Bio-Art: Edunias.

Ah, Eduardo Kac. Whenever I miss the chance to see a bio-related movie, I know I can always count on you to monkey with nature in ways that make us question the definitions of things like "art"and "hubris." For those of you new to this column, Kac's specialty is bio-engineered art. The thoughts behind this art are usually pretty cool.

One of Kac's more recent pieces is the Edunia- or, if you prefer, Natural History of the Enigma. Each flower has a sample of Kac's DNA in its veins via a single protein. The idea behind these flowers was to create a man-plant hybrid that did not exist in nature. Way to go Moreau on us.

The Edunia contains Eduardo Kac's flesh and blood...in a way. It actually has a genetic marker in it from Kac's DNA that makes the fluids in the plant's veins turn red. The idea was that the pink petals of the flower and the red of the veins would be analogous to Kac's own flesh and blood. Creepy? Yes. Art? Your mileage may vary.







Wait a second. This sounds familiar. Wasn't there a monster that was part plant, part-human? We're sure Japan has several, but the one that comes to mind is Biollante - a rose created out of plant DNA, Godzilla gene scraps, and the life essence of a botanist's dead daughter. If Kac's stuff gets anywhere beyond a basic gene marker, we're screwed.

The fun does not stop at crazy hybrid flowers, no siree! Kac also made six seed packs, each designed to look pretty and house mutant plant seeds of doom. There were six packets made for the Weis,man Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN)  in 2009. They are not available to the public insofar as I know, but the mere thought of the Edunia breeding is enough to scare me after Biollante. Do not want man-plants.

Bio-Art: The Young Family.

Blurring the boundaries between humans and other animals is one of my favorite things in the world. If, however, such a practice became common, it would not be the cute and fuzzy utopia that the furries would probably like. Mixing human and animal nonetheless remains a very popular theme in art and culture, as it has for thousands of years. Only recently, however, has that combination been so close we could almost look in its eyes.




The Young Family, a sculpture by Patricia Piccinini, pushes the Uncanny Valley so hard that it has been featured on those "real or fake" pop-up ads alongside the bully whippet. It features a transgenic creature - or, rather, a family of transgenic creatures. (The artist herself mentions pigs; I for one see more dog in them.) Piccinini claims to have an ambivalent stance regarding technology. The Young Family was made to spark discussion. No time to start that like the present.

First of all, allow me to praise the artist for her choice on adding canine traits (mostly the ears) to her hybrids. Dogs are the creatures that illicit the most sympathy from humans. We already dress dogs up in people clothes and buy them birthday cakes. Had she chosen a pig, frog, or rodent (which are more common model organisms than dogs), the sculpture probably would not have had the same effect. Props.

Regardless of the animal used, the sculpture touches upon a very real issue: Science will create hybrids like the dog-family above. This is not an "if." Science will create fertile human-animal hybrids because it can. We've already engineered bacteria to make insulin and mice to have human immune systems.It is only a matter of time before we make all-out parahumans.

If human-animal hybrids became a reality, organ transplants would become a lot easier. There could be many a medical advance made by harvesting bodily fluids, organs, and so forth from not-quite-human chimeras and hybrids. There is no way science will not do this. People who have relatives with diseases that can only be cured by human tissue replacement will do whatever they can to get that person cured.

Parahumans like The Young Family open a whole new can of worms. Modern culture has placed a special label on humanity. Once the human species starts getting blurred, what will legislation do to the hybrids in labs? A lot of people would say that it depends on if the resulting hybrids are self-aware or not, but no matter where you stand, this will evolve into a slippery slope. If we can give human-dog hybrids human rights, soon, people will insist that mice with human immune systems are human enough for rights.

Oh, by the way,  the U.S. in particular has a bad rap for not giving humans basic rights. Gay marriage comes to mind. This blog alone should be proof that I am not sub-human. Whether I should be on par with a dog-human hybrid or not is up to you.

As the artist herself put it, "These are not simple issues with easy answers: It is one thing to talk about an idea and another to be confronted by the emotional reality of a creature, and yet another to be in need of what that creature might provide." Seriously, discuss below.

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'.