h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/campaigners-slam-chimeric-monkeys-204323160.html

Chimeras have production potential with things like bananas and potatoes.

http://listverse.com/2008/04/01/top-10-bizarre-genetically-modified-organisms/

within a short space of time the human race will die off! Cause! meddling with nature and then unleashed either by "accident" or intentionally. All it takes is one living cell/microbe/amoebae - lets keep this scenario to just films and the human race to evolve naturally

A lot was learned in the Nazi death camps. For example Dr. Mengele did twin studies at Auschwitz in which drugs or diseases were given to one twin then both twins were killed to find out what effect the drug or disease had had on the body, compared to the unaffected 'control' twin.

A lot was learned that wouldn't have been possible without these experiments.

Does that make them OK?

Does the end justify the means?

I would say no to both questions, Jabs, but it's a closer call with animal experiments. I would love to see bunnies and rats and mice (and, of course,monkeys) spared the suffering they must feel. My only rationale for continuing animal experiments is that someday we will find the techniques necessary to manage without asking them to give their lives. The animal experiments would have been a step on the way toward a better world for all.

On the other hand, I can equiocate sometimes (not proud of it, but there you have it). Using animals for testing makeup and perfumes just sticks in my craw.

On recombinant DNA, its got a lot of potential for good* and also altogether too much potential for accident or even active malevolence.**

Examples of serious scandal, 2002, in the central coast area of California, a grower planted out a recombinant DNA altered rice crop, which had been altered to produce pharmaceuticals, in fields adjacent to other fields planted to rice being cultivated for food.

This was idiocy and insanity at least two ways.

First, with wind pollinated plants like cereal grains of any and all kinds, the pollen, carrying half the genetic complement of the plant, can and will drift into adjacent fields, pollinating the crops planted there.

The recombinant DNA alteration does not stay restricted to the planting that has been altered and with plants can not be relied on even to stay reasonably well restricted even to the male and female sets of haploid alleles.

The trait engineered with the recombinant DNA will be carried to adjacent fields planted with the same kinds of crops.

This is a commonplace problem for especially sweet corn and popcorn growers, since if another farmer is growing one of the other four kinds of corn in an adjacent field (there are five basic kinds, seed corn, dent corn, popcorn, sweet corn and soft corn***), it can seriously damage the sweet corn or popcorn crop, even making it unmarketable.****

As a matter of fact there had already been at this time an even more serious scandal of the character in Mexico, where pollen from recombinant DNA altered corn altered to produce insecticides had drifted into an adjacent planting being cultivated for food, poisoning the crop, with fatal consequence for at least one person who ate the tainted corn.

Also, of secondary importance, there is also a serious security issue, since with a wind pollinated crop, one needs merely drive by on a service road adjacent to the planting with a (new) car vacuum cleaner hanging out the car window and running, while the crop is actively pollinating (usually in the middle and late afternoon of a hot and dry day, as the crop nears maturity) and one can literally vacuum up a specimen, without even having to stop or set foot in the field. In other words, this amounts to 'giving away' ones' recombinant DNA work.

[With a vigorous whack on the head tendered mit ein studetenkappen, "Dumbkopf!!!"]

You'd think that people involved in recombinant DNA would, having brains enough to do that kind of work, also have common sense and common decency enough to avoid situations with any potential like that.

Unfortunately, often they don't.




On Dr. Mengele, he was not only an incompetent surgeon and a sadistic monster, but also learned next to nothing of any importance is his human studies.

Arguably, his single most important contribution was a compound which changes eye color, turning brown eyes blue, which he apparently tumbled on as a side effect doing toxicology studies, attempting to determine minimum lethal dosages (for human beings) of a number of common poisons.

That one came up as a denaturant in the illicit cocaine of the Colonel Siebert era. The effect can be quite startling with a black man. That compound can kill and will, even in sub-lethal dosages, produce neurological damage.

(Before the rise of the Medellin Cartel, Colonel Siebert, Dr. Mengeles' adjutant at Auschwitz, was the leading cocaine factor out of Columbia and Peru in the illicit cocaine traffic.)




If one is going to be producing dangerous recombinant DNA alterations, as for pharmaceuticals and poisons, for commercial purposes, one should at least have the sense and decency to use only vector organisms that don't move (plants) and plants that are never consumed as human food stuffs, or for that matter even enter animal food chains, that are preferably reproduced asexually and preferably taste so foul anyone tasting them will instantly spit them out.

It really doesn't take much imagination to find suitable recombinant DNA vector organisms that way.

For my own part, depending on whether I'm interested in an oil soluable or water soluable compound, I can think of a couple of plants in either category that are already in cultivation, as ornamentals, which are never eaten by human beings, or even appreciably enter animal food chains (including insect food chains).

