“She’s A Pussy Cat”

UK starts study on using human DNA in animals


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Right this second I don’t have anything new prepared to say about chimeras, but I wanted to post this story because it’s kind of a follow-up to a story I posted last year in When We Meet Monsters.


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People who follow conspiracy theories often take it as a kind of truism that any cutting-edge science we read about in the mainstream press has been available in black ops laboratories for ten years or more.

According to the mainstream press, now, scientists are so familiar with intermingling human and animal genes that we should try to set some culturally acceptable boundaries to the practice.

It is reasonable to wonder how long scientists in black ops laboratories have been mixing human and animal genes and it’s reasonable to wonder what those scientists have accomplished unbound by culturally accepted norms.


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In the 1996 John Frankenheimer film of H. G. Well’s 1896 [!] classic story, “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” Fairuza Balk plays the character Aissa. When Edward watches Aissa dance, then talks to her, he is almost hypnotized. Aissa is beautiful, smart, curious yet oddly out-of-touch with the modern world. Later Edward speaks with Moreau’s assistant and tells him Aissa is beautiful. Moreau’s assistant smiles and replies, “She’s a pussy cat.”

Later in the movie, of course, when Moreau’s control of the island breaks down we discover Aissa in fact is a pussy cat, a chimera, partly human, partly jungle cat. Unable to live as a human, unable to revert fully to animal, Aissa dies tragically—in the classic sense of that word—fighting other chimera that have reverted almost completely to their animal nature.


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Scientists are mixing human and animal genes so frequently that they want to establish culturally acceptable boundaries for the practice.

When we meet people who seem attractive, smart, curious yet oddly out-of-touch with the modern world, should we wonder if there is more going on than meets the eye?


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The simple phrase “She’s a pussy cat” makes me shiver.