Preventing the Rise of the Mutants

There have certainly been other political stories that have come up recently that I've wanted to discuss, some of which I hope to touch on anyway in the near future, but I found that I could not let this one go that I'm preparing to write about. And in fact, this one seems so absurd that I've toyed with the idea of also writing about it on my non-political blog. Well, to get to the point, Senator Sam Brownback, the senior senator from the state of Kansas, last week introduced the Human-Animal Hybrid Prohibition Act of 2009.

Well, to be fair, Senator Brownback apparently first introduced a version of this bill in late 2007. And also, it isn't as if Brownback is a lone wolf in this measure. And it is particularly important that he isn't a lone wolf because he isn't a wolf at all, or even part wolf. Although, technically it would be legal today for Brownback to be part wolf, this act aims to prevent such an abomination from ever happening. There are apparently twenty other senators who have joined Brownback, including one Democrat and one senator who was formerly his party's nominee for the presidency.

Let's take a closer look at some of the findings that this bill has, shall we? Section 2 of the act states that Congress finds that (1) advances in research and technology have made possible the creation of human-animal hybrids. Okay, I suppose this could be true, but if a mixture of human and animal DNA has yet to actually have been attempted yet, I'm not sure you can say definitively that you can create human-animal hybrids, unless you are talking about on television. (But upon closer inspection, this appears to be an animal-human hybrid so I'm not sure the example fits...) But moving on, Congress also finds that (2) human-animal hybrids are grossly unethical because they blur the line between human and animal, male and female, parent and child, and one individual and another individual. They keep pointing out that "Congress finds" this and "Congress finds" that, but as best as I can see at this point, (and in the interest of full disclosure, I have not done any research on other statements that Congress has made agreeing with these findings) it appears that these are simply the findings of twenty-one probably insane people. So it might be possible that these twenty-one lunatics are blurring the line between one individual and another individual by asserting that these "findings" are of Congress. (And I am certainly not going to waste my time looking to see whether Congress has made any statements in support of these "findings.") And finally, the last one of these "findings" that I'll discuss is that Congress finds that (3) human dignity and the integrity of the human species are compromised by human-animal hybrids. Really? Human dignity is compromised by human-animal hybrids? The integrity of the human species is compromised by human-animal hybrids? This sounds like a personal self-esteem problem to me more than anything else.

While I really do appreciate Senator Brownback and friends for standing up for my dignity and attempting to protect the integrity of my species, these people all strike me as being profoundly stupid. From what I understand, this act is aimed to prevent federal funds for embryonic stem cell research from being used to experiment with any sort of mixing of human and animal DNA, which some scientists evidently believe might be beneficial in finding pathways to cure certain human diseases. But the abject stupidity of these supporting this act is amazing. Do they truly believe that researchers who are granted federal funds to research embryonic stem cells are going to say, "Screw finding cures for diseases! Screw it! I'm going to create a Jackalman, err, Manjackal hybrid!" Really, you think that serious scientists who are granted federal funding for the purpose of researching these stem cells to cure diseases are going to create human-animal hybrids? You people are idiots.