Bio-Art: Glowing Monkeys.

I've been looking into a book called Frankenstein's Cat. It details the advances made in mixing organic lifeforms with technology, covering everything from GloFish to Roachbots. In other words, it gels very nicely with this little column. It is so named because, hey, we've made a cat that glows green in the name of curing lethal diseases.

It's weird -maybe even cute - when cats and danios get turned green, but what if science did a GFP splice that really hit home?

Source: PopSci.

Well, Japan did. In May 2009, Erika Sasaki of the Central Institute for Experimental Aninals in Japan injected marmoset embryos with GFP. That's right: we've made a monkey glow green.Or, rather, we've made twin monkeys glow green, and it's 100% heritable. As with most of these experiments involving GFP, the scientists hope to track the genetics of Parkinson's, Huntington's, and many other hereditary diseases.

Marmosets, for the record, are probably the ideal lab monkey. (Rhesus monkeys are the other big monkey you need to know.) They reproduce at a young age, and are juuust distant enough from humans to avoid any really sticky ethical issues. Experiments have been done to make monkeys glow in the past, but this is the first time that the trait has been heritable. The last monkeys did not pass it on to their offspring, or else suffered genetic lottery fail.

Kei and Kou are the first F2 glowing marmosets. They were made by effectively cloning a male glowing marmoset's sperm into the egg of a normal female marmoset. Although not as well-expressed as one might think, the little monkeys do indeed glow in the dark beneath their fur. If nothing else, their underpaws glow green, showing the transgenics at work. Since then, they have gone on to sire many a glowing monkey, creating the first glowing primate founding stock.

Here's the kicker: even monkeys aren't close enough to humans to track some diseases. Soon, we will need to splice human embryos if we want to cure diseases that can only affect people in a certain way. Ethical concerns aside, it should be easy to find some crazy mom who would want a bright green baby, so long as "will not look like The Grinch" was part of the contract. This isn't art yet, but look for gene spliced kids in the future. It'll happen.

Bio-Art: The Island of Doctor Moreau (novel).

Last week, I covered the 1977 film adaptation of H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau. Having not read the book yet, I could not comment on the differences. If you want to see an island with beast people descend into chaos, this is the movie to watch.

Now I have read the book. I want my own copy of it for Christmas. It makes the movie look like crap by comparison, and I am not saying that simply because I have a vivid imagination. It is just that powerful. Anyone wanna donate? No? Oh well, onto the review.

First off, I was totally right to pick the 1977 version of Dr. Moreau when it came to film adaptations. If the afterword at the end of my edition of the novel was any indication, it is the only remotely watchable adaptation out there. Even then, there were some important differences from the book. In the book, the protagonist does not become a manimal, there was no sexy panther-woman, and the implications for society are clear as day. The added romance and the protagonist's regression were clearly there to make it more audience-friendly. So, too, was the blanket statement about human beings descending into bestiality (not in THAT way, but still). In short, a lot of what Wells was trying to get at was either distorted or lost entirely.

The basic story is still the same: Shipwrecked man finds himself on an island with beast-people, a mad scientist named Moreau, and his ambiguously gay associate Montgomery. The protagonist learns that Moreau has been creating human-animal hybrids and tries to talk Moreau into seeing some semblance of ethics. The manimal kingdom descends into anarchy once Moreau dies, and the protagonist leaves the island on a makeshift raft.

Moreau is the first mad scientist to operate entirely without remorse. He sees nothing wrong with what he is doing. He makes the rules for the monsters. In his own mind, he is GOD. The protagonist tries to reinforce his rules by the end of the story by, in the novel, saying that Moreau is not just an ex-person - he's still watching the manimals from above. (This was changed slightly in the 1977 movie.) Deep stuff like that rarely comes around nowadays.

The freaks on Moreau's island are not meant to be attractive, period. The book describes them as having several digits missing, distinct slouches,  being stupider than regular humans, and overall not being very good dates at all. Although Prendick, the protagonist in the novel, does affectionately mention that the female manimals are more modest than their male counterparts, it's not like he makes out with one or anything. These freaks are more akin to Frankenstein's monster than anything remotely beautiful. As the novel goes on, they become more and more feral thanks to their "stubborn beast flesh."

The movies all seem to miss the more personal perceptions of the strange island. At one point in the novel, Prendick and Montgomery comment about how normal or strange the manimals seem to them. To Montgomery, who has been on the island for years, humans are the weird ones. It really throws one's perception of 'normal' into perspective.

When the protagonist journeys back to London, he cannot help but see the humans there as manimals. He notes the similarity of most people going about their daily lives to herbivorous beasts (specifically cattle; compare 'sheeple.') During his brief time as king, he taught a monkey hybrid to repeat whatever he said with small distortions; this he compares to a priest spouting "Big Thinks," just like the monkey-man. The ending reads almost like something out of Nietzsche: much in us is still worm.


The Island of Dr, Moreau is to furries what Lolita is to pedophiles: HORRIBLY misinterpreted by the very fetishists it was trying to prevent to the point that it has its own cult within the subculture. (Note: I am NOT saying that all furries are pedophiles. I am just showing how far a fanbase can skew the author's intent.) I love blurring the lines between humans and animals as much as the next person, but after reading Dr. Moreau, any furry should thoroughly reconsider his/her position on the story. There's nothing good about letting one's inner beast loose according to H.G. Wells...no matter how inevitable the descent may be. 

I want to teach a class with this book. It is one seriously powerful piece of bioethics and horror. "Science gone horribly wrong" should be its own genre. Can we call it "biohorror," maybe?  I'll make a poll about it.

