This escaladed to rakunks, a racoon/skunk hybrid (Atwood 51); snats, a rat/snake hybrid (Atwood 51); wolvogs, a wolf/dog hybrid (Atwood 209); et cetera. Some of these splices were useful but most were only for making scientists "feel like God. " (Atwood 51), crossing moral lines and disregarding nature. The worst of these splices are pigoons, a cross of humans and pigs used for organ (kidneys, skin, brains, et cetera) transplants and research (Atwood 22). Pigoons blur boundaries between man and animal and makes the reader ask "how far is too far? " (Atwood 206), when it comes to genetic splicing. The pigoons were considered a good idea, but they gave rise to corruption in the compounds that made them, who made their product overly expensive (Atwood 56) and the needs of the people in the compounds, who needed meat and used pigoons, eating "cells [that] might be identical with their own " (Atwood 24). Genetic splicing was originally meant to help "victims " (Atwood 56), but was twisted into a sport of creation and extortion, and led to acute cannibalism. All the advancements in Jimmy's society were generally twisted; infecting people, extorting people, and tearing families apart. .
The government in Jimmy's society works on a capitalist system, because their society values the improvements achieved through scientific and technologic development. The compounds, where the development occurs, hold the power in society because of the discoveries they make. The most heinous example of this is the HelthWyzer Compound, whose subsidiary NooSkins (Atwood 53) "develop[ed] skin-related biotechnologies " (Atwood 55) but HelthWyzer also had a "secret unit " (Atwood 211) focused solely on creating diseases and their antidotes, then deploying "the hostile bioforms into their vitamin pills " (Atwood 211); releasing the antidote only when they could make maximum profit on it. This project gave Crake the idea to put his JUVE virus, which would remove humanity, in his product: BlyssPluss, especially since this secret unit was the cause of his father's death (Atwood 211).
