Salamanderoos are fun to wear, (yeah,)
Something super new in underwear!
Anyone else remember how DDT was going to rid the world of bugs? Well it did that, and also got rid of frogs, birds, fish, …
The bottom line for me is that I don’t think we are prepared to anticipate or deal with the ethical and biological ramifications. So in a sense, it is “bad”, for now.
Our awareness of evolution and other scientific knowledge has only underlined the fact that humans are just another species of animal. Yet we no longer have the feeling of kinship and respect with other species that many cultures once had. So we now regard animals by and large as objects for profit and scientific manipulation. This viewpoint is considered acceptable as long as there is a species specific exemption for the human animal. Yet what is this exemption based on?
Perhaps it is simply the fact that we are humans and they are not. There are humans in a vegetable state that are certainly less intelligent than a chicken. Yet it is considered perfectly fine to kill a chicken and a moral quandary to kill a vegetative human. We haven’t even addressed genetic engineering yet.
Let’s say we engineer a hyper intelligent species of animal, perhaps an ape. This animal can now score highly on human IQ tests and maybe we’ve even modified the vocal cords so they can speak. Do we still give them the same rights as apes? Conversely, what if we created animals with human bodies but stunted nervous systems. Still human or not?
These examples say to me, that while we value intelligence it need not belong only to humans (anymore), and we don’t want to define and perhaps cannot define what makes humans so special. But if we can’t do that, how do we justify our exemption from objectification? This is essential to me, because if we don’t justify it, we can’t assure ourselves our exemption or adequately rationalize our behavior towards other species.
Species-centric viewpoints have been a very important tool in our evolution. Yet while humanity stands on the threshold of the genetic philosopher’s stone of life - which put’s evolution itself in an entirely different perspective - we are still, as a whole, stuck in the same modes of thought.
This has been eloquently demonstrated by the laughable comparisons of genetic engineering to animal husbandry and plant grafting by John Mace and xtisme. 19th century viewpoints are not capable of dealing with the consequences of twenty first century technology. The ostrich simply buries it’s head in the sand. One may as well be comparing flint arrowheads to nuclear weapons.
This sort of thinking just underlines my point, that we are not ready for the immense power that is fastly becoming ours.
Human genes are not exempt from gentic experimentation. They havebeen combined with animal genes for years. We already stand on the slippery slope of our own objectification and devaluation. We will either recognize the sanctity of all life or lose respect for our own.
Actually, I hope that my daughter will have that option. Or maybe HER kids will finally be able to get rid of the genes for heart disease, diabetes, myopia, etc. that I have or may have passed on to her. I already know she’s myopic. Since her dad and I are both diabetic, she’s at high risk for developing diabetes herself.
Of course, I take bioengineered insulin, so I’m already prone to like the field.
Bio-engineering? Stem-cell research? Grow a new pancreas! Not a bad idea!
errata, I think anyone here will agree that genetic engineering to that degree of humans is completely unethical at this time, because of the risks involved. However, if we can be assured that it’s as safe as conceiving a child in the more usual way, I don’t see a problem.
You mention that there are ethical issues. Did you mean that it’s just flat dangerous at this time, or is there something else?
From ccwaterback
Some brief points on DDT from the Master:
[Straightdope](Guys, you have got to learn to read between the lines. All the products we ever need have ALREADY been invented (by those evil capitalists). Look what he’s saying here…)
Afaik, DDT isn’t a bio-engineered agent in any case, so what was your point??
Well, THAT link was definitely fucked up. Here it is again:
Here is another quote while I’m at it:
isnt it mule = horse + donkey
Just trying to make a point that we tend to forge on willy-nilly with our technology without a true understanding of the consequences. Perhaps we learned a valuable lesson with DDT? I hope so.
I’m not that worried. Perhaps I’m a bit biased, cause I do it every day… 
Once something is introduced into a genome, it is prone to natural selection. Most of the times, our crude meddling causes negative shifts in fitness, and one can expect those mutations to be bred out relatively quickly. Usually, these shifts are pretty extreme.
