Denis: Is it animal magic or not?

Jun 8 2009 by Our Correspondent, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

PIGS are, apparently, genetically and physically close to humans.

And yes, I have met one or two blokes where the resemblance is striking.

Now scientists in China have genetically modified pigs as the first step towards creating a “donor strain” that, sometime in the future, should be able to produce hearts and kidneys for human transplant surgery.

Which is great news for medical science but makes you wonder where it might all end.

“A pound of back bacon, two pork chops and a kidney, please Mr Butcher. If you’ll just slip the kidney in this cryogenic organ case I’ll have it fitted later.”

Will other animals be roped in and have their genetics tampered with until we have a whole range of creatures available?

Visiting the zoo will take on a whole new aspect.

“Now come on, children. We’ll visit the ape house next and help grandad choose his monkey glands.”

Maybe hospitals will have stable blocks at the back where patients can pick their own. And what is best about this, as far as carnivores are concerned, is that they can have a new heart fitted and eat what’s left with chips.

Yes, it is getting into the realms of a science horror story, isn’t it? I mean, will the Olympic Committee have to rule on whether a competitor qualifies if he has the hind legs of an African cheetah?

Or will someone complain when the latest American to win seven gold medals in the swimming pool has difficulty wearing shoes because of his webbed feet?

Of course, somehow it is all acceptable if the parts being used are internal. Out of sight, out of mind. Hearts, livers, kidneys, all those lengths of internal tubes we all have. We prefer not to think of them in the first place.

And animals are animals, anyway. We breed them to eat so why not breed them to supply body parts?

I just hope that sometime in the future, aliens of a far superior intelligence don’t finally land on Earth, disembark from their flying saucers and discover that we humans are genetically and physically close to their own race.

“What a boon to medical science,” they might say. “Especially with chips, garden peas and gravy.”