World's first Genetically-Modified humans created

[hoosierdoc]

we are already approaching maximum capacity for nutrition development and housing. its kind of a give and take game. sure it would be great to have 12 billion people on earth living in 500 floor buildings and all in harmony, blah blah.. but who's going to feed them?

We use a ton of our food for fuel. We have PLENTY of room for more people on this planet and have plenty of ability to grow more food for consumption. It's supply/demand. When food prices go up, people will grow more.

 

[hoosierdoc]

nothing wrong being a realist, but everyone persecutes you for it.

To be a realist you must first make statements based in reality

 

[Hogwylde]

You must be a glass half empty guy (or a glass was half empty so I knocked it off the table guy).

The glass is NEVER half empty........or half full.

The glass is ALWAYS twice as big as it needs to be to contain the given amount of liquid.

 

[CX1]

the people he performed services for aren't complaining about pain are they?

No they are not. And were I in their situation I would want the same choice available to me. I believe it should be up to the individual if they wish to continue to struggle against a disease or peacefully resign to the inevitable conclusion. It is the ultimate expression of personal liberty.

 

[CX1]

Nature provides its own balance. Man has selfishly always tried to change that balance in his favor and it has never worked.

Yes because things like antibiotics, pain medications,vaccines, cancer treatments etc etc have never had a positive effect on the quality of human life.
We should go back to the time of our beginning where a simple flea bite could easily kill you since it is part of nature.
Abandon all cooking and cleanliness standards that help prevent illness because nature has not standards such as that and they are just a construct from human experience.
Those with poor vision should accept their fate of blurriness and abandon their corrective lenses because one should always accept what nature gives them.

 

[Don]

I will take my genetically modified honeys.

 

[ATOMonkey]

"We'll see," said the Zen Master.

Making life "easier" (however you want to define that) seldom makes life better, only easier, longer, etc.

 

[joshualee49]

Available resources are a lot more important than real estate. As our dependance on fossil fuels increases -whether by sheer population size, China's ever increasing demand, etc - our supplies will diminish. It's not necessarily a short term problem, however we as a species are in no hurry to change our lifestyles to match what the planet will sustainably be able to provide. Am I a doomsday prophet? No. I just think one should look at all facets of an equation...

Do we have the space on the planet to support billions more people? Sure.

Should we continue to look for ways to improve quality of life? Sure.

Are we on a sustainable road with respect to raw resources and power? Nope.

Are cow farts responsible for the ozone layer depletion? Yep.

Something has to give at some point. Either the planet will reduce the population for us or we will learn to balance our "quality of life" with our planet.

 

[Hogwylde]

Sorry to bust your bubble boys and girls, but humans have been genetically "modified" since the begining of the species. That's why we have such a wide diversity in the way we all look. If it weren't for inbreeding and crossbreeding, we'd all look pretty much the same. But, we don't. We all have different skin colors, eye colors, hair colors, etc. Different races have different sensitivities to foods, diseases, and enviroments.

And, for all you purists.....you have been eating genetically modified food for generations. There is no such thing as a Granny Smith apple in nature. Someone had to create it by grafting a limb from one tree to another......genetically modifying it from it's natural state. Anytime you crossbreed different varieties of the same species, you genetically modify it.

 

[Stschil]

Yes because things like antibiotics, pain medications,vaccines, cancer treatments etc etc have never had a positive effect on the quality of human life.
We should go back to the time of our beginning where a simple flea bite could easily kill you since it is part of nature.
Abandon all cooking and cleanliness standards that help prevent illness because nature has not standards such as that and they are just a construct from human experience.
Those with poor vision should accept their fate of blurriness and abandon their corrective lenses because one should always accept what nature gives them.

You read Waaaaaaaaaayyy too much into my statement. I never once suggested that we should have never "evolved". However, medical science HAS HAD it's hand in prolonging the mere existence of many whom, if left to nature, would have had a quicker path to the afterlife. I will use, as an example, a foster child of a friend of mine. This boy drowned after somehow finding his was into an unattended pool. The circumstances that lead to this are immaterial, however, extraordinary life saving measures were taken and he is still "alive". He cannot care for himself, he is only a body that breathes. What kind of existence is that?
Doctors prescribe drug upon drug upon drug upon drug to "treat" patients.
One for this tick, one for that twitch, one to counteract the side effect of the first, one to make them sleepy because the three before make them jumpy, and it goes on and on and on. Until the patients become shells of their former selves.
Who does this benefit?

How many drugs have been developed and approved, only to later find that there were long term negative effects that weren't considered?

