When creating lethal mutants, please keep these World Health Organization directives front of mind.
Image: Lore Sjöberg
“When 22 bird flu experts meet at the World Health Organization this week, they will be tasked with deciding just how far scientists should go in creating lethal mutant viruses in the name of research.” — Reuters
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION’S OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON LETHAL MUTANT VIRUSES, ORGANISMS AND INORGANIC LIFE FORMS
While we recognize that the cause of science and public health is advanced, in the long term, by the creation of lethal mutant viruses, organisms and inorganic life forms, we also recognize that, in the immediate sense, lethality is generally considered counter to the goals of the World Health Organization. We therefore provide the following recommendations for scientists.
1. Giant versions of existing organisms must not be more than 3.5 times larger than the normal version.
2. Tiny versions of existing organisms must not be small enough to be absorbed through the nasal membranes.
3. Just … don’t make it breathe fire. Just don’t.
4. Same with eye beams.
5. Lethal mutant creatures should not feed on any of the following:
5a. Fear.
5b. Pain.
5c. Human blood, if the blood must be specifically and exclusively human. Feeding on human blood as part of a general tendency toward hematophagy is acceptable.
5d. The “X” of children, where “X” is pretty much whatever.
5e. Radiation.
5f. Everything.
6. Be aware that most life insurance plans don’t pay in case of ironic death.
7. While combining the genetic material of humans with that of lower life forms is both extremely instructive and, let’s be honest, a real hoot, please make sure the resulting organism can’t talk. It’s creepy.
8. Creatures that plant their eggs in humans, leading to a bloody and painful death of the host as the young squirm and tear their way to the outside world, should provide some positive medical benefit.
9. You know the candiru, the tiny fish that can swim into a human’s urethra and lodge itself there with tiny spines? You will never come up with anything that awesome.
10. No invisibility.
11. No perfect camouflage that might as well be invisibility.
12. No transmogrifying into an exact duplicate of another person or animal.
13. Let’s just say the creature should look like whatever it actually is.
14. If you take a food animal and make it aware of its fate, prepare to be excluded from all World Health Organization barbecues.
15. There is no reason to make lethal mutant versions of sharks. They’re already sharks.
16. Go ahead and bring extinct species back to life if you want; we took them once, we can take them again.
17. If you create an energy being, please do not refer to it as “a being of pure energy.” Nobody has ever created a being of 97 percent energy and 3 percent nougat.
18. If you believe your creation will help you live forever and/or return the dead to life, let us know so we can get in on that action.
19. Humanity is not the real monster. Your monster is the real monster.
20. If you create a creature that escapes your control and wreaks havoc on the surrounding community, do not then create a female version.
21. Please do not say that your creature replicates “like a virus” unless it enters the cells of a living organism and hijacks the cellular apparatus to replicate itself. That goes double for your YouTube video.
22. Lethal mutant life forms should not be able to heal instantly from any wound. Wait, no, that counts as a medical breakthrough. OK, go for it.
23. It is the position of the World Health Organization that if you realize, just before you die, that you’ve been a fool to trifle with the laws of nature, and you recant your single-minded pursuit of science at the expense of basic humanity, revealing at the last possible moment that there was good inside you all along, you’re still a dick.
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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a boffin, a griffin and a muffin.
