Look mommy! I tied my shoe all by myself!

Thursday, December 13th 2007 – South Korean ‘scientists’ have successfully cloned cats that glow in the dark. Through the manip- ulation of a particular gene, the cats are born or ‘xeroxed’ into existence with a protein that becomes a dull red in the dark. This extra- ordinary accomplishment (up there with penicillin and electricity) is allegedly the first step in furthering the genetic sciences. The ‘scientists’ affirm that: ‘The ability to manipulate the fluorescent protein and use this to clone cats opens new horizons for artificially creating animals with human illnesses linked to genetic causes’. This is true in the same way that buying a pound of cement is the first step towards building the Empire State Building.

I apologize to the South Korean ‘scientists’ for mocking their discovery, they must understand that I am especially mocking the effort poured into this endeavour and the great amount of pride they take in its accomplishment. An undisclosed amount of financial investment and time were spent in the goal of creating glowing cats. They call it a pioneering marvel for science, I call them GLOWING CATS! Nevertheless, you will excuse me if I was not surprised because I had read about the ig Nobel prizes a few months ago.

The ig Nobel prizes are given to the scientific breakthroughs or studies, in various fields, that offer the least amount of scientific promise. They ARE actual science yet will make you almost speechless through their uselessness. I use the word ‘almost’ because you will still be left saying …why? why? ....w…why? For example, in 2007, for aviation – the scientist who won, discovered that a hamster can recover from jet lag more rapidly when given Viagra. For Physics, the winners conducted a theoretical study of how sheets become wrinkled. For literature, a woman performed an extensive study of the word ‘the’. Finally for linguistics, my favorite, three scientists discovered that rats sometimes can’t tell the difference between Japanese spoken backwards and Dutch spoken backwards. Once again, these ‘breakthroughs’ make us laugh yet we must not lose sight of the fact that massive amounts of money and time were used up by a, let’s be honest, utterly fruitless pursuit. Some less humorous examples can also be historically cited.

When we talk of useless scientific experiments and add the epithet ‘cruel’, the Nazi regime of Germany (1932-1945) comes to mind. Apart from Doctors C. Clausberg and J. Mengele, a slew of shady physicians experimented on human subjects using a simple methodology of ‘trial and error’. For example, 1000 subjects at Dachau camp were given nothing but sea water to drink to see the effects and to randomly try counteracting the effects with various substances. They developed the cheapest way to sterilize a woman, namely to inject their uterus with acid. Their other random attempts at sterilization included massive amounts of x-rays, surgery, silver nitrate, iodine… Also, many subjects were deliberately injected with different poisons or shot with poisoned-tip bullets. This was not to see how much time the poison would take to act since the subjects were killed shortly after the administration, if they survived the injection. The autopsies divulged…..absolutely nothing relevant.

I am not comparing glowing cats with Auschwitz THIS time. I am simply demonstrating 1 of the 2 reasons I have observed for which people would run useless experiments. The first is ‘just for kicks’. The Nazi officers (Sturmabteilung, Scutzstaffel) were sadistic and psychopathic (75-90% of them according to various studies) and thus the experiments were easily justified in their thirst for blood, even if they are hiding behind a scientific justification. The second reason, which probably applies more to the glowing cats, is pure curiosity combined with ignorance. Humans have a compulsion to know things that they don’t, to the point of researching trivial things. The ignorance factor is a lot less pronounced today since we have researched, at least partially, most things that have any importance on our daily lives. It wasn’t always so.

Further back in history, the first medical breakthroughs were also largely conducted with a ‘trial and error’ approach. Trepanation (drilling of the skull to remove a fragment) was widely used from Antiquity to the Modern period to relieve pressure of excess blood. They tried bleeding the patients everywhere and the head worked the best; probably because the hole relieved pressure on the brain that had swelled with various infections. Furthermore, Leonardo da Vinci (1442-1519) was among the firsts to pop open the human body and give a tentative function to all the weird sacs he found; the muscles were red because they were stained with blood. The blood, of course, comes from food… Finally, my favorite treaty of human remedies comes from the Greek, Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) in his Natural History (77 AD). This gem gave us the obvious treatment for headaches in women, fumigation of the uterus. Also for hemorrhoids, he suggests a nice enema of herbs and mud. I am guessing most of Pliny’s experiments involved doing something random and if the person got better, what he did works.

Whether for reasons of cruelty or curiosity, the magnanimous level of knowledge that we have achieved in 2007 has marginalized the potential of original experimentation. We are thus treated to glowing cats and are told that it is a ‘breakthrough’.

(Pictured: Leonardo da Vinci's anatomy of a man - Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele - Glowing cats, ie: the same result as when you put a flashlight under their belly)

End.