Genetic Engineering--would you?

[Flevalt]

I would assume the first way to make use of genetic engineering would be, like always with new technology, applied for military purposes first and foremost.
Continuing this line of thought, if mass cloning became a thing and if genetic modifications could be done to these clones, it would likely lead to all kinds of new biological weapons. The clones would not even need to be in any state close to being recognized or acknowledged as human beings, for them to fulfill their purpose.
I could think of dozens of ways to put this into practice.
The last I heard about human cloning successes were when they cloned 30 embryos in China if I remember right.

Going down a different line of thought, living organisms and machines aren't all that different from each other in the way they work. You can make a machine emulate emotions or even experience dreams.
I would say chances are actually pretty high that humans are simply neurocybernetical machines.
Of course I'm not a neuro-scientist, but robots are big in the coming, not just for Google.
The 4th industrial Revolution has already begun.
Smart machines, just like genetic engineering seem to be current candidates with high potential for sudden technological surges. My second point being, I think that we might actually get closer to an understanding of how the human brain works through these advancements. And once we have this kind of knowledge, creating more human-like machines will in turn be possible as well. But the resources on the planet are finite and everything has it's limits.
If you can make a machine work like a human and a human like a machine, that only leaves the question which of the 2 available options costs less for each individual application. I could therefore imagine genetically modified organisms (not necessarily humans) partly replacing machines, perhaps not in areas that confront you in your daily lives often, but for example in aeronautics it would be a tremendous improvement to see a machine fly more similar to a bird or bee, just like it would be an improvement to see a mindless organism fly that way on the pilot's command.


A funny topic.
People that complain about such forum discussions not being scientifical enough because the discussions lack an empirical foundation kind of miss the point that this is a forum and not some science blog working with the goal in mind to bring humanity a step further. I don't see the harm in talking about things like these.

[LadyV]

*decides to sit back and wait until: there is some more use of science related reverence links, yes/no believers run out of steam, or topic gets locked.*

*Ponders about the fact that computer programs still come with unintentional side effect (bug's in layman's terms), and there active use as alternative cyber-spy or saboteur. (where still a long way off, but the root problem don't seems to grow up.)*

Well first of all yes and no is quite vital. Everyone has an opinion and that's not bad. It is a vital discussion of where we are going. If we deny yes or no in our pursuits and only follow cold science we do far greater damage because we are Human. And on issues of this level every person has the right to choose and be heard.

As for the computer programs statement...hardly a comparison to changing the fundamental of life its self.

[mvgulik]

http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/probing-the-improbable.pdf
http://embor.embopress.org/content/13/7/584

Yummy, more reading material.
Thanks.

[LadyV]

It's the nature of men to put the Earth and its resources under their rule and manipulate them. It's how the Agricultural Revolution transformed the world, how civilisation developed, how Kingdoms and Empires rise and fall. Saying we should not manipulate the genes of plants and irrational animals to make them more useful is like saying we shouldn't have domesticated dogs, cattle, or chickens, or that we should not have cultivated barley, wheat, sorghum, and other plants that people can actually eat.

Taming animals is not the same as opening them up and making them a different creature. Concepts such as taking Human muscle genes and inserting them in pigs for example. Yes it produces more dense muscle mass and thus more meat. But is it ethical to now be eating Human muscle? It may be grown in a pig but the gene is not of the pig.

Selective breeding of plants to produce the best they can be is fine. You are not changing there very structure merely selecting that which best suits your needs. It's when you begin taking the gene from cold water fish that live in arctic conditions and inserting into plants to resist freezing you go wrong. Animals and plants should remain separate things. Creating hybrids is a vast unknown that can be disastrous.

Very true. We should only refuse to "research" something that would actually be a violation of the moral law. Which is why, for example, we don't do experiments on humans beings (anymore anymore anymore) until they've been proven safe with other animals with genetic similarities to us, like mice.

Which, to put it shortly, is why I am horrified with some of the anthropocentric societal experiments being pushed today, but couldn't give a fuck whether I eat vat meat.