All it takes is a little foresight and a little thought.




* If I were doing this kind of work, I'd be concentrating on subtleties, like better absorption spectra for the chlorophylls, higher chloroplast counts, broader and shorter leaves, reduced transpiration, shorter and sturdier stalks, more efficient root systems, etc., all to the purposes of increasing production and reducing the cost. ---With extraordinary care if I were trying for improved resistance to pests, that no toxic properties came in the package.




** On the other hand, cf the link in post 3, one does need to be careful that stories of hypothetical or fictional or actively spurious character are not circulated as fact, to the discredit of serious and honest criticisms. According to the text, only items 10 and 9, the first two in the list, are real, the remaining 8 are all spurious.

Yet again, I can recall once, in the immediate aftermath of the Central Coast scandal mentioned, watching a number of apologists for the recombinant DNA industry propounding to the effect that there is 'no possibility' of harmful effects with recombinant DNA, an outright lie, realizing with a shock about halfway through the TV program that the spokesmen selected were all antisocial.

Once does want to be careful not to give away dangerous ideas since there's always some psychotic or villain out there who may apply them.

For my own part, I'm more interested in product safety than 'preventing a panic'.

(On the creature pictured in item #1 (last item in the list in the link in post 3), I think I would have called it 'le - mao', 'lemao', instead, since 'mao' is not only onomatopoeic but also good Chinese for 'cat' and it is supposed to be a Chinese production. Cute looking little devil isn't it, even if is spurious.)




*** On the five basic kinds of cultivated American corn (zea mays):

1. Popcorn: this is the most primitive type of American corn.

2. Seed Corn: this is the most generalized type of American corn. Robust ears of ornamental corn, unless popcorn, are usually in this group.

3. Dent corn: characterized by robust kernal and a horizontal dent on the end of the kernal, this is type of American corn most frequently used for animal feed stuffs, ground for meal or malted for hominy.

4. Sweet corn: cultivated for a sugary seed sap, this type of corn is harvested and consumed in the milk stage. Allowed to ripen and harden off, the mature kernals usually have a surface texture and conformation similar to a (very hard) raisin.

5. Soft corn: this is the type of corn cultivated primarily for oil.




Other types of American corn:

a. Teosinte: a rhizomatous Central American wild corn which produces an 'ear' with usually only two or three kernals, is thought to be ancestral to modern cultivated corn, which does not occur and cannot propagate itself in nature.

b. Tripsacum: this is a wild popcorn variety native to North America. It looks, superficially, like a cluster of ears sprouting directly from the ground, but has no true ears of the sort cultivated corn has and instead bears its crop of popcorn in the tassels. There is a corresponding South American variety that grows tall and straight with usually only a single stalk. This one sometimes turns up in the florist trades, since if the entire seed head is dipped in boiling oil and popped, the the kernals, which are not shed in the process, produce a remarkable and attractive floral effect. These are also thought to be ancestral to modern cultivated American corn.

c. Sorghums: these grains are in the same genus and usually interviable with zea mays.

d. There is an emerging cultivated variety cultivated for the high sugar content of the stalk to the purpose of producing corn syrup. This variety needs to have its ears removed as soon as they emerge to maximize sugar production.




**** I used to apply the principle to produce 'red, white and blue' sweet corn for 4th of July picnics, a moderately difficult gardening task since different varieties of corn mature at different rates and have to planted sequentially so that they all flower at the same time. If every other 18th plant, uniformly distributed through the entire planting, is a red or blue seed corn, planted in a population of quality hybrid white sweet corn, that's enough to produce a sprinkling of red and blue kernals on the ears of the hybrid white sweet corn.

One does not have to be brilliant in order to have common sense. It's common sense to know that if you plant genetically modified corn or rice in fields near farms where non-modified crops will be raised, the pollen will be carried by the wind to the other farms. To be honest, I don't know if the genetically modified traits will be at half-strength when combined with regular crops. I also don't know if the traits desired by the modified crops will be watered down because of pollen from normal crops. See, it can cut both ways. Even if the farmers in question are antisocial, they still need to stay in business. When their crops turn out badly, their livelihoods will be threatened, so they need to be more careful about what they plant and where.

How about super-salmon [geneticallymodified salmon] that escape from fish farms and go into the ocean, to breed with unmodified salmon?

Mengele is just short-hand for them all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation

If we're outraged by this, should we not be outraged about breeding unnatural animals simply for experimentation? Doesn't that diminish us as a species?

The argument isn't at all clear cut, one way or the other.

