Folklore is full of people turned into swans. And devoted and noble dogs turned into people. There are stories in which creatures are, if not changed, at least treated as if they were humans.
It’s all fiction, of course: we are only “creatures” in a very general sense. But then I open the newspaper and there’s a feature about research into “human-animal hybrids”. So a happy morning wondering if the cat could be taught to play scrabble, or whether perhaps any of us could have a careful operation that would leave us content not to do much more than eat and purr and scratch things.
But no, it turns out that what the paper is really talking about is researchers using hybrid creatures to study the effects of human diseases. And, less easy to envisage, some people needing individually tailored organs can have them grown in sheep or pigs. There is more about how this will cure people who need help, and the set of systems being worked out to make such things are safe and useful.
I can think of another possible outcome: the believable short stories that may be written about the girl saved by a sheep; or the pig that saved its master without realising it. How will it all be paid for? There are, apparently, people trying to create human livers in animals. Their success if they do may offer comfort to any number of people who, perhaps without any choice, ruined their own. It might even be possible to get the funds needed for more research from the booze firms.
“I often wonder what the vintners buy / One half so precious as the stuff they sell” said the Persian poet Omar Khayyam … perhaps one day it may be new livers.
What do you think? Have your say below
