genetic engineering

[evilkoal]

i was wondering how other people feel about genetic engineering in general, and genetic engineering on humans.

 

my opinion on it is that it is amazing!

imagine being able to be ten feet tall with two sets of all your vital organs, lungs that can process other substances than air, stomaches (sp?) that can digest anything, honeycomb bone structures, very fast regeneration, and stuff like that. imagine what we could become as a species! there would be all sorts of genetically modified humans, all sorts of subspecies. our armies would be unstoppable. people could potentially live for thousands of years, but then there could be drastic consequences, such as people not being able to interbreed, and all sorts of undesirable mutations.

 

when i actually get around to going to college, i am going to try to go into some sort of genetic engineering/genetic sciences field, and i was just wondering what people thought of it :)

[Vagrant0]

i was wondering how other people feel about genetic engineering in general, and genetic engineering on humans.

 

my opinion on it is that it is amazing!

imagine being able to be ten feet tall with two sets of all your vital organs, lungs that can process other substances than air, stomaches (sp?) that can digest anything, honeycomb bone structures, very fast regeneration, and stuff like that. imagine what we could become as a species! there would be all sorts of genetically modified humans, all sorts of subspecies. our armies would be unstoppable. people could potentially live for thousands of years, but then there could be drastic consequences, such as people not being able to interbreed, and all sorts of undesirable mutations.

 

when i actually get around to going to college, i am going to try to go into some sort of genetic engineering/genetic sciences field, and i was just wondering what people thought of it :)

Sadly, the fantasy of it doesn't live up to the reality.

 

Genes are a rather complicated thing, there is no single gene that controls height fir instance, additionally, increasing height without adjusting other genes, like those needed for bone growth, could be rather disasterous. As is many really tall people end up having problems later in life because their body can't support that much weight. More importantly, it would probably be a bad thing to be much taller than we are now as a species. Larger creatures require more food, oxygen, and water. Imagine if the population of the world suddenly required 30-50% more food/water/oxygen than it does now... Not a good thing. And all those other things you suggest would probably be even more detrimental to humanity.

 

Two sets of vital organs would require twice as much blood, twice as much oxygen, and twice as much space in our torso... Nevermind having to pretty much remap the circulatory, autonomic, and central nervous system to make it all work. Just for a backup?

 

You breathe air as a process for removing excess carbon from your body. Although carbon may combine with other elements, oxygen is one of the most common, and least problematic of these. Additionally, since our blood seems designed to carry oxygen and carbondioxyde, and the system works pretty well, all things considdered, breathing anything else seems a bit silly. Gills don't count since they are technically less advanced, less resilliant lungs. That and you probably won't be able to find anyone willing to undergo such a treatment if only because any miscalculation would mean death.

 

Our stomach is fine as is, what reason would you have for trying to eat anything else. Just because your stomach can digest it doesn't mean that your body can make use of it.

 

Very fast regeneration comes at a very steep price... Namely longevity. Every time a cell splits, a sort of counter within that cell decreases. When that counter reaches 0, that cell will no longer divide. And since such a feature would appeal to mostly those who were constantly putting their body in harm's way, it could prove very bad... Sort of like having sections of your body just start rotting because the cells in that area no longer decay. "So turn off that counter" you say... Then we have another issue, which we are all familiar with... Cancer. Cancer is essentially a cell which does not have this counter, and so it divides uncontrollably.

 

Essentially, some things we're best off not playing around with. The current track record of Genetic Engineering (on the cellular level) hasn't been very good thus far, and it only takes one person with good intentions to make a mistake that many others end up having to pay for. I'm not saying that it's bad, just that humanity is far too stupid to use something like that responsibly or capably.

[freddycashmercury]

Very fast regeneration comes at a very steep price... Namely longevity. Every time a cell splits, a sort of counter within that cell decreases. When that counter reaches 0, that cell will no longer divide. And since such a feature would appeal to mostly those who were constantly putting their body in harm's way, it could prove very bad... Sort of like having sections of your body just start rotting because the cells in that area no longer decay. "So turn off that counter" you say... Then we have another issue, which we are all familiar with... Cancer. Cancer is essentially a cell which does not have this counter, and so it divides uncontrollably.