Just look at my department’s floor. The cell culture guys down the hall are always complaining to us fruit fly guys that they are getting fruit flies in their cell culture media (maybe they are actually getting cell culture media in our fruit flies, but that’s another story). Our flies, nearly uniformly, have mutated eye colors (red->white), curly wings, messed up bristles, or a bizarre body color or shape. So I go and look at the flies floating in their cells a few doors down. They never have mutant phenotypes. The flies smart enough to get out and get into another room with food are all the kind you find in the wild. Either that or they just aren’t our fruit flies (which is what I always claim).
One can expect this from things like the GFP fish that is making news now. If one of these got out, it would be an easy tasty meal for the next fish out there. Even if it didn’t fluoresce brightly, and therefore didn’t get eaten because it was an easy target, the extra DNA gives no positive fitness, so mutations will just accumulate and the gene will soon be deactivated.
There are other things that may impart a positive fitness: bt in corn – it gives protection against bugs, “Antifreeze” genes from fish in tomatoes to make them freeze-hardy. There is really no inherent danger as I see it in taking one edible, digestible, nontoxic gene, and sticking it into another production vehicle. In the long run, if these don’t give positive fitness, they will vanish from the gene pool. If they do, the corn and tomatoes will be better off for it and we won’t notice the difference. In the long term, it is an adaptation that the corn or tomatoes would need anyway (if they were to survive in those particular environments). The fact that it came from bacteria or fish doesn’t matter – it is just DNA. DNA can spread like that in nature (through lateral transmission by way of viruses). But, no matter what the introduction method (nature versus man), in the end, it is just a gene, subject to all the same rules of evolution and genome structure.
I think we’re further along than many people think.
Another case in point. Human genes are being combined with pig genes for the purposes of creating human organ farms. So how human will we make these pigs before they are too human?
edwino,
I have a question for you. I seem to remember reading that a specific gene doesn’t necessarily have a 1:1 relationship to an expressed trait and that genes are dependent upon other genes for expression. I can’t seem to find that in laymen’s terms out on the internet so I was wondering if you could confirm, deny, or clarify that idea since you seem to have the background to answer the question.
That is correct. 1:1 correlation between allele and trait can happen, but it is certainly not the rule. There are a number of things going on here, and the reason you can’t find a good explanation all in one place is because this one question encompasses a good chunk of what we call genetics.
First is the exact nature of the trait you are looking at. Many diseases out there are correlated in a 1:1 fashion with specific alleles. Sickle cell disease comes to mind – it is one mutation in the hemoglobin gene that causes the sickling. Carry this, and you will get SCD. Cystic fibrosis is another one (although many different mutations can cause CF, one mutation is responsible for most of it). Many traits and diseases are caused by many alleles. Complex traits like skin color and eye color are good examples.
Second is the role of the gene mutated. There are a number of things going on here. Genes are all part of regulatory networks. If you mutate a specific network, or an end-product gene with only one role, you will get a very specific trait. Mutating a regulatory gene or a gene with many roles, and you get many different traits.
Third is the exact kind of mutation. A gene can be mutated in any one of a number of ways – it can be deleted or obliterated, it can be misexpressed, it can gain new function, it can decrease or increase activity. So two different mutations in the same gene can cause different sets of traits.
Fourth is penetrance. Because the genome is so complex, and because each one of us carries a different complement of alleles, in the end, all of our genetic regulatory networks are somewhat unique. Mutations which cause severe traits in one person may not cause any change in another, because of genetic background. This is called penetrance.
Thanks edwino. Very informative.
My follow up is essentially, can we really predict how human these pigs will be when we inject human DNA? There is, I imagine, some room for error, but I think the pressure for human parts of all kinds is large.
While it may seem relatively innoccuous to cross human and pig genes to create human like organs in pigs, what if the body parts where more recognizable? Would it be all that big of a difference in scale to create pigs with human eyes for example? To get the right size and shape, perhaps we would have to create a more human face. While genetically, it may be a similar amount of human genetic material, I think this sort of transformation would provoke a little more of a reaction when people see the end product. [shudder]
Honestly, moral implications aside, there is a great demand for human parts, this latest strategy is distressing to me. I hate to think what unscrupulous labs will be doing whilst piggy-backing on the well funded and regulated research.
