer care to do.

In reality, though, genetically altered intelligent simians probably would be too costly and prized to be used as street-sweepers or restroom attendants at fancy hotels. And besides, that would be a waste of their potential. Instead, I think it's more likely that we would educate and train them to perform intellectually demanding, crucial jobs that inexplicably have been devalued by a society that would rather reward hedge fund managers, professional athletes and reality show contestants. Intelligent apes could be groomed to teach preschool, take care of elderly people in nursing homes, and work as firefighters and air traffic controllers -- at least until they learn about collective bargaining and form unions. Then we could breed some intelligent dolphins to take their jobs.

So what do you think? Express your opinion below.

Credit: Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images