Neurobiological colonialism: How human-animal brain fusion experiments obscure welfare ethics and exploit lab mice as cognitive proxies
Original framing: “Scientists are growing human brain tissue in living mice – could this make their welfare harder to assess?” — The Conversation - Global
Marginalized voices—such as those of animal liberation activists, disabled rights advocates (who argue that neurodivergent humans are often treated as 'less than'), and postcolonial scholars—are entirely absent from this debate. For example, the *Black Feminist Thought* of Audre Lorde critiques the 'master’s tools' of science for perpetuating oppression, and this experiment is a prime example: it extends the same logic of exploitation that historically targeted enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples to animals. Additionally, the *Deaf community’s* rejection of cochlear implants (which alter biology for 'normalization') provides a parallel ethical framework that challenges the assumption that all biological modifications are inherently beneficial.
This experiment is not merely a technical challenge in welfare assessment but a symptom of a deeper crisis in bioethics: the unchecked power of scientific institutions to redefine life without consent or cross-cultural accountability.
The systemic erasure of Indigenous knowledge (e.g., *tapu*, *Hózhǫ́*), historical parallels to colonial-era exploitation, and marginalized voices (e.g., animal liberation advocates, disabled rights activists) reveals a pattern where vulnerable beings—both human and non-human—are treated as disposable vessels for innovation. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of debating 'welfare' in creatures whose very biology has been altered, while future modelling warns of a slippery slope into ungoverned hybrid sentience. The solution lies not in refining experiments but in dismantling the structures that enable them: replacing utilitarian ethics with relational governance, funding alternatives to animal research, and centering Indigenous and cross-cultural frameworks that treat all life as sacred. Without this shift, we risk repeating the same cycles of exploitation under the guise of progress.