"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 03 - Woodsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

Franklin Peirce sighed. "Of course it does," he said. "It even has a good
deal to do with the Endangered Species Replacement Program. Our exploitations,
our neglect, our disregard of the rights of other animals to have their own
place in the world, all that led to the deaths of many species. When we
realized what we had done, and when the technology became available, our guilt
drove us to set up the ESRP. That program is, in a very real sense, an
expiation of our sins.

"It might even have something to do with the idea that we shouldn't use
gene replacement to turn animals into humans. But more to the point here is
the feeling that there is something sacred about the human form. Animals are
animals, and changing them in that way degrades us and defies God."

"Doesn't changing them corrupt their own integrity?" This was the woman
from the OnLine Herald .

Franklin Peirce sighed again. "If we made most animals human, we probably
would be doing that," he said. "Animals are not little, cute, furry people, no
matter how many children's stories and veedo shows and Sunday supplement
articles treat them that way." His questioner tightened her mouth as if she
had been responsible for more than one such article. "They don't have our sort
of minds, and they wouldn't fit in our bodies. They wouldn't have the faintest
idea of how to live as humans. They would be the equivalent of the profoundly
retarded.

"But those few animals like Freddy," the museum curator continued. "They
do have our kinds of minds. They are human in all but body. They can talk, and
we can ask them what they want."

"What do they say?" asked the Times man.

"Thank you," said Franklin Peirce. He had needed that question. " They say
that they are human in the most important way. They say that their integrity
is corrupted by unreasonably enforcing their handicap." The man who sat on the
sofa, between Kimmer Peirce and Calla Laffiter, nodded at these words.

"It isn't really," said Franklin Peirce, "a question of 'animal rights' at
all. In his own mind--and in mine--a genimal like Freddy is as human as one
can be. The question is therefore one of human rights."

"But he isn't human!" said the woman from the Herald .

"He is now," said Calla Laffiter. The man from the Times spoke above the
suddenly growing murmur. "You mean it worked," he said. "The technology is
quite well established," said Franklin Peirce. "It's only the direction of the
change that was new. Of course it worked."

"What does he look like now?"

"He's right in front of you," said Franklin. He turned to face the sofa on