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'.

"They Actually Eat That:" Arsenic.

As a close runner-up to cyanide, arsenic is one of the most popular poisons in mystery novels. It also has the weird case, like lead, of being makeup at one point. What the hell were those Victorian women thinking? 

We are NOT amused.

Even today, however, this little monster of an element has not left our shelves. 88 samples of juices from various brands had worrisome levels of arsenic in them, maxing at 13.9 ppb for apple juice and 24.7 for grape. 10 ppb is the federal limit. Hey, we already eat cyanide. This is just another drop in the poison bucket.

Just this week, Consumer Reports published a detailed report on how much, how, and why arsenic winds up on grocery shelves. (I am, however, not VC, so I refuse to copy-paste articles.) This is not counting the natural (and surprisingly harmless) arsenic found in ground water found in fish. If you're curious about natural arsenic in your area of the country, check out this map. (Illinois finally beat Wisconsin at something!) This still does not explain how inorganic arsenic has wound up in our juice.

Modern agricultural products use inorganic arsenic. Certain chicken feeds have organic arsenic in them, as do many pesticides. It does not sound like it hurts the birds, but the digestive process turns the organic arsenic in that feed into inorganic arsenic, i.e. the deadly kind. Even if the chickens aren't harmed, we probably will be. The additive was stopped in 2011, but no doubt someone, somewhere, has found a way around FDA regulations. No wonder chicken's been very in lately.

The cows also endorse bad spelling.

Another source of inorganic arsenic is an old preservative used for lumber. Wood treated thus was used in decks and playground equipment until 2003. If that does not sound bad enough, consider that the arsenic from that coating seeped into the ground when the wood was recycled as mulch. This inorganic arsenic has been known to cause at least 3 different kinds of cancer and diabetes, so it should definitely not be in our food.

 

Any more gaps? Ask China. Yes, even our juice and fruit is made in China. They use arsenical pesticides and have high arsenic content in their water. Arsenic's everywhere unless you grow your own apples, really. Look up a few images of arsenic poisoning for the possible consequences. THAT one I will not do for you.

Besides demanding overdue regulations for arsenic, Consumer Reports also wanted regulations on the lead amounts in juice. Wow, America IS like ancient Rome in so many ways.

A Wizard Did It: Mind Control.

If you click around enough on the internet, you will eventually find yourself in the mire called "conspiracies." If the people who make these posts are right, then we are all being slowly brainwashed by the New World Order government, starting with CIA brainwashing and ending with a slow meltdown into consumerist zombies. It's all according to what the reptilian aliens who puppet our governments want, you see.

Of all the things above there, you probably guessed by the title that exactly one of them is confirmed. The conspiracy nutjobs are onto something. You read that right, folks: There is confirmed evidence that, at least at one point, the CIA actually perfected the art of honest-to-goodness brainwashing.



Look up how we're being brainwashed and you'll find out about something called Monarch brainwashing. This is not that. In the 1960's, supposedly around the same time Monarch stuff was perfected with LSD, Dr. Jose Delgado conducted experiments using brain implants in different animals. As seen above, he stimulated the hypothalami of mammals such as cats and bulls. He found that such stimulation could turn rage on and off at a moment's notice. It was handy and uncanny, but, due to ethical concerns, the experiments were never performed on humans. At least, that's what they want us to think.

Then the government outdid itself. Controlling rage was not enough. More recently, starting in at least 2005, a new project came to light: ratbots.



Ratbots are exactly what they sound like: Rats controlled entirely by humans via radio and computer signals. They look like they're wearing cute little backpacks. They are really more wired than that; probes have been placed in the rats' brains to stimulate certain areas. There are exactly two psychological buttons that need to be pushed to make the rat an automaton: One that processes signals from the rat's whiskers and another that taps the reward center.

Think about how simple that is. Even though the scientists making the ratbots cited practical uses such as treating neurological disorders, spinal chord injuries, and using the rats to detect mines, the far more insidious purpose definitely crossed the scientists' minds. The article from Rense.com, featuring conglomerate thoughts from various newspapers and societies,  puts it best:

""Could it be used, Big Brother-style, to control human behavior, consumer spending, or even worker productivity?" asked the Humane Society in a recent article.

