Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

The Cassini People Were Right

Now that the mid-term elections are over, we can start discussing important issues, one of which was the subject of talking head, recovering-drug-addict-acting-like-a-dry-drunk-or-like-he's-using-again Rush Limbaugh's weird, warped outlook on human behavior and life in general, which is stem cell research.

It's disconcerting to me that scientists at the University of Newcastle in Great Britain have applied to get permission to create part human, part cow embryo so that they can extract embryonic stem cells to conduct their stem cell research. Well, I'm not feeling disconcerted about the hybrid human-cow being created, but more so because these imaginative scientists claim they will destroy the human-cow embryo at age 14 days.

I mean, there are a lot of slang expressions that compare humans to cows in many respects. I need not repeat those comparisons here -- write them on a piece of paper and read them silently to yourself, wondering where you first heard these expressions, thereby giving you a blog topic. My objection to the human cow hybrid research is that we will never know how the human-cow will look, if these scientists get their wish and are permitted to destroy this living being before it has a chance to reach maturity. I am reminded of Jonathan Lethem's first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music and its menagerie of hybrid human/animals.

And by the way, the Cassini people were right.

The Cassini spacecraft, which has been wandering around Saturn snapping photos for the last couple years, was the object of significant protests when it was launched because it is powered by Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG's) fueled by plutonium, which, by the way, was purchased from the old Soviet Union because it was too dangerous to be manufactured in this country. In any event, protesters feared that the rocket would explode or not make orbit and that the 230 pounds of plutonium would be vaporized and then chemically react with oxygen to form breathable, gaseous plutonium dioxide, which has been touted as one of the most deadly substances ever invented and a few molecules of which inhaled would cause lung cancer.

No big deal. The rocket took off. Cassini made it to Saturn. All is hunky-dory. Except now, Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager, is thinking about crashing the spacecraft into one of the moons of Saturn. Here's the rub, as Mr. Mitchell sees it:

The issue is the heat that would be generated by the RTGs and the environment that would be created (melted ice) that could be conducive to the viability of any Earth organisms that might have survived on the spacecraft to that point.

What? Earth organisms? Radioactive mutant Earth organisms? Hybrids, even? What about the treaty the U.S. signed in 1967?

The Cassini people were right.

Posted by Bill at November 8, 2006 09:40 PM