Wednesday, July 12, 2006

BioTrek in Steinbach

We humans now have the ability to move genes from one species to another. (In fact, today we performed a transgenic experiment ourselves.) Under what circumstances, if any, do you think we should move DNA from species to species?

4 comments:

Dr. C said...

Interesting ideas, Damien. (Yes, you are welcome to keep posting here.)

Darren Kuropatwa said...

You guys always have interesting things to say. ;-)

I was thinking about Damian's goat. A goat that spins spider webs. That's kind of cool. But what about if we start applying these techniques to humans. Is there a difference between using transgenic techniques on animals as opposed to humans?

Should we or shouldn't we be "allowed" to apply transgenic techniques to human beings? Perhaps we'll be able to "design" people who have special physical traits that help them do their jobs (swimmers for sea rescues, climbers for fixing electrical/telephone wires, people with excellent night vision for rescuing earthquake victims, ...).

Would there be anything "wrong" with doing this?

To what degree do questions of our "maturity" as a species have to do with all this?

Another thought ...

Wikipedia doesn't yet have a fully fleshed out article on transgenic organisms. Maybe you guys could start adding to it and sharing your knowledge with the world.

Check it out and let's see what you can do ...

Anonymous said...

i think it wouldn't be a great idea to select traits for ones child due the the fact that in order for the human population to sustain itself there have to be some casualties. our population is ever increasing on an exponential curve and thus we may plumet in the near future. so by giving our children our greatest charcteristics we may infact be doing them more harm. giving them a longer healthier life could result in overpopulation, resulting in the spread of deseases and other bad pestulences.
i think we should leave our children to be born the natural way.


however if i could i would pick charcteristics for my child that would make him a 160 IQ average and a fanrtastic sports player. leaving the artistic side to leonardo davinici.

Anonymous said...

I agree with damian as using this technology to produce specialized products can help us in the future in respect to our lives, the environment, and sustainable growth in urban and rural areas. For example, instead of producing hydrogen through electrolysis of water, we can get bacteria to produce that instead. Basically, if it will help us and our world, it is a useful technology.