I feel the exact same way. I couldn't even read the article, because
I knew it would upset me. Nothing personal, Adrian, I don't mind that
you posted about it. I just didn't want to know, or see pictures of
the cats, etc.

Nature is incredibly complex. You can't just *remove* certain traits
with the idea that it won't have any repercussions. How do we know
that cats don't *need* their dander for some reason? Or that they
don't need whatever mechanism it is that produces the allergenic
proteins? Perhaps they need those proteins - what a concept!

When you start tampering with biological processes, thinking that
you've isolated a particular system, you can be absolutely sure that
you have missed connections to other systems in that same organism,
which will be affected by the change, even if you can't see it.
("You" being scientists, that is.)

When wild animals are deliberately bred for specific personality
traits such as docility or tameness, even using more traditional
breeding methods, all sorts of other traits come along for the ride.
Foxes bred for tameness turn from brown to white. In fact, all
animals bred for tameness almost always change color in successive
generations, and nobody knows why. And that's just the change we can
see! How do we know what we're doing to them on the inside?

And that's not even bringing genetic engineering into the picture,
which can do in a single generation what traditional breeding needs
many generations to accomplish. Imagine the consequences in those
cases. Actually, I can't. We have no idea.

It's one thing to create hypoallergenic makeup or pillows, but a
living, sentient being? What's next, hypoallergenic children? Why
don't they put that money and energy into developing better cloths
to wipe down cats, in order to keep the dander from building up, or
better hepa filters and vacuum cleaners, etc. Oh, forgot, people
don't want to have to do all that *work*. They'd rather buy a
designer kitty.

OK, off my rant now. This just makes me really sad.

Joyce

I have to say, I kind of felt this way, but I did see a piece the other
day on a the CBS morning show and it was pretty impressive. There is a
gal who works there who cannot even date a person who owns a cat
because she is so sensative (and I once knew someone this touchy. She
just came on our porch and her eyes puffed up and she became completely
stuffed up and heavy breathing. i think she might have had a fit if she
touched a cat). She sat with this cat for 45 minutes, sitting on her
lap, petting it, and well, her expression was really something. the
other thing is that it's  not like just anyone can buy them. You have
to be tested to make sure your allergies are the ones that are set off
by this particular protein. I was always under the impression the cats
were genetically engineered, but rather they found existing cats to
breed (which explains why some cats make my skin itch and some do not.
I didn't realize it's probably that some are just missing this
protein). So it has its pros and cons. They are so expensive that I
don't think they will in any manner be "throw away" cats and it should
completely dispell "lookie louves" from just getting one. I'm really
undecided about this. In this case, it isn't as though the people
getting these cats would really be able to go to a shelter to pick one
out. They just wouldn't have any cat.