The Drudge Report had a link to this story a day or two ago. It turns out that:
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of…warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents…
According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist (Ilya Ivanov): "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat…"
Mr Ivanov’s experiments, unsurprisingly from what we now know, were a total failure. He returned to the Soviet Union, only to see experiments in Georgia to use monkey sperm in human volunteers similarly fail…
For his expensive failure, he was sentenced to five years’ jail, which was later commuted to five years’ exile in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan in 1931. A year later he died, reportedly after falling sick while standing on a freezing railway platform.
This could all be a hoax, but then again, there were more than a few who had strange ideas about genetics in the early to mid 20th century. Certainly, Lysenko’s genetic theories had more devastating effects on the Soviet Union (and later China) than Ivanov’s futile attempts to cross species. Still, the story brought this exchange to mind:
Mrs. Krabappel: Are there any questions?
Bart Simpson: How would I go about creating a half-man, half-monkey type creature?
Mrs. Krabappel: I’m sorry, that would be playing God.
Bart Simpson: God, shmod, I want my monkey-man!
UPDATE: Looks like Instapundit beat me to the Bart Simpson reference by two days. D’oh!
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