Defending Dr. Moreau from the human-racists

I'm reading The Island of Dr. Moreau to my 8 year-old son, and its a fascinating read for child and parent. As I describe in my Betterhumans column this week "Monsters in the Media" tracking images of human-racism and non-human intelligence in the media has been a longtime research project. Also take a look at Ron Bailey's piece in Reason giving Stuart Newman and Jeremy Rifkin a good thwack for trying to stop chimeric (human-animal transgenic) research by getting a patent on the idea of human-animal chimeras. See also Mark Dowie's piece on the Newman/Rifkin patent scam in Mother Jones this month which hysterically concludes with rhetorical questions about the looming enslavement of human-animal chimeras, which is precisely what a personhood-based rather thana Rifkinite humanness-based public policy would make impossible.