Might Your Child’s First Words be “Moo-Moo”?

Tired of nursing your baby?  Well, don’t worry; Chinese cows can do that for you.  Yes, Chinese scientists have produced a genetically-modified cow that can make milk which can be substituted for human breast milk. The Chinese researchers at the China Agricultural University introduced human genetic coding into the DNA of Holstein dairy cow embryos and then transferred the embryos into cow surrogates.

Sounds interesting–doesn’t it?  When I first read this article, my mind got a crazy image which was hard to release. Allow me to set the stage as to what was happening while I was reading this story about the cow surrogates. It was 2 AM, and I was still awake. I was tossing and turning and I was becoming increasingly frustrated because I could not fall asleep. I thought a bit of reading would do the trick, so I surfed through some news on my laptop and came across this article.  Now, let me defend myself here: Even though I was reading and awake, I was not totally there mentally. I had a root canal that day, and I was a little numb and dizzy. To make a long story short, my imagination got the best of me.

Okay, here it goes:  When I first read this article, I saw the word “surrogates”, and I didn’t process the meaning correctly.  My first images were of a cow nursing a baby, and this picture threw my tired and apparently, dysfunctional brain into overdrive.  For some reason, I could see a cow sitting in a rocking chair nursing a baby.  With that picture firmly planted, I began to wonder what would happen if cow surrogates became popular whet nurses for human babies everywhere. What would be the effects that cow surrogates would have on human children?

Well, number one: I would think that a baby’s first words would be “MooMoo” instead of “MaMa”.  Come on, the kid is going to get attached to the cow, and the cow is not going to speak anything but Moo-ese–the official language of cows so, of course, the kid is going to adopt that language.

Secondly, I think a kid might develop a warped association with the breast.  Let’s face it: a cow’s boob has much more to offer than a human boob.  It goes off in a lot of different directions. If a kid grows up to be either a heterosexual male or a lesbian, the cow breast might alter or deter sexual activity with humans.  Let’s go one step further.  If the saying is true that a guy marries a girl that reminds him of his mother, who will a male baby marry when he grows up?  Sort of takes the kinky out of bestiality, huh?

Third–and this is a positive effect of cow surrogates:  No longer would the words   “You are a fat cow” and “You are turning into a heifer” be considered insults. They would actually be compliments.

Fourth: Steak would no longer be the dinner of choice for anyone. I would think restaurant chains like Outback or Longhorn Steakhouse would cease to exist.

Fifth: If cows can now be milk surrogates, will they eventually be pregnancy surrogates?  I would assume there would be far fewer legal battles between cows and human mothers than there are now between human surrogates and mothers.

After I went through the possible effects that cow surrogates would have on human children, I shut down my computer, took a vamped-up Advil and tried to get some sleep. It was then that the light bulb went off in my head and I realized that the cow wouldn’t be nursing the kid; no, the milk would be pumped from the cow.  With the cow-kid images completely erased from my brain, I fell into a deep slumber and dreamed about eating a whopper with cheese while I watched a cow jump over the moon.  Pain pills are amazing things.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/16/us-china-cows-idUSTRE75F10K20110616

photo by rmgosling

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