I don’t understand why you regard those comparisons as so laughable. I think you seriously underestimate the degree to which we are capable of changing organisms using nothing but those “primitive 19th century methods”. Basset Hounds and Chihuahuas bear almost no resemblence to wolves (from which they are descended). Domestic corn looks nothing like its progenitor teosinte (and indeed, it’s been so mutated as a resut of selective breeding that it can no longer propigate on its own, but absolutely <i>requires</i> human cultivation to survive and disperse its seeds). Virtually every domesticated plant and animal species has been significantly altered from its wild form in order to make it more useful to us.
We’ve been drastically altering other organisms to suit our own species’ needs for at least 40,000 years. Genetic engineering simply allows us more precise control over how we manipulate other species. It’s not some uniquely problematic technology.
Certainly we can! They won’t be “human” at all; they’ll merely be expressing some human cell surface markers on the membranes of their cells. We’re not just injecting human DNA willy-nilly; we know precisely which genes we’re adding to the pig’s genome, and how those particular genes operate. A pig expressing human HLA antigens on its cells is still just a pig; it merely has organs which will be more compatible with a human immune system.
(Pig organs, by the way, are nearly identical in appearance and size to human organs; it’s one major reason why pigs are being considered for this sort of project. If I placed a pig heart and a human heart side by side, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.)
We’ve been able to accomplish drastic forms of speciation, but genetic engineering makes the blurs the lines even betweent the animal and vegetable kingdoms! Crossing mice genes with tomatoes could not have been achieved with any amount of animal husbandry. The difference in scope in incomparable.
No, errata, I still don’t think there’s any difference. We could, with traditional methods, eventually come up with a tomato that has a mouse gene. Consider this: start with two genes in the two that are similar (there are gobs of these), and force mutations in the tomato until it’s the same as the mouse gene. Is there a difference that the source was not a mouse? They’re just chemicals - all atoms are alike. No difference. It’s a modified tomato either way.
You keep talking about ethical issues and things that are disturbing, but I have yet to see anyone mention anything slightly disturbing about this technology, or hear anything that comes close to an ethical issue. Could you spell one out for me? I haven’t been successful reading between your lines.
Easier than CurtC’s method is lateral transmission by viral transduction, as I mentioned above.
When a virus infects an organism, it often takes a chunk of genome with it. This can be passed along to the next infected organism. Granted, there aren’t any viruses (of which I am aware) which infect both plants and animals. But this doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, or that it hasn’t happened. We carry a lot of viral DNA in our genomes and chances are not all of it is strictly viral in origin. In fact, given the fact that viruses as particles don’t replicate, chances are that most viral genes in fact have originated in other organisms.
errata, you seem to have a skewed view of how genetic engineering works. Our technology limits us right now: when we talk genetic engineering, we are talking about introducing a handful of genes. In pigs, we are introducing human HLA genes, which encode the proteins that the immune system uses to recognize “self” tissue. All we are doing is taking pig livers (or whatever), and slightly altering them (taking out pig HLAs and putting in human ones, a change of a few genes) to trick the human immune system into accepting them as our own.
They are still pig livers. It takes thousands of genes to encode and to run a mature adult liver. We aren’t touching these – they are still pig genes.
In the future, with huge leaps in technology, perhaps we could introduce these thousands of genes – all of the transcription factors and enzymes and DNA replication machinery and translation machinery etc. etc. Then we could be talking about whether the liver is more pig or more human. But there is really no reason to – evolution dictates that the genes are well over 95% similar, and the function is almost entirely the same. So the pig genes work fine, even in humans. There is nothing special about pig genes versus human genes, especially when we are talking about some gene which induces a transcriptional network for correct ductal morphology (or whatever). They work the same, and there is no reason to muck about if it works.
In the end, nearly every legal system in every society recognizes what makes us humans. That is the brain and sentience. If you are brain dead to the point that you fail an apnea test, in the US (and most other places, to the best of my knowledge), you are dead. Life support is discontinued because you are dead.
Nobody will care much if pigs are growing recognizable human livers or human hearts or even human ears or human eyes. Not even human hands. As long as their brains are pig brains, then they are pigs.