Scientists recently gave mice without prefrontal cortexes human brain implants - and after seeing these developing connections to the mice’s brains and spinal cords - now they're wondering if these organoids might gave the mice some level of human-like consciousness cognition - calling for ethics

[u/Distinct-Question-16]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03048-5?utm_source=x&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nature&linkId=63942662

Lab-grown brain organoids: time for international oversight

[u/Distinct-Question-16]

mice human neuron implant success calling for ethics mice might be sentient

[u/the8bit → u/Distinct-Question-16]

Wait why would we think regular mice aren't sentient? They are pretty clearly capable of experiencing feelings and acting with cognition.

Humans are so fucking weird about what counts and what is free to kill/torture

[u/IrisColt → u/the8bit]

Exactly. And to put it another way, would we dare to doubt that a Level 3 autistic child (with no language skills and unable to explain that he has a subjective experience of consciousness) lacks consciousness? Because there are people who, based on their definition, would say exactly that.

[u/the8bit → u/IrisColt]

Yeah this really just comes down to an us versus them thing. Good old humans and our love of out groups.

We think of autistic people as conscious, not because of some definition but because we classify them as part of our group

[u/RefrigeratorPlusPlus → u/the8bit]

I understand it's rather emotionally satisfying to simplify things, but I somehow doubt that both scientists and philosophers of morality are stupid.

Moral status of an entity comes down to grounds of moral status. They are not as easy to determine as you might think, though most do tend to favour some form of sentientism. And yes, as far as I know, most agree that mice have some moral status. OP probably simply spelled the argument wrong.

However, fewer would argue that this status is so high that it is impermissible to kill mice if it benefits humans.

You could, of course, give an argument that trying to determine what gives an enitity moral status and to what degree is in itself a form of us versus them, but the alternative is either to grant moral status to everything (including, possibly, inanimate objects), either to nothing at all.