I do agree an understanding of how things work, combine, and progress is helpful. And in a case by case situation may be fine. But as a practice modifying any gene beyond its normal potential is dangerous. It is one thing to made the best plant or animal it can be. But when you begin introducing foreign genes into the base organism you begin changing life on a whole other level. And that is the unknown I talk of. I personally do not think we are any where near ready or knowledgeable to undertake such extremes. And even when the day comes that we are fairly sure we know all the possibilities we should step back and re-examine if we should and that we have learned enough.

I also agree the experiments are at times horrific. However i do care if I eat vat meat.

[mvgulik]

*decides to sit back and wait until: there is some more use of science related reverence links, yes/no believers run out of steam, or topic gets locked.*

*Ponders about the fact that computer programs still come with unintentional side effect (bug's in layman's terms), and there active use as alternative cyber-spy or saboteur. (where still a long way off, but the root problem don't seems to grow up.)*

Well first of all yes and no is quite vital.

I don't think it matters. The Yes will happen anyway, and the No's can only hope the Yes will not screw things up.

Everyone has an opinion and that's not bad. It is a vital discussion of where we are going.

Yes.
The problem comes from those that have firmly made up there mind on a definite Yes or No. And there usually only do some cherry picking in favor of there point(/believe), while trying to make is sound like the other side is wrong with unsubstantiated rebuttals.
I don't see those kind of talks as discussions, but as dual/tripple/etc monologues, and those never lead to anything useful.
(it only takes one or two of those to spoil it ... well, at least for me.)

cold science

That's intentional. The scientific method is geared to minimize the general, mainly unintentional, bias of humans to have an effect on tests/results/etc. If it would not do that, you would have no way of knowing the difference between False and True(ich) data. Which seems kinda crucial when you like to discus (the social part) something.

As for the computer programs statement...hardly a comparison to changing the fundamental of life its self.

Correct. Its revering to something else.

[mvgulik]

I would assume the first way to make use of genetic engineering would be, like always with new technology, applied for military purposes first and foremost.

I'm sure at some point it will. But the main target will probably be to search for ways to extend the human natural live.
(which is, in part, why we have a military in the first place.)

--- --- ---

"A Human and a grain of rice may not, at first glance, look like cousins. And yet we share a quarter of our genes with that fine plant." [Read/Play]
++
CQ: Genes do not make the man/animal/plant. Its the whole that makes what it is, and a single additional gene will not really change that.

[GenghisKhan44]

It's the nature of men to put the Earth and its resources under their rule and manipulate them. It's how the Agricultural Revolution transformed the world, how civilisation developed, how Kingdoms and Empires rise and fall. Saying we should not manipulate the genes of plants and irrational animals to make them more useful is like saying we shouldn't have domesticated dogs, cattle, or chickens, or that we should not have cultivated barley, wheat, sorghum, and other plants that people can actually eat.

Taming animals is not the same as opening them up and making them a different creature. Concepts such as taking Human muscle genes and inserting them in pigs for example. Yes it produces more dense muscle mass and thus more meat. But is it ethical to now be eating Human muscle? It may be grown in a pig but the gene is not of the pig.

That is a good question. Probably not. (But, hey. No one seems to care than a human cell line is used to test the flavour of foods. [Which, by the way, is not the same as eating aborted fetuses. But it's still wrong.])
But there's got to be something with denser muscle mass than isn't human. Can't we mix pig genes with, say, gorilla genes, or whale genes? Or something else?

Selective breeding of plants to produce the best they can be is fine. You are not changing there very structure merely selecting that which best suits your needs. It's when you begin taking the gene from cold water fish that live in arctic conditions and inserting into plants to resist freezing you go wrong. Animals and plants should remain separate things. Creating hybrids is a vast unknown that can be disastrous.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but every living thing has the genetic capabilities that are being injected into them. Or, at very least, genetic code has many capabilites, most of which are dormant. I don't know whether we've figured out how to activate dormant genes. My guess would be that, right now, probably not. Or else it is simply easier to control the results by adding in or knocking out genes.

Would genetic engineering be any less controversial if scientists limited themselves to modifying the genes of a species within its own species? Like knockout mice?

I do agree we shouldn't tamper with human genes. Frankly, we don't need to. Any limitations we have as a species can be overcome without tampering with human chromosomes.

