Catching up on the last little bit of year end list-making, here’s Wired’s “Top 10 New Organisms of 2007.” The collection includes quite a few organisms that you might call useful or productive — vaccine-producing button mushrooms and mice that model schizophrenia, for example. But a few of the organisms on the list are what might be considered “entertainment” organisms: the now infamous glow-in-the-dark cats, the hypoallergenic cat, and tadpoles engineered to be fluorescent for the purposes of art (that’s an image created from one of them above).

Reading about these organisms got me thinking about a comment posted by SabrinaW about the glow-in-the-dark cats. Here’s what she wrote in December:

It is the commercialization of such “designer pets” that bothers me about this. Coming from a negative utilitarian standard (avoid doing harm), this development appears frivolous, potentially harmful, and disrespectful to the dignity of animals. We are treating them like robots or a product rather than as a living being with needs and an interest in being treated humanely. I worry about the shifts in how we will view animals in the wake of this “new exciting feature!” and what that will inspire in us as we find ourselves unable to understand more while still maintaining respect for the dignity of life.

I am allergic to pet dander (dogs and cats), and love cats dearly. But I cannot bring myself to consider a “made to order” hypoallergenic cat – such a “feature” brings no benefit to the cat itself and could hold potential dangers for it.

I wonder about where we should draw the lines here. Sabrina draws it at the genetically engineered “designer” pet. But humans have been breeding certain characteristics into and out of our pets for a long time. What makes a hypoallergenic cat different? At $27,000 a cat, it will almost surely be prized and well cared for. Isn’t that all a cat can ask for? Or is there something about the act of genetic engineering that pushes these kinds of organisms over the line?

Update: Check out Sabrina’s further thoughts on this in the comments.

-Greg Dahlmann

Earlier on blog.bioethics.net:
+ South Koreans clone cats that glow in the dark
+ About those glow in the dark cats
+ Looking for cats that glow in the dark

photo: Dmitry Bulatov, Kaliningrad Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Art in Russia