Ohio SB 243

Thoth


Ohio Senate Bill 243 proposes ban on human-animal hybridizations.
Why?
Steve Buehrer (R Delta), introduced the legislation originally in a broad way that made no distinction between therapy for serious illness & handicaps and super hero breeding.
The use of these "hybrids" is due to the shortage of donated human eggs in doing "stem-cell" research that can help people with any number of crippling health problems. For more on the background, check out BioNews.
The bill has passed the Senate & is going to the House.
As a comic book / science fiction fan, my first thoughts are of characters like Spider-Man, who not a hybrid at birth, gained spider like powers after being bitten by a radio-active spider. One of my favorite characters along this line was Oedi, the cat man from the Dreadstar comics. A far off galactic empire created a race of cat men to blend the ferocious fighting skills, coordination & hunting ability of a cat with a human who could fit the uniform. The result? A race of hybrids who liked to sleep a lot. They later found that the beings could farm pretty well, too. Oedi's combat skills didn't manifest til the galactic empire slaughtered his wife.
How would our society deal with a culture of "sub-human" human constructs? This is famously explored in Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner.
Currently, most plans for these hybrids are to make therapeutic goo.
Try as I might, the only arguments I can find in favor of this legislation always grind down to religionist opinion. It invariably winds up with quoting Christian scripture & frequently citations of Ohio being a Christian state.
Ohio's Christian Taliban set is tittering with glee at the thought of kneecapping scientific & medical progress.
In pre-Christian days people had gods who were part goat, bull, elephant, ibis, jackal... Ma'at had wings. It differentiated them from the gods. There have been any number of hybrid creatures like centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, flying dragons & such frequently tasked with protecting us.

Ganesha


In Christian thought it is believed that God made man in his image. Hence the human form is something kind of sacred. It's this differentiation from other species that gave the Christian domain over everything else. You can see how this belief could be skewed to give European Christians dominion over sub-Saharan Africans, Indians & Asians practicing their own religions. You can see how it could lead to denying inter-racial marriage with a mindset that inter-racial = inter-species. Couple that with the concept of these sub-species being "soulless" & you got a real recipe for, well, everything bad in modern western civilization.
Do we need to perpetuate this?
If the Republicans who support this legislation were real libertarian, free marketers they would condemn it in a minute. What about the jobs that will be lost by hamstringing our research industry? Unfortunately, when sex is involved these clowns do a 180 & go all Stalin Hitler Taliban on us. Do we want these people legislating along religious lines and leave a group of people handicapped by disease only to then label them a burden on society and bemoan the tax dollars spent on warehousing them? Think they won't eventually come up with a Final Solution?
This is wrong headed and un-American legislation.
~ cheap shots deleted ~