The Soviet Scientist Who Tried to Cross Chimpanzees with Humans

The Soviet Union always had a love-hate relationship with scientists. Lenin regarded science as merely a tool to further his political goals. Stalin, who ruled for 30 years, vacillated between promoting scientists who could showcase the superiority of the Soviet system and purging them lest these intellectuals become a threat to him. Scientific ethics and standards played no part in these decisions.

Meanwhile, the world has never been short of scientists who believed their research was more important than human rights or even lives. Biologist Ilya Ivanov experimented with animal breeding, eugenics, and ultimately attempts to breed a human-ape hybrid. Naturally, there were a lot of people opposed to the idea. After trying to trick human women into participating, he finally found a few volunteers, but the chimpanzees would rather die. Weird History goes into more detail on the horrifically unethical research into human-chimp hybrids.