Bio-Art: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1977)

You knew this day would come. After doing bio-art sections for a few weeks and referencing furries in several entries, reviewing this series was inevitable. All adaptations are based off of an 1896 sci-fi novel by H.G. Wells, the same author who did The Time Machine. Apparently his work has never really been taken seriously, so no matter how profound The Island of Doctor Moreau was, almost everything got lost in the freaky science aspect.

The Island of Doctor Moreau is a legend among the furry fandom. It centers around a castaway (whose name varies from adaptation to adaptation) who winds up on the island of a mad scientist named Dr. Moreau. The good doctor was kicked out of England for his insane vivisection experiments, which have borne fruit on the island. The doctor has created human-animal hybrids thanks to his vivisection research. After severely drugging and repressing their animal instincts, he believes that he can create something closer to the divine than man. This does not work; the manimals break the laws that Moreau gave them, and the island quickly degenerates into chaos. One can see why fans of anthropomorphic animals would have some interest in this story.

So how do you like being a walrus, Homer?

 

There is, however, one big, black sploch on the furries' interpretation of this work: The original hybrids on Moreau's island were going from animal to human and back again, not human to animal like so many tweak. The change was the result of science gone horribly wrong. The book and films get into a lot of the deep, dark issues of scientific progress and general ethics. It's even philosophical at points. The part in the book where the protagonist is worried about humans becoming animals again is cut out in the film versions. The emphasis on furry sex in the 1933 film Island of Lost Souls, however, speaks for itself. We've already degenerated that far, people!

However, as I have not yet read the book version of this behemoth, I was forced to look into the film adaptations instead. After clicking around a bit, it looked like the 1977 version had the fewest deviations from the book.  It was that, a film about hawt panther chick sex, or the 1996 version, which was so bad it got riffed. I hope you all see why I chose the version I did.



The film starts with one Andrew Braddock being shipwrecked. He lands on Moreau's island, which the doctor calls "paradise." Accompanying this doctor is a headhunter named Montgomery and strange-looking servant named M'Ling. Oh, and there's also a hot lady named Maria, who is probably part cat if her pet serval is any indication.

The stranded Braddock realizes very quickly that strange things are going on on the island. Soon enough, Braddock finds the doctor's lab.  While there, he learns of the doctor's vivisection experiments. Not only has Moreau been effectively gene splicing things (in this case a bear) and giving them organs from human beings, but whenever they try to reconnect with their animal selves, the doctor reminds them that they're supposed to be human with a whip. It's a hard scene to watch for anyone who has had any pet ever.

Interestingly enough, the doctor uses the exact same logic that goes into creating scientific chimeras and hybrids today: Think of the benefits for medicine! That's just about the most generic reason in the book for why science does anything. Growing human ears on mice? Glowing bunnies? Just admit it: Humans love playing with nature. It's in our nature to tweak things, even if we shouldn't. The medicine excuse is getting old.

I've seen worse.

Soon, we meet what the furries came to see: Manimals, or, rather, humans with half-decent makeup. Sayer, an ape-man, keeps repeating Moreau's credo as the manimals show more and more bestial traits, killing and walking on all fours. Until he dies at the end of some REALLY intense chaos, his words are along these lines:

"This is human. This is man. This is LAW."

The law includes "no shedding blood," "man shall not kill man," and "no eating flesh." All of these are utopian ideals that man has been striving for for decades. (In regards to "no eating flesh," however, humans need meat, too. Way to go, doctor.) The manimals fail horribly in keeping the laws up. Eventually, they AND Braddock rebel against the doctor. Braddock's punishment is, of course, being turned into an animal.

When Dr. Moreau does try to turn a human into an animal, by the way, his partner Montgomery strongly objects. He objects so vehemently that Moreau shoots him. Also, the transformation is excruciatingly painful for Braddock; I find transformation fascinating, but seeing how much he regressed without showing many major changes was depressing. If this film is the closest to the book, please to be reconsidering your stance on science doing this, furries. I know a good portion of you want to be wolves, but trust me, it's not nearly as fun as you think.

Braddock does manage to escape the island. It's hinted that he and Maria are both returning to their true natures on the way back to civilization. Again, there's no mention of the worry that mankind in London will turn back into animals...


...but I'll save that for next week. ;)

Patented Humans?

To make up for my general sloth this week, I found a rather interesting article concerning the patenting of life. Long story very short, somebody wanted to patent (i.e. claim exclusive rights to) a human-animal hybrid. If this patent had slid, he would have been able to produce said hybrids for his own profit, and would be the only one legally allowed to do so for the next 20 years. Ouch to everyone else.

In the end, the scientist applying for the patent lost the case. The court ruled that the hybrid was "too human to be patentable." However, winning an exclusive patent was not his goal. Instead, his goal was to create a precedent for future human hybrids, which would become inevitable as science progressed.

We already have human chimeras. The government has already allowed a patent on a mouse with a human immune system for medicinal research. "Humanized" animals like this are usually given the OK, but what about non-human things with human brains? How far can we go until something becomes so human that it becomes unpatentable? Hell, human parents might start patenting their kids, just in case they start becoming valuable. They're technically made by people and under the sun.

The article in question brings up some really good points. Science has no ethic; it can and will make human hybrids. If we can patent anything made by man under the sun, including life forms, who's to say that humans will not be patented next? Hell, conspiracy theories are loaded with humans being barcoded. That's actually a very real possibility, what with RFID chips becoming more and more common. Real furries are also slowly becoming more and more plausible. With new advances in science come new meanings of being human.

Just sayin'.