OncoMouse and me
A genetically engineered animal helped me rethink the imago Dei. It might also save my life.
(Illustration by Martha Park)
When I walked across the threshold into what Susan Sontag called “the kingdom of the sick,” I held the belief that the imago Dei was a metaphor that set humans apart and demonstrated God’s love for us. Now a small relative of mine, a transgenic lab mouse known as OncoMouse, is demolishing that understanding of what it means to be human. OncoMouse shatters all the traditional boundaries I’ve held so dear: human/nonhuman, nature/culture, artificial/natural. OncoMouse reminds me that the image of God is reflected in, with, and under all of creation.
OncoMouse is kin to me, and the research for which she is being used could possibly one day save my life. Over the last seven years I’ve had three kinds of cancer: breast, melanoma, and solitary fibrous tumors. This last one is incredibly rare. Only about one person in a million per year gets it, and when it led to a sepsis that threatened my life, doctors told me my condition was even more rare. Internal medicine residents started writing it up for the medical literature.
My cancer is rare. But even without the cancer, I am an utterly unique human being among all the 117 billion humans who have ever lived. And according to my religious tradition, the one thing I share with all other human beings is called the imago Dei.
