Glowing Fish to Be First Genetically Changed Pet
Fri 21 November, 2003 21:49
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A little tropical fish that glows fluorescent red
will be the first genetically engineered pet, a Texas-based company said
on Friday.
The zebra fish were originally developed to detect environmental toxins,
but Alan Blake and colleagues at Yorktown Technologies, L.P. licensed them
to sell as pets.
"These fish were bred to help fight environmental pollution," Blake said
in a telephone interview. "They were bred to fluoresce in the presence of
toxins."
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And how long do you think it will be before we have fish (and other
animals) with commercial messages or logos emblazoned on their sides?
Other applications come to mind, some applied to people. If fish can be
made to fluoresce in the presence of toxins, then perhaps other organisms,
including people, can be made to have specific physiological responses to
specific chemical inputs, including the presence of varios drugs or
hormones. Imagine a world where you take a truth cocktail, and some
physiological effect ensues that is linked to hormones released with
deceptive responses.
How about innoculating the young before they enter school, so that
fundamental behavioral drives are writ large to assist class management?
Those TV commercials with people having "Poor anger management", or
"Confused", or "Clueless" stamped on their foreheads may be closer to
reality than we think. Didn't the arch-villian in "Snowcrash" have "Poor
Impulse Control" tattooed on his forehead?
Alfred Bester's "Demolished Man", covers some of this ground, where a
society keeps order by constant telepathic surveillance of the citizenry,
and no thoughts are truly private. We may not have telepaths, but between
Mr Ashcroft and Admiral Poindexter, we are likely to have predictive
databases that are the next best (or worst) thing. A chemical/biological
cue to point out the possibly guilty is merely a refinement. The idea of
self-identifying guilt isquite old. Think of the last scene in Hawthorne's
"Scarlet Letter".
Or consider the marriage of biology and electronics, where different
patterns snap on and off in response to some electronic signal. I can see
it now, "My life as a billboard".
One popular feel-good mantra is "being comfortable in your own skin". With
these recent technical advances, achieving that comfort may be a very
elusive goal. In the future, it could be that no-one will be comfortable
in their own skin. Instead of being comfortable, the challenge will be to
keep the package from revealing the contents. Instead of wearing your
heart on your sleeve, you might have a kind of human emoticon glowing on
your forehead.
