Frankenstein’s Cat (2013) by Emily Anthes is about biotechnology and how animals populations are helping to enhance the field. Anthes is a science writer and is obviously very into biotechnology. The technologies Anthes discusses are cloning, “pharming”, tracking, prosthetics and spying. All of these involve animals of all different species.
This book enticed me because of a NPR clip discussing “pharming”, in relation to the book. Pharming uses animals to produce medication for human consumption. Pharming primarily uses animals that produce milk and it involves implanting a human antibody into the animal embryo. When the animal is born it produces the antibodies for certain conditions or diseases, when the animal is milked and we consume their milk, we treat said condition. When these animal reproduce their offspring carry the same antibody, so it is a relatively low cost way to produce pharmaceuticals.
This book was very informative to help understand the biotechnology field and how animals are apart of it. I really didn’t care for the book though. Most of the procedures bothered me and I didn’t fully understand why they are necessary. Especially the cloning aspect.
When cloning animals, they put the cloned embryos into animals of similar species. In the book they clone wild cats, but put the embryos in house cats. The problem I have with cloning is that it takes hundreds of embryos being implanted for maybe one cat actually being born. Then once born, many cloned babies often die soon. There are also many stillbirths, miscarriages, etc. To me this seems like a lot of stress on animals for not having any good results. Scientists want to clone wild species to see if this is actually a possibility to help dying and endangered species. To me this just seem absurd.
I just don’t understand how many of these principles discussed in the book are actually going to do any good, especially for the animals involved in the experiments. The author is very into every procedure discussed and thinks they are going to boost animal welfare. Again, I don’t really buy it. All the procedures are intensive, intrusive and seem to not be all that great for animal welfare. Yet, if you are interested in biotechnology, consider checking this book out.
