For decades, a moral debate over whether experiments that involve the hybridization of humans and other animals has been raging, with speculation building as to what sorts of help–or horrors–might result from such research. Now, Senators Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) have introduced in Congress the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009. The proposed measure has already received 20 co-sponsors, with Landrieu as the only Democrat at present, but will there be enough support to enact laws to soon enforce preventative measures against the creation of cross-species hybrids like alleged “humanzees”?

OneNewsNow discussed the dangers of human-animal hybridization with Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council, who warns that he expects there will be many who will fight against the bill. ”There are already scientists who are planning and starting experiments to combine human and animal hybrid embryos for experiment,” he says. The proposed bill will not affect use of animals or humans in legitimate research, “but would ban creation in the laboratory of part-human, part-animal creatures that would blur the line between the species.”

Hollywood films ranging from Planet of the Apes to Star Wars have somewhat helped condition humans to the idea of what co-existence with human-animal hybrids might be like. Historically, in addition to studies performed by the Soviets in the early part of the twentieth century, as I noted in my post from last year titled Humanzees and Hybrids: Science or Monkey Business, “similar reports have been uncovered having to do with facilities in Italy during wartime, as well as in China in the 1960s. One compelling case allegedly took place in the United States in the 1920s, as reported by University at Albany psychologist Gordon Gallup who told of a human-chimp hybrid that “was successfully engendered and born at the old Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Orange Park, Florida in the 1920s”, and “destroyed” afterward by participating scientists. Another interesting report featured in issue 44 of National Vanguard magazine in 1976 described a “man of sorts” who some claimed was also a ape-human hybrid. “Bassou”, as he was called, ”lives in the Valley of Dades, near the town of Skoura, in Morocco. He sleeps in the trees there and subsists on dates, berries, and insects. He wears no clothes, uses no tools, and speaks only in grunts.”

Perhaps hybrids have already existed… if this is the case, it also begs the question: would enacting legal measures really conclusively prevent such things from occurring again?