[-empyre-] Animal Interlude, Letter to Alba Guestbook, 2001

[Adam Zaretsky]

Hi Eduardo 

As you know... I support you and Alba. May you find togetherness!(Pending
FDA/EPA approval.) 

I have no problem with the techniques of transgenes being used for art
production purposes.
I do have an objection to the concept of this being a Harmless Art.

Why pretend that? 

The inserted gene is claimed to be harmless to Alba as an organism.
This is an industry claim that I seriously doubt.

But, if the art of GFP Bunny is not Alba in Herself but instead
'comprises her creation' including the techniques of Insertational
Mutagenesis 
and you still want to claim that 'no harm was done'
then lets take a closer look at the Protocols for a Transgenic Rabbit·

They call for hormone treatments both for hyper-ovulation of the egg
supplying (donor) rabbit -- mom(1)
and hormone treatments for the psuedo-pregnant state of the surrogate
'uterus' donor -- mom(2)
and surgery on both sides to collect the fertilized embryos from the
fallopian tubes of mom(1) rabbit
and to implant the GFP positive embryos into the surrogate uterus of the
mom(2) rabbit. 

This says nothing of the throwing away of the biohazardous Œleftover¹
embryos that didn't take the transgene properly.

As a part of the process, We also have to take into account the unnamed or
numbered Brothers and Sisters of Alba
who were possibly still born or born with abnormalities due to the viral
infection vectors, cytoplasmic bacterial infection,
bad laparascopic technique, or other natural causes.

How many embryos were implanted?