Wealthy, retired tycoon Charles Stanford is sneaking around behind his brother Winston's back with his wife when he finds out that Winston is terminal with cancer. Charles contacts a company that has had success fighting cancer by exchanging human and animal DNA. Instead of curing the cancer they create a chimera (animal/human hybrid) for Charles, in the form of a dog that carries much of his brother's DNA. This way Charles can still have a part of his brother that he really did love even though he cheated with his girlfriend. Things go wrong when the dog seems less like a new being and more like the reincarnation of his brother in an animal's body. This is a very real science. The University of Minnesota has dozens of pigs that produce human blood for a possible future method of producing blood for transfusions. Other companies have gotten fined for experimenting in DNA mixing that is unapproved.