Friday, November 12, 2004
Odd applications for genetic engineering
Deer that glow in the dark
and Hypoallergenic cats?
A correspondent reacts:
- Where here in God's name do you find this shit????????????????
- My first thought is that there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture, along the lines of, say, creating Frankenstein and playing God.
On the other hand, too many people just get rid of their cats after they discover that their new baby, or their new boyfriend or girlfriend, or their mother or whoever, has an allergy to the cat. So, if this would decrease or help to prevent cats from being abandoned, then I guess it has some value.
My gut doesn't like it though. I think the whole premise about "improving" a pet is bothersome. It has the potential to become out of control very quickly.
(voiceover)
".........buy now while supplies last....the new and improved hypoallergenic cat..........if you act now we'll throw in the magnetic super-chip, allowing you hours and hours of enjoyable purring by your pussy, whether he wants to or not................................"
(and then)
"Tired of changing that litter box? By-golly, you don't have to anymore... get yourself the super new and even more improved hypoallergenic cat that doesn't eliminate waste product... yes, you heard me, no more messy clean-up, why you don't even have to feed the damn thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
What next? I was rather struck by the tone of allerca's web site, no matter how hard they tried they seemed to be straining at presenting their "product" as a loveable animal. They might have done better by trying to talk about it as a new breed of cat... and taking rhetoric from cat breeder sites.
I can't help but wonder what sort of testing was done to create these animals. And, what happens, when, inevitably, they escape into the wild and cross breed with other cats.... Is it a monsanto scenario? Does the genetic modification persist across generations?
¶ 6:17 PM
