The story of a dog that survived euthanasia by gas in St. Louis is making the rounds on the quirky new circuit. The angle I don't see anyone even mentioning, however, is that we may have just witnessed the beginning of all dogs being resistant to poison gas. This dog is just one year old, and because it survived the poison gas it is beng put up for adoption. If it isn't neutered (article doesn't say) then it might live to father puppies and perhaps pass on an immunity to the gas. If stray dogs that don't die when gased get to survive, then we should soon see a lot of dogs with immunity to poison gas showing up at animal shelters across the country.
Genetic engineering in action, as it were. The question I always ask whenever genetic engineering comes up in a discussion is this: how is it worse when we manipulate genes directly, instead of through selective breeding? Why do we damn scientists for adding Vitamin A to rice ("The way to cure blindness and hunger should not come from big agribusiness," said Brian Tokar, a member of Biojustice, a group opposed to genetic engineering), but we don't curse the gardeners who selectivly bred the tomato into a plant much different from its wild variety that yields tiny fruit. (Check out this 1860's tomato, as well as this wild tomato and compare them to our moden varieties.)
We don't think twice about manipulating the genomic make-up of life on earth when it's done accidentially or in a herdy-gerdy cross-breeding fashion, but people are suddenly aghast now that we actually know what we're doing.
James Weldon has posted his Graphic Novella, Polio: A Virus’ Struggle, on the Science Creative Quarterly's website. It's interesting in two ways; interesting in its discussion of the Polio virus (I had no idea it was of such ancient origin), and interesting in its breezy presentation of hard facts. 
