Author Emily Anthes tackles the subject of aggressive expansion of the current bioengineering landscape in her new novel "Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts"
"Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts" author Emily Anthes is of the opinion that bioengineering has come a long way since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996. Since then, scientists have tried creating goats that produce valuable protein-rich milk, pigs that can grow organs for human transplant and cockroaches that could potentially serve as tiny scouts into danger zones for the military.
The author also reveals that a lab in China is currently disabling the genes of rats one at a time to identify the function of each gene. Through this, they intend on tackling the human genome by way of the mouse genome.
"By doing this over and over and over again, they've created hundreds of different kinds of mutant mice," Anthes tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "There are mice that are prone to tumors; there are mice that get male pattern baldness; there are mice that have various behavioral abnormalities. One of them buries marbles endlessly. It sort of seems to be an OCD-like condition. There's a strange kind of mouse that only seems to be able to make left turns."
Such bioengineering projects are usually complicated in nature and are still in their experimental stages. While some research conducted in this field hopes to find cures to fatal diseases like cancer and give sight to blind people, others tend to analyze human interference with nature.
"It puts animal welfare and human welfare in conflict," says Anthes. "Most thinking, feeling humans, I think, would say that they don't want animals to suffer, but a lot of us - the majority of Americans - surveys show, also accept some sort of animal research and experimentation. ... Most people, for instance, would say that they're willing to see some mice engineered to get cancer if it cures human cancer, but they're less willing to see mice suffer if we're just looking for a cure for baldness. It's really something we have to tackle on a case-by-case basis based on what the potential benefits for humans are versus the cost to the animals themselves."