 

The thing that stops is telemorase (sp?) production, correct? I haven't looked at any of this stuff in a while, but it (telemorase) helps create new cells or something, right? The way I heard it, if we could force the body to produce more telemorase, we might theoretically be able to slow or even stop aging.

 

I am in no way an expert. Point out exactly what I have wrong, and be brutally honest. I suspect the majority of my info is flawed, and I am curious as to what the reality is.

[evilkoal]

@ freddy: yes, tylomerase, or the lack of the production of it rather, makes the body age and decay (forcing the cells to stop reproducing.) I would imagine though that if we found a way to make cells keep producing tylomerase, we would essentially make them be able to reproduce at the controlled rate that we have before.

 

@ vagrant: on height and bone structure: the height issue, and body weight caused by being extremely tall issue could essentially be solved by introducing a honeycomb bone structure (found in birds) to the human race :)

On the organs: ahh you are right about it requiring twice as much blood and all that and the 2x size torso, but that is why i suggested the 2x size humans and i would would hope that the body would automatically rewire the circulatory system seeing as how we would be experimenting with embryos. experimentation would be able to tell whether or not... with the extra set of lungs, the body could get twice as much oxygen, and/or process other types of air is what i meant. i was thinking of engineering a pair that could process the oxygen out of a helium rich environment, and work on the level that normal lungs do with nitrogen... i figure that you are right on the stomach issue though.

On regeneration: i would figure that if we took the gene that salamanders have, and engineer it to work faster, we could have extremely fast regeneration without the risk of the regenerated tissue become cancerous.

On the unwilling issue: who cares if the person is willing? i sure dont. we could progress in the scientific field and the medical field if only we had a supply of people that are bred for the sole purpose of being experimented on.

you could argue for their rights, but then what about the animals that are bred solely for experimentation? it is the same thing.

[ninja_lord666]

@ vagrant: on height and bone structure: the height issue, and body weight caused by being extremely tall issue could essentially be solved by introducing a honeycomb bone structure (found in birds) to the human race :)

Most of our weight comes from muscle tissue, not bone tissue, so that would achieve little.

 

On the organs: ahh you are right about it requiring twice as much blood and all that and the 2x size torso, but that is why i suggested the 2x size humans and i would would hope that the body would automatically rewire the circulatory system seeing as how we would be experimenting with embryos. experimentation would be able to tell whether or not... with the extra set of lungs, the body could get twice as much oxygen, and/or process other types of air is what i meant. i was thinking of engineering a pair that could process the oxygen out of a helium rich environment, and work on the level that normal lungs do with nitrogen... i figure that you are right on the stomach issue though.

Automatically rewire? Did you fail Biology!? Every minuscule detail is determined by DNA, and if the DNA doesn't dictate something, it won't happen. Cells are not intelligent life, and cannot at all adapt at that level. The most adaptivity they have, is becoming a bit more resistant to a particular strand of bacteria. If we change around the organs, but nothing else, the embryo would die before it's even an embryo.

 

On regeneration: i would figure that if we took the gene that salamanders have, and engineer it to work faster, we could have extremely fast regeneration without the risk of the regenerated tissue become cancerous.

For one, taking a gene from another animal, especially another class of animal, wouldn't work. A human protein would be unable to read a salamander chromosome.

[Vagrant0]

i was thinking of engineering a pair that could process the oxygen out of a helium rich environment, and work on the level that normal lungs do with nitrogen... i figure that you are right on the stomach issue though.

You failed chemestry. You cannot process helium into oxygen. And the amount of Oxygen in the environment would need to be rather high for the ingenious system of respiration to work (what with the carbon (As I exlained)). More over, environments (atleast that we know of) which are particularly high in helium, or nitrogen, are usually those that would kill us long before we even had a chance to take a breath (gravity, atmospheric pressure, toxic vapors, high temperatures, low temperatures).

 

On the unwilling issue: who cares if the person is willing? i sure dont. we could progress in the scientific field and the medical field if only we had a supply of people that are bred for the sole purpose of being experimented on.

you could argue for their rights, but then what about the animals that are bred solely for experimentation? it is the same thing.

