The copycat chronicles

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

 

 

The copycat chronicles

Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:02:33 -0500

 

Daily Dose

 

Tuesday December 21, 2004

 

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Purr-fectly engineered

 

And now, a pair for the " creepy but coming " file...

 

A little over six months ago (Daily Dose, 5/18/04), I wrote

about how cloning has gone mainstream — starting with

pets, specifically cats. To recap that earlier piece, there's a

firm in California (figures, doesn't it?) called Genetic

Savings and Clone that'll provide wealthy pet owners with

genetic duplicates of their deceased felines for around

$50,000.

 

But for a fraction of that figure, you may soon be able to get

a guaranteed-healthy, genetically engineered cat that's

almost completely hypoallergenic, to boot!

 

A Los Angeles company called Allerca (what is it with

California and the bio-tech cats?) has announced the

development of a new breed of cat based on a British short-

haired variety that'll be almost entirely free of the allergy-

causing proteins that trigger sneezing and wheezing in

millions of people across the country. Hoping to offer the

first of these in the marketplace by 2007, the firm estimates

domestic sales of 200,000 of these purr-fectly bred felines

per year.

 

And at $3500 apiece, they'll rake in a tidy gross of $7 million

a year from domestic sales alone if they hit this mark. Not a

bad chunk of change, huh? If this sounds like an overly

optimistic figure, consider this: Roughly 10% of the

country's populace (or around 27 million Americans) are to

one degree or another allergic to cats. In some extreme cases,

cat allergies can trigger asthmatic attacks, respiratory failure

— even death. The treatment of cat allergies is currently a

multi-billion dollar industry.

 

But my question is this: Why stop with allergy control? Why

not breed cats that don't shed — or that can't breed — or that

always stay kittens? Better yet, why stop with genetically

engineered cats? Why not design dogs that can't bark over 75

decibels or that won't chase cars or that instinctually use the

toilet instead of the lawn? Think these things aren't coming?

Think again...

 

We've already got genetically designed glow-in-the-dark pet

fish and the aforementioned cloned cats. And scientists have

long been tinkering with wild creatures to try to make them

more hardy or less able to harm us — like mosquitoes that

can't carry diseases (Daily Dose, 1/23/04).

 

Beyond this, it may not be much longer before our pets are

more than genetically engineered — they're just plain

engineered. Keep reading...

 

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Robo-cat to the rescue

 

Robotic pets have long been a staple of science-fiction

movies and novels — but it seems the fabricated feline is no

longer a figment of fiction.

 

According to a recent ABC News report, several robotic cats

have been in use since 2001 to help health professionals to

treat Alzheimer's patients and others with sensory diseases or

degenerative mental conditions. Apparently, interaction with

this Robo-cat have proven quite beneficial to certain types of

patients — especially those who can't care for a real pet.

 

Manufactured in Japan, the high-tech tabby can stretch, purr,

meow, twitch its tail, detect movement, respond to stroking

or petting, and even recognize its name. The article didn't

specify whether the fake feline could perform typical cat

antics like killing mice, coughing up synthetic hairballs, or

sleeping 16 hours a day.

 

Use of the copy-cat as a therapeutic tool has been pioneered

by a husband-and-wife team of Georgetown University

scientists as part of a broader field they've pioneered called

robotic psychology (nope, I'm not even making this up).

Kind of creepy-sounding, if you ask me...

 

But hey, I'm still stuck in the dark ages when pets were bred

naturally.

 

 

This cool cat never copies the crowd,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

 

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