The Pale Horse

My friend The Beerman Dave e-mailed this scary bit of news to me this morning, and I thought it would be a good time to rehash my Island of Doctor Moreau and last year`s companion pieceMoreau Revisited. This story out of the U.K. about a University of Nevada project to produce sheep with human genes should be cause for great concern, not out of fear that we will somehow produce a sheep with a human mind (the neural complexity needed just won`t be there) but because the very utility sought by blending human genes with animals could give us catastrophic species jumps by disease organisms as a result.

I have spoken of Kuru, the dreaded ``laughing sickness`` of New Guinea in a past post. Kuru is a fatal illness caused by something called a Prion, which is a protein-based agent that is neither a virus nor a bacterium. It turns out that Kuru is one of the few Prions which can infect human beings (it infects people through mortuary cannibalism) and it is a terrible death from neurological breakdown including trembling and shaking, trouble swallowing, walking, breathing, madness and eventual death.

But there are other prions which do not affect us-mad cow disease, for example, or ``scrapies`` which infects (you guessed it) sheep. Notice the quote from the USDA article;

``In the laboratory, the scrapie agent has been transmitted to hamsters, mice, rats, voles, gerbils, mink, cattle, and some species of monkeys by inoculation. There is no scientific evidence to indicate that scrapie poses a risk to human health. There is no epidemiologic evidence that scrapie of sheep and goats is transmitted to humans, such as through contact on the farm, at slaughter plants, or butcher shops.``

Now what do you suppose will happen if a scrapies agent infects one of these chimera that the mad scientists in Nevada have spawned? Disease organisms mutate, and they do it regularly to get a leg up on the ``competition``-on their host life forms. Biologists believe that sexual reproduction is Nature`s way of keeping the larger creatures from being overwhelmed by micro-organisms, since the next generation contains a different genetic combination to which the organisms must adapt. Asexual reproduction leaves the same genetic sequence in tact, and the disease factors quickly ``learn`` to pick the immune response lock.

But there are diseases, millions of them, which are benign in one species while lethal in others, or which simply have never ``acquired a taste`` as it were for another species. By mixing human and animal DNA we are introducing micro-organisms which have adapted to certain species to an all-you-can-eat human genetic buffet, offering them the unprecedented opportunity to mutate. Because they are still infecting their favorite prey, they should still flourish. In the process, the unfamiliar human DNA acts as no barrier, and the diseases have the means to adapt to human conditions.

How long before a mutated form of scrapies finds a home inside a human being? Chances are very low as long as we only have one or two animals being so adjusted, but the benefits from this experimentation are too great; harmones, transplantable organs, bone marrow, stem-cells could all, theoretically, be grown in animals and transplanted into humans. Think of it! No organ shortages, no embryonic stem-cell debates, whatever medical needs we have being filled by these mutant animals!

But the price could be higher; possibly much higher.

Everyone is worried about the Bird Flu mutating, breaking out in the human population. That is just one illness, one which is finding it difficult to cross species. Now, imagine every illness a sheep is subject to being capable of crossing species easily, thanks to this genetic experimentation. It gives me the willies!