 

"What if some future implant, billed as a medical miracle, was also secretly encoded to direct thought, getting a person to think like Big Brother, or to work harder for managers at corporate control, or to follow the orders of Mephistopheles?" asked The Boston Globe in a recent editorial. "What if Madison Avenue got a piece of the supposed beneficial chip to direct the consumer to buy the expensive spread or the new cereal?""

 

Of course, these rats are totally being used for non-sinister purposes. They are definitely not one of the reasons I have a cat.  Nope. 

Bio-Art: Lizard Boy.

I missed out on doing mind control for this week's Bio-Art column. Shame; it was supposed to go nicely with 'A Wizard Did It," but it slipped my mind and will be done tomorrow instead. I have found something slightly less scarring at my local video store: A movie called Lizard Boy.



The plot of Lizard Boy is simple: In an attempt to spread his inept sperm, a scientist named Gino engineers a lizard-human hybrid named Carlo. Carlo grows up quickly into a highly intelligent reptoid guard dog with a preference for human blood. It is not long before he goes on a killing spree. Making reptilian-human killing machine was the whole point of the government-funded lizard hybridization project all along, and it fails miserably in the end (when Carlo kills both FBI agents and himself. Spoiler). 

My own personal love of reptiles aside, what grabbed me was a quote on the back of the cover saying that the movie questioned modern science and the future of genetic engineering. Despite all that I will say about this movie from this point on, I have to give it some credit for doing significant research into its subject matter. Everything about the glowing pigs and Komodo dragons being capable of virgin birth is 100% true, guys. It's not meant to scare you. Really.

Despite being advertised as a Jurassic Park-ish flick, this movie will not scare anybody beyond those stunned stupid by how silly it is. JP made us get the point by making us wet our pants. Lizard Boy is so silly it's hard to believe it's making a point at all. Don't let the cover fool you.

First of all, watch this movie while stoned. Or drunk. Or under the influence of something. There are enough pot scenes in this flick that it was clearly written and produced while stoned off of one's ass. Hell, the main character's wife even ditches him because smoking pot ruined his chances of making babies with her. So, yeah, don't watch this sober. It clearly wasn't intended to be seen that way. Being under the influence of friends also counts. Watch this to laugh at it with people.

The lizard gets stoned. Yes, really.

If you happen to be sober, however, you will notice the acting fail (although they're trying!) and, well, general stupidity of most of the characters. Unless they were trying to make a killing machine, they would not have a giant, spliced Komodo dragon (which is RARE in a lab setting, by the way) waiting to be unleashed. The only guy who realizes this decides to make a hyper-intelligent human hybrid that *GASP!* reads the more obscure works of Shakespeare. They make the people in Sotoba look smart, and the doctor there thought that fang marks looked like bug bites. This cannot be taken seriously at all. The bad SFX and makeup do not help its case.

THIS is scarier.

 

If these people are being serious, they have failed miserably. If, however, they were trying to make a perfectly silly movie about how perfectly silly science can be, they've succeeded. Rent/download it for a night when you will have friends over to crack jokes about it with. It deserves to be put on the same pedestal as Birdemic and The Room for being so bad it's good.

A Wizard Did It: Growing Body Parts.

Losing body parts can be one of the most traumatic experiences in a person's life. Even with skin and organ transplants, there's a chance of rejection. Alcohol killing brain cells isn't cool, either. Also...oh, hell, you came here for the freakish science. I may as well cut the lead-in and show you what you came here to see: A mouse with an ear on its back.



This mouse is one of many comprising its appearance to give humans missing bits and pieces. It's hairless and has its immune system compromised such that it will not reject foreign tissue. Although the masters behind the mouse claims that it will live a normal mousey life, given the reduced immunity, we highly doubt that. It will, however, have popularity among evangelists as a harbinger for the end of the world.

The ear and several other body parts can be grown on biodegradable scaffolding. This is harder than it sounds; specific chemical signals are required to make cells grow. There are no stem cells required; instead, all the bits are harvested from cadavers, which may be better or worse. Once they are re-started, however, everything from ears to arteries can be effectively grown in a bioreactor. Or on a hairless mouse. 

