Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts
Written by Emily Anthes
Narrated by Hillary Huber
4/5
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About this audiobook
In Frankenstein's Cat, journalist Emily Anthes takes us from petri dish to pet store as she explores how biotechnology is shaping the future of our furry and feathered friends. As she ventures from bucolic barnyards to a "frozen zoo" where scientists are storing DNA from the planet's most exotic creatures, she discovers how we can use cloning to protect endangered species, craft prosthetics to save injured animals, and employ genetic engineering to supply farms with disease-resistant livestock. Along the way, we meet some of the animals that are ushering in this astonishing age of enhancement, including sensor-wearing seals, cyborg beetles, a bionic bulldog, and the world's first cloned cat.
Through her encounters with scientists, conservationists, ethicists, and entrepreneurs, Anthes reveals that while some of our interventions may be trivial (behold: the GloFish), others could improve the lives of many species-including our own. So what does biotechnology really mean for the world's wild things? And what do our brave new beasts tell us about ourselves?
With keen insight and her trademark spunk, Anthes highlights both the peril and the promise of our scientific superpowers, taking us on an adventure into a world where our grandest science fiction fantasies are fast becoming reality.
Emily Anthes
EMILY ANTHES is a freelance science journalist. Her work has appeared in Seed, Scientific American Mind, Discover, Slate, Good, New York, and the Boston Globe. She has a master's degree in science writing from MIT and a bachelor's degree in the history of science and medicine from Yale, where she also studied creative writing. She is the author of Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Reviews for Frankenstein's Cat
35 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received an ARC of this book at the ScienceOnline conference and immediately dove into it. I barely had time to finish it before my daughter stole the book from me and read it herself.
The book was a fantastically engaging look at the role the biotech revolution is beginning to play with multicellular lifeforms. For me, I couldn't stop thinking about where the early experiments being done now will lead us in the next 10, 20 or 50 years. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A brief but interesting overview of biotechnology as it relates to animals, including genetic engineering and cloning. The prospects range from the altruistic (goats with elevated levels of lysozyme in their milk, aimed at preventing childhood diarrhea) to the dystopian (the theory of breeding animals with lower receptors for pain as a solution to modern farming's faults). Although Anthes looks at the potential negatives of the technology, as well as the ethical dilemmas it poses, the book ultimately comes off as biased due to her including a "vision" of a future where biotech (inc is used freely and positively. It's too easy to be starry eyed about technology that has not yet proven its utility.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very thoroughly researched, Anthes examines the myriad biotechnology fields today from genetic engineering to cyborgs to prosthetics. I'm biased, but the opening chapters on genetics and cloning were well done (looked at other reviews and I am unsurprised to see people use that M word even if the science is doing). Re: genetic modification, she writes in the last chapter "The important thing is that we do not throw the genetically modified baby out with the bathwater. We spend so much time discussing the ethics of using our emerging scientific capabilities that we forget that NOT using them had ethical implications of its own." There are both good and bad ways tech can be used, but remember these are just tools- it is our responsibility to use them ethically and reasonably.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Short, interesting and lovely footnotes. If you're interested in science or the future, this is a very good read.