The secret of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Well, actually it is Dr. Fred Gage of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies that is reported as having led the successful effort to make mice born with human brain cells.
By Nedroj Walker
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH was a treasured book of my childhood. It fundamentally shifted my feelings towards rodents—much as Charlotte's Web changed many children's concept of spiders. Not me though, I routinely squish them without warning should they enter my domain. No for me, it was the Rats of NIMH that altered my natural view.
What the scientists are being reported as having done is not close in fact to the fiction I loved. Still as much as a Chinese astronaut is a symbol for their space age, a mouse with a tenth of a percent "of human cells in their heads" symbolizes to me that I need a rose bush.
Technology is great, but we have to develop enough socially to unconditionally accept the mutants we will create. We will make some smart ones. We are children playing with building blocks, but when something is born from our play I hope we graduate to enough maturity to own up to the responsibility for what we have created.
Science fiction as a genre loves to warn against playing God in tantalizing ways. Don't take from my figure of speech that I am religious or even accept the concept of God, but I do recognize the wisdom of the natural order. It is hard earned wisdom that can be reasonably overruled so long as it has been understood first.
I imagine a revolution of rodents fighting us giants in dirty guerrilla type ways. Thousands of cats would fall victim in the first wave to poisoned meals. After that I fear a great many of us would die in our sleep.
Could a peace be reached, or will the rodent war spiral us down into extinction? I can't wait to find out!