The names to know for this form of tissue engineering are Boston's Bob Langer and Joseph Vacanti, now widely hailed as the fathers of growing tissues in the lab. (There is also a Chinese scientist questionably copying them.) Other scientists refined the processes, creating fancy things like bioreactors that simulate the body even better than a petri dish. There are even ways to make body bits grow in 3-D environments thanks to NASA. Oh, and despite harvesting corpses, the Vatican says this process is OK.

 

We just hope that cutting off body parts or some such does not become a sick fashion trend. Amputee fetishes are bad enough; now that parts can potentially be regrown, who knows what people will be trying out as edgy trends next?

Catgirls are always an option. No exceptions.

A Wizard Did It: Super-strength.

OK, we're cheating a little on this one. Wizards don't usually have super strength - if anything, their STR stat is usually very low, meaning that a hit from that nasty-looking staff will only cause eight hit points' worth of damage at best. It's still a superpower, and definitely worth covering this week.

 

Das Uberboy - real name unknown -  was born with muscles that would make Schwarzenegger cry. He is currently an eleven-year-old child living in Germany, hopefully beating up school bullies who would otherwise steal kids' lunch money. He's been lifting 6.6-pound weights since the age of 5; we sure hope he has a sense of justice!

Das Uberboy is among the rare specimens of humanity to exhibit double muscling. The gene for myostatin is just plain gone in this kid. Genetically, there is nothing to stop his muscles from growing. Remember bully whippets and Belgian Blue cattle? Same thing, only in humans. (Hell, given that his mother and grandfather were athletes, this may well have been inherited in the exact same way.)

Just to remind you, whippets usually look like little greyhounds.

Scientists are currently interested in Das Uberboy so that they may cure diseases that affect muscle such as muscular dystrophy. Das Uberboy may also explain why some people are naturally stronger than others. Legal performance enhancers are also a possibility. There are, however, some worries about satellite cells, which may create a muscular 'burnout' and deplete muscle later in life. How many people using this will be REALLY worried about the long term, again?

A loooong time ago, Friedrich Nietzsche talked about Das Ubermensh. This child was probably not what he had in mind, but Das Uberboy is still cool. Alas, there are very few pictures of the boy, so please make due with this article.

A Wizard Did It: Pyrokinesis.

 Many people consider making fire one of the most important discoveries of humankind. After the invention of fire, we could endure cold nights and cook food that might otherwise kill us. Fire has also been important in warfare, causing massive damage and making people flee the area lest they get singed.  It's also flashy; even though we have mastered the art, pyrotechnics remain a staple of stage shows. The first person to handle fire must have been thought of as a wizard.

Second only to our admiration of fire is our desire to control fire.  We don't just mean turning on a stove - we mean the ability to create fire just by thinking about it. Matches and camphor just aren't enough anymore. We want to answer that "need a light?" situation without carrying such items around. The bad part is, for that, you'd need magic.



Qigong master Zhou Ting-Jue may as well be the next prophet. He was born in 1934 and has been practicing martial arts since he was seven. Eventually, he was let in on some of the more spiritual secrets of Chinese culture, including qigong, which is like very intense yoga. After decades of qigong, he can heal the sick, adjust his weight at will, and, apparently, heat things so hot that he may as well be setting them on fire. All of this is done solely by controlling his own energy flow.

Mind, heating things to the boiling point is not quite pyrokinesis. It is still pretty close. That towel was steaming.  He probably could ignite a match or move a candle flame by pure force of will if he really wanted to. He would have more credibility than any YouTubers claiming to be the Human Torch.

Unleash the power of the sun!

Disclaimer: The supernatural powers of qigong are still under debate, even with spectacular individuals such as Zhou around. This does not mean that one should not give it a shot. Pyrokinesis aside, qigong is very good at reducing stress, improving mood, and keeping one in good physical shape. It does not promise giant ki blasts, but hey, results may vary.

Even so, ki mastery is NEVER like this.