(urth) note Re: Short Sun blog

[Jeff Wilson]

On 9/27/2010 7:14 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
>     *From:* Jane Delawney <mailto:jane_delawney at sky.com>
>     On 26/09/10 12:10, Lee Berman wrote:
>>     All these fantastic biological processes are casually accepted yet a slight
>>     protein readjustment in the histamines of a human-appearing alien by the best
>>     doctors of an interplanetary empire to suppress organ rejection is deemed
>>     impossible?
>     Not impossible; just very very improbable :)
>
>     Unless it is to be believed that all lifeforms everywhere in the
>     universe share a common biochemistry, it's about as believable that
>     an alien Typhon would be able to receive human organs (or body
>     parts, whatever) as it is that a human woman would be able to bear
>     the child of an alien being with copper-based blood, as occurs in
>     that well known /fantasy/ series Star Trek.
>
> Of course, it is not very probable according to conventional
> evolutionary theory (admittedly, Wolfe has a penchant for Lamarckism)
> that the native animals and plants of St.Anne would be edible to humans,
> or that humans would be edible to alzabo, for that matter. Indeed, the
> alzabo seems to have evolved a solution which is radically more
> effective and biologically implausible than the transplantation of human
> organs!

The memories supposedly only last a few days in the living beast, which 
could be in line with "normal" tissue rejection. It's also probable that 
the alzabo of Urth is altered from its native alien form, if it isn't 
actually the descendant of bear-men upon whom the memory-assimilation 
was grafted after being reverse engineered.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >