Memo to scientists: Beware of the Mickey Man

I am writing these words on the morning after the State of the Union Address, after a sleepless night filled with dark, nightmarish images, all because of three words I heard in the speech: “human-animal hybrids.”

President Bush said that he wanted to pass legislation prohibiting “the most egregious abuses of medical research,” including “creating human-animal hybrids.”

What? Didn’t anybody else hear this?

Isn’t anyone else alarmed about the INVASION OF THE WEREWOLVES?

Because that’s exactly what this sounds like to me. It sounds to me like scientists are busily perfecting ways to merge humans with animals, which has been the stuff of nightmares for centuries. I need to do some more research on exactly what President Bush was talking about, but I certainly know what a human-animal hybrid is. Oh, yes, indeed I do.

Here are a just a few human-animal hybrids:

Vampires: They look human but have vampire-bat fangs and vampire-bat appetites. Need I enumerate the trouble they can cause? Entering lady’s boudoirs? Sucking their blood? Inspiring overwritten novels? Inspiring all-black goth fashions?

The Sphinx: It has the body of a lion and the head of a human. It’s a harmless tourist attraction as long as it stays put in the desert. But we don’t want armies of Sphinxes roaming the streets, pouncing on regular (non-lion-body) people.

Chimera: A creature with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. Not technically a human-animal hybrid, but a cautionary symbol of the dangers of unchecked hybridization. It can breathe fire.

Ganesh: The Hindu god with the body of a human and the head of an elephant. Large trunk can be used for bad purposes, such as stealing peanuts from regular people.

Spider-Man: OK, he’s not very scary. But shooting webs from fingertips can be creepy, if unchecked by legislation.

Anubis: Egyptian god with the body of a human and the head of a jackal. Jackals are unpleasant enough in the wild, not to mention when sitting next to you on the bus.

Werewolves: Part human and part wolf. They have many nasty, vicious, predatory traits. Plus they have some wolf characteristics, too.

That Faun in the “Narnia” Movie: I’m still trying to figure out what kind of hybrid Tumnus was, but he seemed to go mostly goat in the head, horns and hind legs, and mostly guy throughout the midsection. He was a sweet fellow, but biologically very confused.

Satyr: Kind of like a faun, with goat-like characteristics which I won’t enumerate here. Definitely not, however, a sweet guy like Tumnus.

Gorgons: Women with writhing snakes for hair. Medusa was one of them. Proof that nothing good can come from hybridizing with a reptile.

Centaurs: They have a man’s head and arms and a horse’s body and legs. Frankly, this is one hybrid that makes sense to me, especially if you want to win numerous gold medals in track and field.

Harpy: A hideous monster with the head and trunk of a woman and the wings, legs, tail and talons of a bird. Makes it hard to call her “Mom.”

Well, while researching Harpies, I have just run across a story about what President Bush was actually referring to in his human-animal hybrid comment.

At issue is the practice of putting human stem cells in animal embryos, and vice-versa. Usually this is done for experimental research reasons, but it could conceivably (pardon the expression) create new species, such as something part mouse and part human. One scientist has already created a mouse with a brain that is 1 percent human and is working on creating a mouse with a 100 percent human brain.

Oh my God. It’s a Mickey Man. It probably has only three fingers and thumb. And I thought vampires were scary.

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