The "Cover" Story: What's He Trying To Say?

Below (and above on the banner) is the final cover design, commissioned by Water Street Press, for the book to be published later this summer. I think it does a brilliant job of capturing the overarching – you could say “heady” – themes of the novel. Here's why.

Think of the cover as an easy-to-read thermometer displaying a temperature that’s diagnostically accurate and definite, yet without so much as a word, much less a number. What you see is no ordinary fever.  Clearly there’s something wrong with the patient, but he just doesn’t seem to know it or care.  Why?

 By the way, the headshot is not supposed to look like the protagonist, John Bertram (“Bert”) Gropes whose name was obviously mutated and recombined from the name John Scopes of the original Monkey Trial. Although Bert is endowed by genetic tampering with a unique and single gene from a monkey indigenous to the Caribbean’s Isle Libido, Bert’s resemblance to a monkey is – shall we say – more subtle than the guy on the cover. After all, it’s only one powerful gene unique to a monkey that he carries.

The owner of the head – let’s call him “Humonkey Dude” – is endowed with more obvious missing-link features than Bert. Note how the vainglorious human in Humonkey Dude has attempted to mask his simian attributes, but utterly fails.  One can only imagine what the rest of his body looks like. There are a number of “tell-tail,” if you will, morphological features that allude to the whole story.

The hair on top looks pretty normal, at least in isolation. If you were to crop the image from the forehead up, you’d think he might turn out to be a good-looking guy. But his beard only goes so far in in covering his mega-monkey-like maxillofacial protrusion, the kind that people can’t stop staring at, no matter how hard they try, when casually striking up a conversation with Humonkey Dude. And there’s no toning down his nose that looks like it can easily smell that banana daiquiri lip balm you’re wearing four and a half banyan trees over.

Let's not forget to mention those water-jug ears. I read where super-stud Daniel Craig, who plays a convincing James Bond, is self-conscious about the size of his ears. I can even see Humonkey Dude emerging from the surf, dripping wet, shirtless, causing every hot-blooded, bikini-clad beach babe-oon to swoon. Even Barack Obama said, when announcing a federal anti-bullying initiative, that he was teased in grade school about his big ears.  I would not be going out on a limb to say that, compared to what others say who are running for high office these days, Humonkey Dude’s looks imbue him with no less than industrial-strength Presidential gravitas.

The tongue, however, is the key to the whole cover, and perhaps the novel itself. It’s possible that the seemingly permanent panting pose Humonkey Dude strikes is due to a rogue Miley Cyrus gene that could have been inserted into his zany zygote way, way back when. But that’s not it.  You have to ask yourself: What is causing him to express such passionate feelings with that patriotic unfurling of his flag? It’s what he sees. He’s looking up at the words “The Hot Monkey Love Trial.” Clearly he’s moved by the title and what it promises. The Hot Monkey Love Trial will set him free. 

We Each Have A Separate, Primitive, Inner Mitochondrial Genome

We each have a complete human genome “on the outside.” But on the inside we have a separate genome for the very primitive, if not  primordial, single cells that dwell in our cells: the mitochondria. We could call them our “mommychondria” because, unlike our outer genome -- half from Mom and half from Dad -- the mitochondria are inherited solely from our mothers. It seems the mitochondrial bathing suits on the sperm are stripped away and left at the ovum door. The mitochondria affect vital functions like assisting cells in converting nutrients to energy and, more strategically, facilitating the body in overall health, disease prevention, and longevity.

It’s only a matter of time before there will be mitochondrial mischief in the realm of in vitro fertilizations as happens in The Hot Monkey Love Trial. Meanwhile, there are very exciting developments from the goods doctors. Where women have diseases that can be passed on because of mutated mitochondrial DNA, there’s now an in vitro procedure where the mother’s nucleus is removed from her ovum and combined with surrogate donor ovum with health mitochondria. Combine and bake for nine months. Serves one healthy baby.

Get Ready: It's The Year Of The Monkey!

Today February 8 begins the Year of the Monkey in the Chinese calendar, occurring every twelve years. How auspicious. It is said that newborn people who are biologically published in the Year of the Monkey are destined to be witty, charming, smart, lively, mischievous, and adaptable (one assumes in the Darwinian sense).

Do the same stars guide the destinies of nonhumans? Can a book born this year, having started out a long while back with but a few letters on a page, imitate life when it mutates into a complex being composed of a sympathetic protagonist pitted against powerful and unpredictable forces, including a legal system that’s in the nature of a multi-headed creature of flying monkey butts? 