As much as you may wish to ignore it, and as much as it may impede some advances, the question of morality is valid. You won't get a population of people that are bred for the purposes of being experimented on because 9/10ths of the world would put a stop to that sort of thing pretty damn fast. Say what you want about the current face of evil, but atleast they aren't doing the sorts of human experimentation that the Nazis were. Just because those experiments led to some useful knowledge does not make them right.

 

Still don't see any benefit to being twice normal size... Even if biology could be adjusted to solve any issues. There are just too many issues which would result from the population being larger than they are... Food, housing (or rather all buildings), transportation, all would need be adjusted in ways which do not benefit anyone. Meanwhile it wouldn't really let us do anything new... Ergo, pointless.

[Malchik]

If you wish I will send you my comedy 'New Jeans' which is a very dark play. From my point of view the biggest problem is ethical. If a geneticist has power to change the human make up how can the rest of us know what s/he is doing? It is fine to talk about guidelines, even laws, but who can enforce them? In my play the engineering is used for some very nasty purposes indeed (and hopefully not ones people have considered). But there are many ramifications. So my own view is that we should be very circumspect when it comes to allowing it and make sure we have a viable framework for checking what everyone is doing before we allow individuals to build their private armies of supermen.

[ninja_lord666]

i was talking about the bones not being able to support that much weight, not bone weight. the honeycomb bone structure is much more durable and lightweight, making it an ideal choice for bone structure.

Hmm, yes, I seem to have forgotten that a hollow bone is stronger than a solid bone. Wait! We can get even better! What's the difference between hollow bones and solid bones? Less bone matter. So, obviously, less bone matter means stronger bones. Therefore, no bone matter would yield the strongest bones! We should just remove all our bones, then we'd be able to support five times our weight!

 

well, i figured that since the body already has a circulatory system programmed into the DNA that it would integrate the second heart and all the other organs into it.

plus, you never know until we try it :)

Ah, again you've proven me wrong. DNA can drastically change with nothing changing it. Why, this makes even more sense than...than...everything! You, sir, deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for this wonderous discovery. We could apply it to other things, even. We could redesign a home and just sit back and watch all the circuitry and plumbing rework itself. That would cut down a lot of expenses!

 

okay, if we take the part of the salamander DNA that allows for regeneration, and placed it on the human chromosome, it would be exactly as if the human chromosome had it all along.

as long as that part of DNA occurs in nature, we can easily integrate it into another species DNA.

someday we might even be able to engineer our own artificial stuff. (cant think of the correct word for it right now so i will leave it at stuff.)

Wow, you never cease to amaze me. Again, your flawless logic stumps any possible counter attack. This theory is your strongest yet! It has so many examples from everything! One banana plus one apple equals two apples! I don't see how that doesn't make sense! Why aren't they teaching this stuff in schools!?

[freddycashmercury]

*Snickers*

 

Nice, Ninja. Look, Evil, DNA doesn't just randomly change except in a mutation. 99% of the time, mutations are bad. If we really wanted the second circulatory system, we would either have to wire everything manually, or get WAAY better at manipulating DNA. I doubt we will do either.

 

 

Have you ever read Dean Koontz' Frankenstein series, btw? Very interesting stuff. Lots of genetic engineering.

[Marcus Wolfe]

The morality for this issue varies. Sure, we'd love to make ourselves into a super species, but who'd volunteer? Here's how I think it would happen:

1. Genes and DNA are altered to satisfaction.

2.These genes and DNA would be made into human eggs and sperm

3.These sperm and eggs would:

a)be combined in the laboratory and the products would be sent to orphanages or adopted by families.

b)be sent to sperm and egg banks across the world (obviously, you may have to tweak the genes to match the locale)

Although the children off this project would have tabs kept on them, this would all be kept secret. Nobody would know about this, until 40 years later or so, then the products would be informed of their 'special' nature. Or maybe they would never tell who it was, just to keep it anyonymous.

 

In the method described, we'd be slipping a few altered individuals into the gene pool, and, through the process of sexual reproduction, there superior genes would quickly spread throughout the population.

 

So what would I do? I would make everybody a little smarter, with like, another 10 or 20 IQ points. I would also make everybody more physically flexible, slightly better body shapes, and everyone would have hair thick like mine. I'd probably want to eliminate age-related problems, like balding and wrinkles, but more likely I would end up reducing them.

 

And I'm just throwing this out there, but would lizard DNA work any better than Salamander DNA?