Tea at Trianon: Chimeras

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 6, 2024

Chimeras

From Science News:

Chimera experiments have moved far beyond bacteria. Advances in gene-editing technology have helped scientists create mouse embryos with a dash of human cells, grow brains that are a mix of rat and mouse cells, and grow mostly human organs in pigs (SN: 5/13/20; SN: 4/25/24; SN: 9/7/23). In March, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston transplanted a genetically modified pig kidney into a living person. The kidney had certain pig genes removed and some human genes added to improve the organ’s compatibility with the human immune system. The man was discharged from the hospital in April. He died in May from a cause unrelated to the transplant, the hospital said. (Read more.)

Nancy Reyes said...: Just think: If he had just had an alternative to being given a kidney.

With dialysis he might have lived for years, but never mind. The docs got their headlines.; June 6, 2024 at 7:45:00 AM EDT