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Babies Glinda contracted hepatitis unexpectedly at age 22 after a wisdom tooth extraction. She suddenly went into a comma, her liver failed, and on the brink of death, she had a human donor liver transplant. After a few years, a second human liver also failed. She is again on the critical transplant list. Glinda has one shot at staying alive and agrees to a pig liver transplant. Miracle of miracles, the pig liver is totally accepted by her body. It begins functioning. Over six months of careful monitoring it appears to be brilliantly doing its job. Glinda, now with a whiff of longevity in the air, gets on with her life. She zooms through a PhD. in Computer Science; she has an options success
in a dot.com startup. She meets the perfect man - a dot.com software
engineer whose mother died of organ failure. They are married in a Sonoma
winery and honeymoon in Hawaii. They find a house to buy (with that
option money) right in San Francisco. Not much time passes before they
decide to have children. After all, Glinda is almost thirty. Her liver
is doing beautifully. She is healthy as a horse. Again miracle of miracles
- Glinda conceives quickly and has a healthy pregnancy. The couple and their parents and step-parents, grandparents and step-grandparents, are all excited about this first new addition to the next generation. The birth is easy; the new baby is adorable. She is named Lucretia, after Glinda's maternal grandmother who hailed from Lithuania. Since her pig-liver transplant, Glinda had been part of an online support group for women who had similar operations. By now several of the young women are also having children. Once a week they log onto their private chat room and discuss their livers, their new children, and their symptoms (if any.) As they become closer over the years, they talk about their sex lives, their husbands, their careers - whatever friends share. Amelia, a member of the support group, whose baby was several months older than Glinda's, begins to note some odd changes in her baby. 'Catherine's nose is changing shape,' types Amelia into the chat room window. 'And her chin is too.' In fact, her baby starts to look quite different. The other members of the support group are just that - supportive. But soon all of their babies begin to show similar changes. By the time all these children of mothers with pig liver transplants are one year old, they develop "snouts" instead of the nose, mouth and chin of darling babies. People quickly begin to call them "BabySnout" and the mothers are distraught. They log on every day to help each other deal with problems about the children; their doctors; the press; the fathers who are ready to bolt. What to do? Glinda herself comes up with the solution. In a stunning feat of publicity and spin, the mothers go public with the baby snout problem and turn the press, the media, and then the whole country around. They declare BabySnout the new advanced species of human child - a new genius/genus proclaimed by science, technology and the will of God.
Their campaign is so successful that if parents don't already have a BabySnout, they now aspire to it. Apple Blossom Pig Liver Farm secures huge investments, multiplies their production ten-fold, and begins supplying pig livers even for healthy young women. As soon as their new pig livers stabilize, these women rush into childbearing and join the proud elite of BabySnout parents. In less than six years a whole new warrior class of BabySnout child, destined for all the best schools, the best marriages, the best jobs in the world, is created in America and duplicated worldwide.
Apple Blossom Pig Liver Farm has the most successful IPO in the history of technology. Little animations of BabySnout appear everywhere on the Internet and TV. Educational conglomerates publish curricula and interactive learning toys based on the superior image of BabySnout. And the real breakthrough comes with the first class of BabySnout children in China - engineered and born in the year of the Boar of Chinese Astrology. Some of us now, with the regular same old children, just can't compete anymore. ©2000 Sherry Miller. All rights reserved.
Author's note: In reality pig livers are extremely close to human livers. For a person with terminal liver disease, the prospect of a pig liver versus imminent death appears to be a favorable option. Most of us would probably make that choice as well. I am writing about unintended consequences of new technologies, but fully support organ donation and organ transplants. See: http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2000/0214/fea1.htm
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