Science, in general, ceased to be the pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of humanity a long time ago.

 

[CX1]

You read Waaaaaaaaaayyy too much into my statement. I never once suggested that we should have never "evolved". However, medical science HAS HAD it's hand in prolonging the mere existence of many whom, if left to nature, would have had a quicker path to the afterlife. .

I read exactly what you wrote. You used the absolute term of 'never' ;

Man has selfishly always tried to change that balance in his favor and it has never worked.

I just simply pointed out many instances where mankind has fought against nature and been quite successful.

As for your examples of the medical field going too far. Yes I agree that these events do occur. But I believe they are outweighed by the benefits medical science has brought us overall.
Also your examples help further my conviction that one should have the rights to refuse these treatments and have their journey to whatever is the 'afterlife' shortened by any medical means available if that is their desire.
But for every empty shell you trot out showing science going too far I can trot out 10 where a person would have died or been crippled/disabled from an illness/injury but due to the advances in medical treatment they are living healthy, productive and happy lives.

 

[mike8170]

The first thing that popped into my head was, "this is how the advanced humans that followed Khan got started". As a huge sci-fi reader, I wonder how this is going to play out?

 

[HeadlessRoland]

Aldous Huxley was not prepared for the inanity of the modern world, nor the ethical conundrums our fabled technology would bring upon our heads. He envisioned a great deal, but who foresees this malevolence with such clarity? We literally have a somnolescent drug which is named Soma. We routinely create offspring through modified form of breeding, in-vitro fertilization. We can alter the sexes of our offspring. We can now even, heretofor unknown in the annals of human history, alter the very genome of our offspring, the chemical encoding which uniquely qualifies us as human.

At what point do we pause in our endeavors and ask not merely whether we CAN achieve something - but whether we SHOULD? At what point do these modified children-of-man become something greater than human, beyond human, supra-human? At what point can we look into the mirror and readily see Doctor Frankenstein staring back?

"When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man." - A Clockwork Orange

It is precisely our varied - and flawed - genome which gives mankind our robustness, our worldwide resistance to malady. Black plague nearly destroyed the world, slaughtering one in three people in Western Europe. Luckily, there was enough genetic diversity for enough individuals to have enough of a resistance to the virulence of the disease to resist and to populate further. Creating a world of already-perfected beings gives us nowhere to run in the event of catastrophe, no particular genetic refuge. Uniformity of genome, no matter how much it may lessen inherent defect, is a weakness against illness - not a bulwark. Cheetahs, for instance, have a very close to uniform genome, and due to lack of variability, are susceptible to many diseases, and each generation does not vary much in this regard, for this reason, and thus they remain forever similar.

The makings of the natural world, despite our ability to meddle therein, are not our playground. The natural world is a sacred realm of mystery and power, with which we tamper not lightly. We tread not softly. We do not respect the natural world or its divine processes, and Nature does not suffer fools gladly. Unintended consequences reign, and this is perhaps the most deplorable news we've heard of to date.

Science: a once-noble enterprise reduced to a never-ending non-question of 'should vs. could'

 

[indytechnerd]

Shouldn't this thread be in the Survivalist forum?

Also, do all of these kids look like this guy?

 

[eatsnopaste]

Sorry to bust your bubble boys and girls, but humans have been genetically "modified" since the begining of the species. That's why we have such a wide diversity in the way we all look. If it weren't for inbreeding and crossbreeding, we'd all look pretty much the same. But, we don't. We all have different skin colors, eye colors, hair colors, etc. Different races have different sensitivities to foods, diseases, and enviroments.

And, for all you purists.....you have been eating genetically modified food for generations. There is no such thing as a Granny Smith apple in nature. Someone had to create it by grafting a limb from one tree to another......genetically modifying it from it's natural state. Anytime you crossbreed different varieties of the same species, you genetically modify it.

I suppose you're going to tell me we didn't hunt the dinosaurs either! boy! some people!

 

[Ted]

I'm picturing an Earth from the film, "I am Legend."

 

[Hornett]

How many drugs have been developed and approved, only to later find that there were long term negative effects that weren't considered?

There's not much talk about the diseases we would inadvertently create.
If we were only half as smart as we think we are...

 

[Hookeye]

The quest for making the Superliberal continues..............

My guess is that nature stops highly liberals from breeding, so to bump that type to the next level they have to be lab created.

 

[CSORuger]

The one on the far right

 

[HeadlessRoland]

I'm picturing an Earth from the film, "I am Legend."

The film or the book?

(Note: there is only one correct answer to this question.)