Science, animals and art
Louis-Marie Houdebine is the Directeur de Recherche INRA, head of the Laboratoire de Differentiation Cellulaire, Unite de Biologie du Developpement et Reproduction INRA, researcher at INRA since 1968, expert in two national biosafety commissions and has been participating for six years in a European Bioethics Course. His fields of expertise include gene expression, the design of vectors for transgene expression, preparation of pharmaceutical proteins in the milk of transgenic animals and the generation of transgenic animals (rabbits) for the study of human diseases. Louis-Marie was involved in the highly controversial debate about a transgenic rabbit with the bioartist Eduardo Kac which claims Houdebine has created the green rabbit Alba for him, named by the artist.
Today we see scientists opening their laboratories to artists working on living “objects” for example changing the design of butterfly wings or using pig stem cells. How do you react to this type of Endeavour?
Artists have always used nature as a model to create pieces of art. Artists and more generally humans have imagined living organisms being chimera and painted or sculptured them. Humans have obtained for their pleasure plants (e.g. roses) and animals (e.g. dogs), which are profoundly genetically, modified using conventional genetic selection. Now, it has become possible to generate new animal breeds and new plant varieties known as transgenic or genetically modified organisms, using gene transfer. The techniques changed but not the aim. Gene transfer can however modify organisms more profoundly and more rapidly than genetic selection. This new approach is acceptable per se as living organisms are naturally in a permanent evolution even if this is a process too slow to be generally historically visible.
Do you think it is ethical to use animal or living tissues in artworks?
There are obviously ethical problems potentially raised by bioart. Genetic modifications may in some cases be deleterious for plants, animals or environment. This has been the case since the invention of agriculture and breeding which allowed genetic selection. For example, only a minority of people care about the suffering of dogs from some breeds selected for the only pleasure of their owners. The generation of transgenic animals for bioart point the new problems of animal welfare and it also reveals the neglected problems raised by conventional genetic selection. Cloning pets as cats and dogs raises clearly ethical problems. Indeed, clones are often not healthy and suffering. Moreover, the generation of clones implies the sacrifice and/or the suffering or the oocyte donors and on embryo clone recipient. This appears more or less acceptable if this technique is implemented to improve some breeds of animals used by many people. It is much less acceptable if the animals are generated for one or o few persons.
Should purposefully created ethic committees regulate art and science projects? Wouldn’t these ethic committees pose a form of artistic censure?
The extra suffering of animals induced by their use may be acceptable to some degree for experimental animals as they are used in limited number to get knowledge and not directly money and the effect of the experimental protocols cannot be fully predicted. The animals being the source of organs or recombinant pharmaceutical proteins may suffer in some cases. This suffering is known, reproducible and may imply a large number of animals that are used to improve human health but also to generate profit for some companies. The suffering of animals should then be accepted on a case-by-case basis. The manipulation of farm animals should not increase their suffering, as the survival of none of the human communities is strictly dependent of cloning or transgenesis. The manipulation of living organisms for bioart should in no case result in any extra suffering of animals and in deleterious effects on environment. Ethical committees should regulate this aspect of bioart without being a real censure. The possibilities for bioart are indeed broad and they leave enough space for creating pieces of art not including unacceptable side effects.
Can an artist play a role in the advancement of scientific knowledge?
Bioart might inspire some people to get scientific knowledge but this would likely be marginal.
