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From: atd@allegra.UUCP (Anton Dahbura)
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Subject: Life imitates art?
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Date: Tue, 19-May-87 15:14:16 EDT
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Posted: Tue May 19 15:14:16 1987
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      ITALIAN SCIENTISTS CONFIRM APEMAN CAN BE CREATED

      by Uli Schmetzer (Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1987)


     ROME- The image of the mad  scientist  with  the  white
beard  concocting an apeman in his laboratory is no longer a
science fiction fable but a 1987 possibility.

     An  Italian  anthropologist   said   this   week   that
biogenetic  scientists,  using refined techniques of artifi-
cial fertilization, are capable of creating a new  breed  of
slave,  an  anthropoid  with a chimpanzee mother and a human
father.

     Brunetto Chiarelli, dean of  anthropology  at  Florence
University, said the experiments on the new subhuman species
had been interrupted at the embryo stage because of "ethical
problems".

     The professor said the  experiments  had  been  kept  a
secret.   He  did  not know the name of the laboratories but
thought that in the United States and  other  countries  the
cross-breeding of a female chimpanzee, fertilized with human
male sperm, had resulted in the formation of  an  anthropoid
embryo.

     "Scientific  information  is  numerous  but   reserved.
Maybe  at  the  end of the year we will have an idea of what
has been achieved," he said.

     Chiarelli suggested that the new species could be  used
"for labor chores that are repetitive and disagreeable... or
as a reservoir for transplant organs."

     The professor also said that  at  Florence  University,
researchers  had  successfully  crossed  two species of ape,
gibbon and siamang.  "These two species are genetically more
diverse than man and ape," Chiarelli added.

     The idea of an army of apeman slaves cleaning  streets,
placing nuts and bolts on assembly line products, or waiting
in cages to have their vital organs cut out came as a  shock
to clergy and scientists.

     Though Italian scientists agreed that  it  was  techni-
cally  possible,  they doubted that any such experiments had
been carried to their natural conclusion: the  birth  of  an
apeman baby.

     Church leaders recalled that the  Vatican  only  a  few
weeks ago had condemned genetic experimentation.

     "The idea is bestial  and  repugnant,"  commented  Rita
Levi Montalcini, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics.

     "Any such initiative must be  blocked  at  once,"  said
Prof.  Arturo Falaschi, director of the Genetic Institute at
Pavia University.

     But other Italian scientists agreed  that  with  modern
techniques,  the  idea  is  feasible.  They also pointed out
that the first apeman experiments were carried out in  Paris
in  the  mid  1930s with what one professor called "the most
crude methods".

     "As far as I know, nothing has been  published  on  the
subject,  although  one cannot exclude that some experiments
have not been made public," said Alberto Piazza, director of
the Institute of Genetics at Turin University.

     "I ask myself, however, what would be the scope of such
experiments?  To create an army of slaves?"

     What worried many  genetic  researchers  was  that  any
adverse  publicity  could  slow  experiments  on the cure of
hereditary illnesses and genetic defects with new  selective
fertilization methods.