Monkeys Shine

          We have explored two of the three topics required for English 115. And we touched on the third when examining the vampire mice of Stanford University.The research at Stanford using parabiosis (the anatomical joining of two individuals, especially artificially in physiological research) focused on cognitive regeneration and stem cells. Specifically they were interested in how younger blood would affect older stem cells and genetic makeup.
   I hope you've noticed that the common thread of this Blog assignment has been that it focuses on Portland Oregon;1) entertainment businesses,2) myth and legend and now 3) research and development.
   

          I want to be cloned. No, I need to be cloned.Then my clone shall be cryogenically frozen until such time the technology to download, my personality, my identity or dare I say, my soul is not only possible but normal. Why? Well, who doesn't want to live forever? Huh?... UH.... Right. You and me both.

         It’s a cool 60 degree Portland morning, August 13th, 2015... You're walking Sparky, your Dachshund/Ausie mix. He’s happy. You’re happy. Sparky believes HE takes YOU, for YOUR morning constitution, while he takes care of his all - important morning business. You stop three houses down from your place. Bob Johnson’s place; A 3500 square foot ranch-style, three bedroom two bath family home, with a Winnebago squeezed into a too small single vehicle carport on the right side of an overfull garage.You scratch your crouch, stretch, yawn and think to yourself, “Gee, last summer Bob sure did have the greatest Bar-B-Q.”  Sparky religiously pops a squat under Bob’s mailbox as he does every morning around 6AM. And every morning you think to yourself. “Dam, I should just leave it. That would teach him to borrow tools and not return them. But no…”Bob does Q a mean sturgeon burger after all”, you grumble, as you reach down with your blue bagged covered left hand and cradle Sparkies steaming hot log of delight freshly deposited beneath Bob’s American Confederate flag mailbox.  And then you hear it… The deafening time-stopping life-altering mind-blowing… SCEEEECH! Brakes! 

       The last thing you remember is seeing Sparky getting wedged up under the front bumper of a 1973 Ford Pinto and a license plate that reads Born to Breed.

       No white light, No Angels singing Hotel California, not even a glimpse of the Pearly Gates.

          Thank the lord you haven't used up all of your Genetic stem cells. Last month you made a fresh deposit and you should have enough to clone yourself for the next 500 years. Not to mention the cells you've preserved for Sparky, Smittens (your cat), your wife Bunny and your two lovely kids.

         As you wake in the ICU you look around dazed and confused and mumble

"Poor Thparkles, Ohhh….. Bunny is going to kill me."

        And then you remember the stem cell/cloning/genetic research you've been a part of for the last 35 years and all your worries about life and death fade away into the blissful afterglow of the anesthesia-induced cloning procedure that has just been completed at OHSU. It is now December 13th, 2050 and the genetic research of today has reached its predestined and perfected conclusion.

             Clone -”a cell, cell product, or organism that is genetically  identical to the unit or individual from which it was derived.”   

A healthy rhesus monkey, born at Dr. Mitalipov’s lab in Portland after the nucleus of the mother’s egg cell was removed and placed in the egg cell of another female that is healthy.

       The genetic research done here in Portland Oregon boarders on science fiction and we God fearing, morally upstanding citizens of the American experiment don’t quite know how to deal with it. Though I truly believe we Portlanders are secretly proud of the, what some say is clandestine and possibly nefarious, research taking place at OHSU (Oregon Health Science University) and the Beaverton primate research center (BPC).The man, whose name most Americans have never heard, Shoukhrat Mitalipov (American biologist) has kicked the proverbial scientific hornets’ nest with his ground-breaking, controversial stem cell, gene and cloning research at OHSU and BPC( The Primate Center is part of OHSU)
Click on link to watch monkeys at primate center.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGzvewAfys0


Please take some time to help shape the future and respond to this simple Yes or No three question survey...Just click on the link.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/V2YX3F7