In 2002, tissue taken from the abdomen of an anesthetized goldfish was grown in saline solution enriched with fetal calf serum. The tissue grew 15 percent, at which point it was sautéed in olive oil. The scientists said it smelled good, but the fools declined to eat any. Bah! They have no stomach for science!
Why am I only hearing about this now? Why couldn’t I mention it in this thread?
This leads to the question: Why goldfish? I mean, why not brew up a nice vat of salmon or halibut or orange roughy? The only good eatin’ goldfish are made by Pepperidge Farm.
Not to mention [del]Why cook it if you’re not going to get Skippy the Irritating Junior Lab Assistant to eat it without telling him what is is?[/del] I mean, Why cook it if you’re not going to eat it?
Can they do this tissue growth thing with tissue from any animal? If so, then we could eat bald eagle wings and panda steaks without actually endangering the species. The ultra-exotic meat trade could finally be brought down.
Yes, we could indeed do it with human meat. (I know that’s what we’re all thinking. Read my sig, second link. ;)) I can’t wait to try my own, in fact.
Maybe they intended to and chickened out at the last moment. Maybe they did and simply declined to tell anyone, for fear of massive squickage costing them future grants.
Probably because goldfish are cheap.
I can just see these three besmocked lab geeks nudging and jostling each other towards the little petri dish of fried goldfish daring one another to take a bite. It has a wonderful Larson-esque bend to it.
It’s not like they killed it. They just drugged it and nicked a bit of tissue. I’m sure someone could have sprung for a live salmon or even a cheap whitefish or something. Good Og, man, if it’s going to be done in the name of science it should at least be suited to a side of chips and some malt vinegar.
Did the donor goldfish make it out okay? I mean anesthetized? Why?
I’d have eaten it. Maybe I would have turned into a real-life Aquaman. That would have been pretty cool. My guess is that it tastes like [del]chicken of the sea[/del] tuna.
Animal handling protocols. You can’t just do anything you want to your lab animals, there has to be a reason why you can’t use a more humane alternative for whatever you’re doing. This makes a lot more sense when you’re using dogs or even rats, but I guess the cutoff point for “yeah, this is scientifically classified as an animal, but really, no one cares, vivisect the sucker” is somewhere between goldfish and nematodes.