If genetic astrology is as much hardcore science as it’s cracked up to be, the answer is absolutely yes!

Monkey Seek, Monkey Suit Thrown Out

This follows an earlier post (Sept. 24, 2015): A monkey named Naruto filed a lawsuit, with a lot of help from PETA, to claim copyright ownership in a selfie he’d taken and that went viral. Naruto sought in his legal claim to have himself named the copyright owner and the beneficiary of the proceeds from the photograph to benefit him and his fellow monkeys on the preserve where they lived.

As could have been predicted from my earlier post, on January 6, 2016 the monkey’s claim was bounced out of court. The federal judge in San Francisco ruled that a monkey, or any other animal for that matter, cannot “author” a work of art under copyright laws, much less be the owner of the resulting copyrighted work entitled to collect royalty checks from its exploitation.

Apparently the judge decided the case based on, of all things, a simple reading of the Copyright Act which, it’s true, nowhere suggests that animals can own copyrights.  As the judge reasoned, consistent with the case of Cetacean Community v. Bush, brought by whales and dolphins seeking legal benefits and protections different than copyright, Congress has the power to ensure that animals are covered by laws it passes, but it consistently chooses not to do so.

I’d like to think that if I’d been given a chance to argue this case, there might have been a different outcome. Taking a page or two from The Hot Monkey Love Trial, I think the judge might have been persuaded with a more genetic and less legalistic argument. It would rely on common sense and wouldn’t arbitrarily place so much darn stock on what the Copyright Act actually says or doesn’t say.

Here is the summation of my argument: “It’s a fact that genes of humans and monkeys are more than 98% identical. I mean, like, that’s just for starters, right out of the genomic gate, no questions asked. Not enough evidence? Really? Suppose then, your Honor, someone had inserted one nefarious but unique human gene into Naruto’s in vitro fertilization, closing the narrow gap even more, would your answer be the same? How about two such genes?

Try as you may, your Honor, to remain firm in your opinion and to refrain from slipping. But be forewarned, because that slope you’re on is lined with banana peels….”

DNA TWOFERS

The thorny legal problem Bert Gropes faces in the The Hot Monkey Love Trial – whether he’s a person who can be prosecuted or a mere thing that can’t be prosecuted, like a monkey or a humonkey – I’m telling you isn’t so farfetched.

It was reported that a mother, Lydia Fairchild, found out that DNA tests indisputably proved that her children were not hers, not only disqualifying her from receiving welfare but proving she’d committed a crime in fraudulently receiving prior welfare payments. When she had a third child, law enforcement was there at the hospital to take additional genetic samples to support the case against her. The father was indeed the father, but the DNA again proved that she was not the mother, strongly suggesting she was engaged in some kind of clandestine surrogacy that made little sense. 

A lawyer took on her case in the face of overwhelming genetic evidence against her. The answer was eventually found in the New England Journal of Medicine. There it was reported that a woman could not find a match in her own family for a kidney transplant because her DNA did not match her siblings, and it was discovered her own children must not have been her own. In that case the doctors persisted by taking samples from different parts of the body, resulting in the same conclusion. Eventually they tested tissue of the patient from a removed thyroid and – bingo! – the DNA matched her siblings and children.

This condition of having different genetic profiles from different parts of the body is a type of chimerism, conjuring up the original meaning of the word where two different species have been welded together. Here, however two human genetic profiles have been fused together.
Although mild forms of chimerism can result from transfusions, transplantations, and natural genetic inheritance, the cases like Lydia Fairchild are called tetragametic chimerism. That’s tetra, as in four. Instead of two cells – one egg and one sperm – forming a zygote, a tetragametic zygote is formed from two eggs and two cells that form one zygote instead of simply forming twins. 

The upshot of tetragametic chimerism – where four cells fuse into one zygote embodying two distinctly different genetic profiles – is that a criminal suspect can be wrongly accused, or exculpated when actually guilty, or accused twice based on two different genetic tests. But, under double jeopardy, an accused can only be tried once even if the other “person” lurking in his genes has only now been identified.

Monkey See, Monkey Shoot: Who Owns The Monkey Selfie?