Very true. We should only refuse to "research" something that would actually be a violation of the moral law. Which is why, for example, we don't do experiments on humans beings (anymore anymore anymore) until they've been proven safe with other animals with genetic similarities to us, like mice.

Which, to put it shortly, is why I am horrified with some of the anthropocentric societal experiments being pushed today, but couldn't give a fuck whether I eat vat meat.

I do agree an understanding of how things work, combine, and progress is helpful. And in a case by case situation may be fine. But as a practice modifying any gene beyond its normal potential is dangerous. It is one thing to made the best plant or animal it can be. But when you begin introducing foreign genes into the base organism you begin changing life on a whole other level. And that is the unknown I talk of. I personally do not think we are any where near ready or knowledgeable to undertake such extremes. And even when the day comes that we are fairly sure we know all the possibilities we should step back and re-examine if we should and that we have learned enough.

I also agree the experiments are at times horrific. However i do care if I eat vat meat.

I do think you are right in a respect, if I understand you correctly.

We don't take enough time to think about the moral, ethical, or philosophical consequences of our tampering with genes - or of the fact that we can tamper with them. I'm not so much worried about the day when we can end world hunger by splicing a few genes in a pig embryo, or whatever. I'm more worried about the moral consequences of modifying human genetic code. Would a GM "human" then be a human? Would they have the same rights as organic humans? Do you know that we've already managed to clone human zygotes? Not make them in vitro, and not split them like identical twins, clone them. We have the ability to modify human genetic code. Do you realise what the implications are of that?

Perhaps you do. I certainly don't know all of them. But I sure the hell don't think the people who advocate for dabbling with human genes, making embryos made-to-order, and the like, know what they're getting into.

Still, at the end of the day, that doesn't mean I care very much if we make GMOs out of anything else. It's like husbandry on a molecular scale. I see no problem with practicing eugenics on animals.

[GenghisKhan44]

I don't think it matters. The Yes will happen anyway, and the No's can only hope the Yes will not screw things up.

That's true. That doesn't mean everything that is possible for us to do is good for us to do.

If you really think otherwise, history would be willing to teach you a profound lesson.

The problem comes from those that have firmly made up there mind on a definite Yes or No. And there usually only do some cherry picking in favor of there point(/believe), while trying to make is sound like the other side is wrong with unsubstantiated rebuttals.
I don't see those kind of talks as discussions, but as dual/tripple/etc monologues, and those never lead to anything useful.
(it only takes one or two of those to spoil it ... well, at least for me.)

I agree. We shouldn't cherry-pick, and we should be willing to hear opposing arguments.

But, at the end of the day, some conduct is right, good, and to be done. And some is neutral. And some is bad, evil, and not to be done. Relegating evil to merely obvious evils like murder of an innocent adult is moral laziness. Someone societally, if not everyone, must put time into considering whether what they do, believe, or are is moral and what is amoral and what is immoral - more time, much more time, than we, as a society, put into actually doing those things.

cold science

That's intentional. The scientific method is geared to minimize the general, mainly unintentional, bias of humans to have an effect on tests/results/etc. If it would not do that, you would have no way of knowing the difference between False and True(ich) data. Which seems kinda crucial when you like to discus (the social part) something.

So morality should not at all be considered in scientific experimentation? Science should be beyond the reach of ethics, much less discussion of good and evil?
I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

[mvgulik]

I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

Seems more like your just trying to make others believe that I believe that.

--- --- ---

As synthetic biology touches on many sensitive ethical questions, a dialogue between scientists, industry and the public is paramount to prevent misunderstandings about research. One example is the debate about GM food in the UK. It was primarily a communication issue that ended GM food production in the UK. As noted in [[40]], although members of the public are happy to take recombinant‐DNA‐based drugs such as insulin or interferon, foods with even trace amounts of recombinant DNA are viewed as highly offensive.

Source: One of the three links venatorvenator posted.

--- --- ---

New research technics, New discoveries.

quantamagazine::At Tiny Scales, a Giant Burst on Tree of Life
"A new technique for finding and characterizing microbes has boosted the number of known bacteria by almost 50 percent, revealing a hidden world all around us."

[GenghisKhan44]

I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

Seems more like your just trying to make others believe that I believe that.

You don't, then?