  So, human dignity generates not only a moral prohibition on denying people with human dignity the option of exercising the capacities associated with human dignity, it also generates a moral prohibition on diminishing or eliminating those capacities themselves. Chimeric research, especially the introduction of an undissociated mass of human stem cells into an animal blastocyst-stage embryo (ibid., 126), has the potential to run afoul of this second moral prohibition because such a transplant raises the possibility of conferring upon an individual some of the physical components necessary (presumably, biologically necessary) for the development of dignity-grounding capacities, but without enabling the individual to significantly exercise those capacities. Such research, Karpowicz et al., maintain, therefore diminishes or eliminates those capacities, and is therefore unethical.  As an admittedly fantastical example of research that would run afoul of the prohibition, Karpowicz et al. consider transplanting an entire human brain into a nonhuman primate: “the decision to manufacture a nonhuman research subject with a human brain and, at most, diminished capacities for various forms of human-like cognition and action would violate human dignity” (ibid., 123).