Next (Page 48)

"You look good, baby, I’ve missed you," Gerard said, again imitating her husband’s voice.

"Thank you," she said. "I have a question for you, Gerard."

"Okay, if you insist."

"Tell me. What is the answer to thirteen minus seven?"

"I don’t know."

She hesitated. "What is the answer to thirteen take away seven?" That was how Evan would phrase it.

Promptly, the bird said, "Six."

"Eleven take away four?"

"Seven."

"Twelve take away two?"

"Ten."

She frowned. "Twenty-four take away eleven?"

"Oh. Oh. Oh," the parrot said, moving on the perch. "You try to trick me. Thirteen."

"What’s one-oh-one take away seventy?"

"Thirty-one. But we never get so many numbers. Most is two numbers."

"We?"

Gerard said nothing. He ducked his head rhythmically. He began to sing, "I love a parade…"

"Gerard," Gail said, "does Evan ask you for help?"

"Oh sure." And then a perfect imitation of Evan: "Hey, Gerrie, come and help me. It’s too hard for me." Then a whine: "It’s toohaaard… "

Gail said, "I have to get the video camera."

"Am I a star? Am I a star?"

"Yes," she said, "you are a star."

He spoke in an American drawl: "We’re sorry we’re late but we had to pick up our son Hank."

"What movie is that?" she said.

The same drawl: "Now Jo, just take it easy."

"You’re not going to tell me, are you?" she said.

"I need a bath," Gerard said, "before any filming. You promised me a bath."

Gail Bond hurried off to get the camera.

During his first yearof life, Gerard showed little effect from the human transgenes that had been injected into him as a chick by Yoshi Tomizu and Gail Bond in the laboratory of Maurice Grolier at the Institut National in Paris. This was not surprising. The successful injection of transgenes was a tricky business, and required dozens, even hundreds, of attempts before it worked properly. That was because multiple conditions had to be fulfilled for the gene to work in a new environment.

First, the gene had to be incorporated correctly into the existing genetic material of the animal. Sometimes the new gene was incorporated backward, which had a negative effect, or none at all. Sometimes it was inserted into an unstable region of the genome, and triggered lethal cancer in the animal. That was rather common.

Furthermore, transgenics was never a matter of inserting a single gene. Researchers also had to insert the associated genes necessary for the primary gene to function. For example, most genes had insulators and promoters. The promoters might make proteins that switched off the animal’s own genes, to allow the new addition to take over. Or they might enhance the workings of the injected gene itself. The insulators kept the new gene separated from the genes around it. They also made sure the new genetic material remained available within the cell.

Complex as they were, these considerations didn’t take into account the further intricacies that might arise from messenger RNAs within the cell. Or from the genes that controlled translation. And so on.

In reality, the task of injecting a gene into an animal and making it work more closely resembled debugging a computer program than it did any biological process. You had to keep fixing the errors, making adjustments, eliminating unwanted effects, until you got the thing working. And then you had to wait for downstream effects to show up, sometimes years later.

That was why the lab felt that Gail Bond should take Gerard home, and keep him as a pet for a while. To see if any positive or untoward effects showed up. Home rearing was especially important because African greys were highly intelligent – generally considered as intelligent as chimpanzees – and with a far greater capacity for language. Using sign language or computer keyboards, a few nonhuman primates had mastered about 150 words. But that was merely average for a grey parrot. Some grey parrots had as many as a thousand words. So they needed the kind of interaction and stimulation found in a human environment. They couldn’t be left in an animal holding facility, around mice and hamsters, or they would go mad from lack of stimulation.

Indeed, animal activists believed that many grey parrot pets were mentally disturbed as a result of insufficient interaction. It was as if they had been held in solitary confinement, year after year. A grey parrot required at least as much interaction as a human being. More, some scientists argued.

Gerard was finger-trained as a chick, and began talking early. He already had quite a vocabulary when Gail, who was thirty-one and married to an investment banker, brought him home to her apartment. As Gerard came into the living room, he said, "Hey, nice place, Gail. Way to go." (He had unfortunately picked up bits of American slang from watching television at the lab.)

"I’m glad you like it, Gerard," she said.

"I was just saying that," the parrot said.

"You mean you don’t like it?"

"I mean I was just saying that."

"Okay."

"Just an observation."

"Right. Fine."

She immediately made notations in a logbook. Gerard’s speech might prove highly significant. One of the goals of the transgenic experiment was to see to what extent scientists could modify the intelligent behavior of non-human animals. Primates were off-limits – too many rules and regulations – but people weren’t so sensitive about parrots. There were no ethics committees to supervise parrot experimentation. So the Grolier lab worked with African greys.