Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotech's Brave New Beasts

By Emily Anthes

Dolly the Sheep was just the start. Meet the high-tech menagerie of the near future, as scientists reinvent the animal kingdom

From the petri dish to the pet shop, meet the high-tech menagerie of the near future, as humans reinvent the animal kingdom

Fluorescent fish that glow near pollution. Dolphins with prosthetic fins. Robot-armoured beetles that military handlers can send on spy missions. Beloved pet pigs resurrected from DNA. Scientists have already begun to create these high-tech hybrids to serve human whims and needs. What if a cow could be engineered to no longer feel pain – should we design a herd that would assuage our guilt over eating meat?

Acclaimed science writer Emily Anthes travels round the globe to meet the fauna of the future, from the Scottish birthplace of Dolly the sheep and other clones to a ‘pharm’ for cancer-fighting chickens. Frankenstein’s Cat is an eye-opening exploration of weird science – and how we are playing god in the animal world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780742168

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.

Reviews for Frankenstein's Cat

[jonathangorman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Short, interesting and lovely footnotes. If you're interested in science or the future, this is a very good read.

[daumari · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very 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.

[brentn_28 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I 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.