by Wesley J. Smith
SAN FRANCISCO, June 29, 2007-- Get ready for the "manimals." In Sunday's Washington Post, Will Saletan describes how some scientists have cut themselves loose from the tether of self restraint and are busily planning the creation of human/animal chimeras with increasingly human attributes. From his column:
So far, our [human/animal] mixtures are modest. To make humanized animals really creepy, you'd have to do several things. You'd increase the ratio of human to animal DNA. You'd transplant human cells that spread throughout the body. You'd do it early in embryonic development, so the human cells would shape the animals' architecture, not just blend in. You'd grow the embryos to maturity. And you'd start messing with the brain.
We're doing all of these things.
This intimidates some people, but not everyone. Reading Saletan's piece brought to mind one of my favorite essays on the subject, written for the Weekly Standard several years ago by my good friend Joseph Bottum (now the editor of First Things) in reaction to a probably false news story that "the scientists" had created a human/pig embryo through cloning. "The Pig Man Cometh" is a wonderful, if hyperbolic, expression of wholly justified righteous rage by one of our best thinkers and writers. Here's a sampling:
You can't say we weren't warned. This is the island of Dr. Moreau. This is the brave new world. This is Dr. Frankenstein's chamber. This is Dr. Jekyll's room. This is Satan's Pandemonium, the city of self-destruction the rebel angels wrought in their all-consuming pride...We have reached the logical end, at last. We have become the people that, once upon a time, our ancestors used fairy tales to warn their children against-and we will reap exactly the consequences those tales foretold.
Like the coming true of an old story-the discovery of the philosopher's stone, the rubbing of a magic lantern-biotechnology is delivering the most astonishing medical advances anyone has ever imagined. You and I will live for many years in youthful health: Our cancers, our senilities, our coughs, and our infirmities all swept away on the triumphant, cresting wave of science.
But our sons and daughters will mate with the pig-men, if the pig-men will have them. And our swine-snouted grandchildren-the fruit not of our loins, but of our arrogance and our bright test tubes-will use the story of our generation to teach a moral to their frightened litters.
If you want permanent restrictions, your best bet is the senator who tried to impose them two years ago. He's the same presidential candidate now leading the charge against evolution: Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican. He thinks we're separate from other animals, "unique in the created order." Too bad this wasn't true in the past -- and won't be true in the future.
Wesley J. Smith is Special Consultant to the CBCnetwork.
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