[Question]{.underline}: Does a human-animal hybrid embryo have a soul?
[Answer:]{.underline} This question has become topical because of the May 2008 decision of the British parliament to permit the creation of such hybrid embryos, for experimentation purposes, for a period of 15 days.
Who am I to resolve this question? What precedents do we have to resolve it?
Some 20 or more years ago, the same question was asked about test tube babies, and some persons imprudently postulated that they did not have souls. Now, we know that this is not the case and that they do indeed have souls. The soul is the principle of life, and consequently of activity. If the individual has human activities, human life, namely reason and will, then it most certainly has a human soul. When man artificially conceives the embryo, God infuses the soul.
Then came the question of clones, who have entirely human genetic material, but only one parent. Can such beings have a human soul? Since the time of Dolly, the sheep, we know that they can have an animal soul, that is, the principle of life of a purely material being. We have not yet, to the best of my knowledge, seen such a human clone grow to adulthood, which God forbid that we should ever see. However, if we ever were to do so we would see that if such a clone ever survived the enormous difficulties and great risk of genetically induced deformations, cancers, and abnormalities, he would have human activities, human life, and a human soul, in the same way as a test tube baby. God infuses the soul when the matter is duly prepared, no matter in how perverse a manner it is done.
Now comes the horrific possibility of an artificially engineered hybrid embryo. Clearly such an individual, if it were to ever live beyond the embryo stage, and even at its generation, cannot be half man and half animal, as the British bishops attempt to maintain. This is a metaphysical impossibility. It either has a human and spiritual or immortal soul and is a man, or it has the soul of a purely material being, that ceases with death, and is not capable of reason and free will, and it is an animal. The only way for us to determine with certainty which of the two it really is, would be to analyze its life and activities. The existence of reason and free will is the only certain experimental proof of the existence of a soul. However, this clearly cannot be done on an embryo.
One could postulate that if it were essentially created from human genetic material, with some inclusion of animal genes, that if it managed to survive, it would have the organization, life, and activity of a man, and consequently a human soul. Likewise, if it were essentially created from animal genetic material, with the inclusion of some human genes, then it would not be a man, having only the determination and organization of animal life. However, there could very easily be intermediary situations, in which not even such a postulate would be possible.
However, the question is irrelevant to the practical action of the Catholic. It is manifestly a perversion of nature, a genetic manipulation of the worst kind, a deliberate program to impose pure materialism, a direct denial of the truth of the natural law of the existence of the immortal soul that is involved here. No Catholic could cooperate in any way, and most certainly not by finding a woman as a host for the implantation and raising of such an embryo, as the Catholic bishops in the UK suggested. This would be a direct cooperation in evil. It would be much better to allow the fruit of such perversion to die a “natural” death rather than to cooperate in any way in its continued existence.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.