‘On the human-animal boundary’

This paper considers contemporary Western attitudes towards animals. Whilst many studies of human–animal relations look backwards to the inheritance of Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes and others, this paper looks to the future. I want to suggest another batch of possibilities that may serve as resources for thinking about the apparent human–animal boundary. These possibilities include Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) / variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (νCJD), xenotransplantation and transgenic animals.