Who should own the copyright in a selfie that is composed, art-directed, and shot by a monkey?  A new lawsuit has been filed here in San Francisco federal court by PETA seeking to have Naruto, the monkey, declared the “author” of his smiling selfie gone viral. What’s more, the plaintiff in Naruto v. Slater wants the monkey to be designated the beneficiary of all royalties earned by the popular photographic image with proceeds to benefit the reserve where Naruto lives.

The photos were taken in 2011 when British nature photographer, David Slater, was on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. He’d set up the camera and a tripod to photograph the macaque monkeys but, as monkeys are wont to do, Naruto started examining and playing with the equipment. The photos were later published by Slater in his book Wildlife Personalities, and Slater claimed to own copyright in the monkey selfies.

Slater’s position is that he set the whole thing up and therefore was the “mastermind” behind – and therefore the “author” of – the photos.  In fact, Slater said he left the camera unattended and hoped the monkeys would do what they did. Taken to its logical extreme, however, that may be like saying you locked Tolstoy in a room and hoped he’d write a novel, making you the “mastermind” behind War and Peace (although it is a much more elegant solution than the proverbial million monkeys with a million typewriters).

There is at least some support for Slater’s position. In the 1884 case of Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, the U.S. Supreme Court held that photographs are subject to copyright protection because of the artistic decisions made by the photographer in taking a portrait shot of Oscar Wilde. Those decisions include choosing the camera, lighting, angle, and wardrobe of the subject.  Maybe only the first two of those items help Slater’s claim of ownership.

On the other hand, Naruto selected – whether knowingly or not – such things as the camera angle, timing, level of focus, and framing of the photograph.

Meanwhile, the Copyright Office – which is considered authoritative but whose interpretations of copyright law are not binding on a federal court – has just recently pronounced in its Compendium of the U.S. Copyright Office Practices (3^rd Edition) that any original work of authorship, including a photograph, can be registered “provided that the work was created by a human being.” The Copyright Office cites photographs taken by monkeys and murals created by elephants as examples of such works it views as created by nonhumans and not eligible for ownership.

In the photos taken by Naruto, shown above, it’s hard not to see the hand, complete with an opposable thumb, of an artist at work.The smiling selfie shows a steady touch and a nicely composed headshot highlighting a set of choppers that, make no mistake, would cause even George Washington to go bananas.  The second shot, so stoic and determined, suggests Naruto intended to conjure elements of American Gothic, but without the whole monkey on your back of having to keep the farm going, or having to pay the mortgage or, for that matter, finding yourself armed with only a puny pitchfork while facing, straight ahead, nothing less than a mountain of 1930’s Midwestern existentialism to sort through. Even if Naruto is a not the copyright owner, and likely no one is, he made judicious artistic choices that would best capture his personal worldview.

REVERSE EVOLUTION: On Becoming a Dino-Chicken

Although it's been firmly proven that birds evolved from dinosaurs, we don't know exactly how it all happened, especially when it took place over an unimaginably long period of time. Recently scientists were able to better understand how the snout of a flying dinosaur became a  beak found in thousands of birds on earth. By turning off the gene expression that is the set of instructions for a chicken embryo to build a beak, the Yale and Harvard scientists were able to have the embryo build what resembled the snout of a giant prehistoric Velocitoraptor.

"Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition," one of the Yale scientists involved in the project said in a statement, "not to create a 'dino-chicken' simply for the sake of it."

Having the understanding of the molecular underpinnings does, however, teach a great deal about how to make new animal. The book How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution by noted paleontologist Jack Horner (with New York Times science columnist, James Gorman) makes no secret of where reverse evolution leads. The publisher's blurb on Amazon summarizes the book's content:

 "A scientific adviser for the film Jurassic Park evaluates the potential for artificially growing a real dinosaur without ancient DNA discussing the relationships between dinosaurs and birds and how it may be possible to stimulate latent tyrannosaurus rex."

All of which brings us to the subject of humans. In the novel Bert's in-vitro fertilization resulted in a unique monkey gene being inserted into his DNA. The legal system wonders if he is a human person who can be prosecuted and not some lesser creature. Bert worries if he is the first human to ever have measurably reversed the ascent of man, appearing to be moving forward as a human but in fact moonwalking backwards into the two and four-legged apes following behind. 

And what next? If the new science of reverse evolution is taught in the schools, will there be those who insist that "Reverse Creationism" also be taught, i.e., the disassembly of the universe piece by piece in an effort to recreate a massive, Ikea-inspired set of assembly instructions so complex and so utterly unfathomable that it proves only one Creator could have put the whole shebang together in the first place?