Genetic Engineering--would you?

[LadyV]

I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

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

Then what do you believe?

[venatorvenator]

I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

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

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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.

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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."

This is also a very interesting paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/ ... 9.full.pdf . Stanford people managed to use dna as a stable 1-bit storage. We're very close to a 8-bit organic computer so to speak, although one of the scientists said his intention is instead to use this the other way around, namely to bring computing technology inside our cells. I read his last paper's abstract and apparently he created genetic logic gates, and I think he wants to build some sort of programming language for the dna. He's been having a series of amazing breakthroughs and it's a good idea to bookmark him if you're interested in this area.

[GenghisKhan44]

May God bless the folks at Stanford - whatever a blessing would look like.

I only hope none of these guys take it that simply because they discover they can do something, therefore it is good, and therefore philosophers and theologians must be subordinate to scientists. I don't think most scientists would intend that, but, as Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss, and sadly even Steven Hawking have proved, even a very excellent, authoritative scientist can be a rather poor, ignorant, and arrogant philosopher. (The same, conversely, can be said of young-earth creationists and people who are ignorant of science making theological proclamations, and so on.)

[painhertz]

a way to make myself start producing insulin again.

That may not be far off with or without genetic engineering. I'd have to dig up some links I recall reading recently on diabetes treatments and potential cures. Be glad to send them to you PM or just post here if I can find them again. Otherwise, yes, this could be one definite goal. (It was something about "rebooting" the pancreas or something like that. Might have had something to do with stem cell research.)

i guess we are already playing god, because if you look now we are creating tings that shouldn't be possible

If we can invent it, it is most obviously possible, and I'd say highly probably that any other intelligent species has or will recreate such a thing again. (Note: wasn't sure if you were being sarcastic or not... figured I'd answer it with some seriousness.)

http://www.uab.edu/news/innovation/item ... slets-mice

[mvgulik]

I'm genuinely asking if you believe that.

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

Then what do you believe?

That I find this question to generally formulated, and that this subject line is not going anywhere.
(other than going even more off topic.)

[mvgulik]

http://www.uab.edu/news/innovation/item/5508-in-human-clinical-trial-uab-to-test-drug-shown-to-completely-reverse-diabetes-in-human-islets-mice

Interesting.

One thing in not clear to me from that article.
"verapamil completely reverses diabetes in animal models."
Would that be a possible somewhat permanent change after a verapamil cure, or only while taking verapamil ?
(presuming the latter for the moment)

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www.pnas.org: Thanks. Bookmarked, definitely.

[loftar]

A bit more than 60 years ago, the same was said for computer engineering. My 10 year old niece can make games now. (Hell, I learned LOGO when I was 10, and BASIC a short time later, and that's when PCs were still in the "new car" price range.) Otherwise, wouldn't you say any teenager willing to tackle college level material and actually grasp it before even graduating high school is already exceptional?

I have to say I still don't think the comparison is analogous, though. Computers are well-defined, constructed by humans to be programmable and are reliable and of simple structure. Genes, on the other hand, have no programming manual, to say the least.

Even if you were to have cheap home equipment to create and manage DNA segments and splice them into living cells, analyzing the resulting protein structure, not to mention the actual effects it will have in the organism is so difficult that it cannot possibly be compared to computer programming in any way. Protein folding is calculated on supercomputers and/or huge distributed networks, and analyzing the effects of a change in a protein in an actual cell requires intricate knowledge of an organism that is incomparably more complex than any computer system.

Not that cheap genetics equipment can't mean anything, but I really don't think it's comparable in any way whatever to the PC revolution, and while I might just be unimaginateive, I can't really see how it could be used in an amateur context. Certainly, it won't mean that kids will breed dogmen in their basements.

[painhertz]

"Certainly, it won't mean that kids will breed dogmen in their basements." You read it here first! Haven 2.0 to have dogmen!

[LadyV]

Then what do you believe?

That I find this question to generally formulated, and that this subject line is not going anywhere.
(other than going even more off topic.)[/quote]


So your playing devil's advocate. Risk an opinion I say.

[MagicManICT]

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.

Well, we've been using "genetic engineering" since the early parts of civilization when we figured out we could breed animals and plants for specific traits. It has become refined in the last couple of decades when we started unlocking the secrets of DNA. Not sure has been used for military purposes at all yet*, though who can say what people do behind closed doors? To note, biologists figured out how to mutate plants by bombarding seeds with radiation and seeing what was viable. Monsanto developed an herbicide resistant strain of corn using genetic engineering (their herbicide, of course).

*edit: well, yes, it has been. Biological WMDs aren't exactly secret, and go beyond the small pox and anthrax the public has been threatened with.

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.

Someone has been watching too much tv... Besides, why do you need clones? In theory, one can apply engineering to fertilized eggs in vitro. In fact, an army of clones because extremely vulnerable to biological agents.

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.

Correct in that this isn't a blog on furthering the subject (though i would like people to get comfortable with the idea of the good that can be done and understand how to look out for the destructive), and technical information doesn't have to be the goal on every discussion, either.

I have to say I still don't think the comparison is analogous, though.

I completely agree, but it was the best thing I can think of. My point, and pardon if I missed getting it across or failed to even mention it, was that we make tools to make technology easier and easier for people to access. I can see a day in the near future when even high school students can get out a genetics kit and modify a few plant seeds and then grow them to see what their toying with genes did. (Maybe make a yellow and white daisy black or something.)