I am getting a bit tired of coming to work in the mornings having to do damage control the first thing I do. And finding that stuff isn’t working. And feeling like I need a … shotgun? Beta blockers? something from Black & Decker? I don’t even know anymore.
But I digress. I actually had something else in mind for my rant today.
Ok, so yesterday I turned on my television and was treated to the unexpected pleasure of genetically enhanced and cloned cows. Yeah, you heard me. Cows. Cloned cows. Cow clones (gets funnier every time).
Ok, so you take a cow. Tinker with its genetic make up until it produced the equivalent of human antigens. These gorgeous little beasts (antigens, not cows) help the immune system produce all kinds of antibodies and that can more effectively battle some kinds of viral diseases. And as we get progressivley more obsessed with living forever and never, never falling ill this is of course the cat’s pyjamas.
You then milk you cow.
Sounds pretty healthy, right?
But, you see, we’re not milking it for milk. We’re milking it for blood.
Now things start getting a bit Transylvanian.
You then take your cow’s blood and run it through a hamster, for some reason (it’s got to do with genetic sequencing – complicated stuff) and then insert into sick human. Sick human all better. Full of goodness. Full of vitamins. Full of cow’s blood and hamster genes.
The cows are worth half a million dollars each. Roughly.
I don’t know about the hamsters. Man, I can’t even begin to speculate how the hamsters got in there in the first place.
I am a determinist when it comes to tech stuff. I believe in the axiom that if we can do it we will and bugger the consequence. Never mind what nature intended and what might go wrong in the not too distant future. It’s all a bit eye of newt and toe of frog, in my opinion. And there’s something just so incredibly wrong with the notion that this is the way forward. If I get rabies, or lupus, or TB I’m sure I will change my mind and happily take whatever pill, or phial, transfusion or transubstantiation modern medecine offers. But the hamsters…
Lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my… Becomes Cow’s blood and hamsters and genes. Oh, my.
The chaos theoretician in Jurassic Park played by Jeff Goldblum has the best line on this topic. He says: “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” On the topic of genetics.
And things might be very different for us in the near future. Maybe the “Moo?” will be a little different. And maybe it will be like the song “Cows with guns”.
The only thing I know is that the whole debate about cloning? You can forget it. It’s here and it’s here to stay. Everyday the level of acceptance is raised a little in the name of progress and that’s just the way things are.
ROL
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