A Different kind of Fish Story

News Item

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 various 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 is quite 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.

Seven Haiku for Number One

Little Hilary
Birthday girl with a mission:
She is number one

Chronological?
Mere birth order doesn't count
At least in her mind

Do numbers matter?
In this context, no, you see
They're all number one

Keep the record straight
Numbers sort by age only
Not by affection

Each is number one
Even numbers two and three
Year-round, ev'ry day

All our kids are great
Though each very different
Did you want clone kids?

So that's my haiku
Birthday and everyday
You're all number one