The Beautiful Animal Called Man
It is a tragic fact of life that in order for man to move forward at a progressive rate dinosaurs could never have conceived, mankind engage in some truly abominable acts against other living creatures. A beautifully wrought piece of imagery puts the paradox of man’s place in the cosmic history of earth into perspective:
“The hand is a symbol of humanity, part of what makes us human - the hand that carved the Parthenon, painted the hands of God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and wrote King Lear was the only hand that had known smallpox. That same hand had now given the disease to a monkey.”
Human Exceptionalism Denied
A poxvirus is special strain that specifically attacks either vertebrates or insects. What unifies their victims is that they gather together in close-knit, dense populate ways such as a herd or swarm. The effect, obviously, is that when poxvirus strikes a species, the affected population is drastically reduced:
“Viruses are nature’s crowd control, and a poxvirus can thin a crowd in a hurry. For most of human history, the human species consisted of a small, scattered groups of hunter-gatherers. The human species did not collect in crowds, and so it was almost beneath the notice of a pox.”
HIV versus Smallpox
Both HIV and smallpox are viruses. But not all viruses are alike. The genetic makeup of a virus covers a broad range of possibilities and potential. The full extent to which this gap of complexity is possible it made abundantly clear in one of the more memorable pieces of imagery in the narrative:
“Smallpox..has about two hundred genes…By contrast, the AIDS virus, HIV, has a simple design that works well. HIV is a bicycle, while smallpox is a Cadillac loaded with tail fins and every option in the book.”
Monkey C099
Monkeys are prevalent in the story because, of course, they are experimented upon. But Monkey C099 attains the level of character precisely because the description of his contribution to human history is made viscerally palpable through the use of imagery charting his role throughout the process:
“a large male crab-eating macaque, Monkey C099 was watching the people. He was an alert animal, calmer and more inquisitive than the others…a pale muzzle with pinkish-white skin that was free of facial hair, which was unusual for a crab-eater. It gave him a more human appearance than some of the other monkeys. He was a leader type, more confident of himself, and one of the largest males in the group. He had big, sharp, canine teeth. He was not a monkey to mess with.”