>> It's common sense to know that if you plant genetically modified corn or rice in fields near farms where non-modified crops will be raised, the pollen will be carried by the wind to the other farms. <<

Yes you'd think it would be common sense, but I recall some
Canadian farmers who were charged with theft and copyright and
patent violations when GM seeds blew into their fields and grew.

The corporate braintrust people actually laughed
and tried to poo-poo the idea that the seeds had migrated on
their own. They simply insisted the farmer's had stolen their
work. They thought it incredulous that the farmers considered
the invasion as a pollution of their natural crops.

Since there was inevitably a counter-suit by the farmers for
damage to their crops the judge simply mumbled something like
'quid pro quo' and threw out both cases. Happily though I think
the have now been educated about what
happens to nature in real whirled conditions outside their labs.


~jwf~

>> The argument isn't at all clear cut, one way or the other. <<

HGWells - "The Island of Doctor Moreau" (the actual book not any
of the rip-off films of the same name that miss the point entirely)
is quite clear about the morality of genetic manipulations on any
animal species. I agree with him completely. One of the few issues
where I would gladly take up arms.



More medical advances in use today than most modern doctors would be
willing to admit are the direct result of German wartime experiments.

Most of what we know about recuscitation, organ transplants and pain
management is based on the work of the so called 'Doctors of Death'.
A book (4 volumes) of that title has since been suppressed.

The current Wiki entry on Nazi medical experiments is restricted
to the most contemptible and dramatically horrific examples. To
speak positively of any benefits that arose from these experiments
is considered akin to being a holocaust denier.


~jwf~

There is an argument to be had, though. With passionate views on both sides. See paul's post 6 for a hint.

Back to chimeras, I personally think that story is excessively sensationalistic. Chimeras have been used as a research tool to the purpose of tracing the effects of given genes almost as long as there has been any molecular genetic science at all, and they are an essential research tool with other important scientific and commercial applications as well.

On the genetics of pollen drift, much depends on whether the allele is in the recessive or dominant form, a phenomenon which is not as mysterious as it used to be before the age of recombinant DNA.

Basically and generally, if the organism has just one copy of the allele on one haploid set of chromosomes, the allele is a recessive and will not be manifest in the mature organism unless there is a matching copy of the same allele on the complementary haploid set of chromosomes.

The allele becomes a dominant if there are two or more copies of the same allele on the same set of chromosomes and will be manifest in the mature organism whether or not the allele appears on the complementary set of haploid chromosomes.

'Superdominance' has been reported, with for example the genes governing sperm production and fecundity with rats and humans being appearing in eight copies on the Y chromosomes.

In commercial productions they rarely want to take chances if they can avoid it with a possible (commercially) useless unreinforced recessive, and usually go with dominant alleles.

Also, 'superdominants' are often more productive of the intended product than a simple dominant.




Gender determination is not always due to the XX/XY configurations that govern gender with mammals and birds. (The effect is reversed with birds, by the way, XX codes for male and XY for female with birds, rather than the reverse which obtains with mammals.)

XX/XY configuration isn't necessarily an issue at all with reptiles.

For example, with turtles and crocodilians, the temperature at which the eggs are incubated is all that matters, and the gender effect of the temperature difference is reversed between turtles and crocodilians. (If one wanted to save the species of 'Lonesome George', sole survivor of one the species of Galapagos tortoises, all one would need to do is clone his DNA into a suitable host egg, incubate at the right temperature, and he would have a mate.)

With vegetation, male and female haploid sets of chromosomes can quite easily reverse themselves with most common crops, due to as little as temperature, amount of sunlight they're exposed to and the humidity of the soil they're cultivated in, as well as a host of other conditioning circumstances. A commonplace genetic survival response with plants if the soil is excessively dry or there are other conditions which might interfere with the maturation of seeds and fruits is to suppress ovules production and produce an excess of pollen instead, since that maximizes chances the genes will carried forward in a better favored ovule.

...on the salmon question, by the by, on recombinant DNA altered salmon, I won't eat it, and I like properly prepared natural salmon...

...letting ones' recombinant DNA alteration escape into the natural world is irresponsible. There are landlocked salmon populations, by the way...

I currently re-reading "The Island Of Doctor Moreau", by the way. The genetic science in it is as primitive as the times in which it was written, but the emotive issues still are valid.

Wells always claimed to be a fantasy writer and denied
being in the same scifi league as Jules Verne to whom
he was invariably and wrongly compared.

He used science as his plot base because the modern whirled
he lived in had abandoned fairy tales and fantasy and left him
unable to explore the range of human emotions in strange and
wondrous situations without bending reality thru some kind of
mad, corrupted or unknown science.

His stated intention was to create new and imaginary environs
in which to set his characters and explore their behaviour and
humanity. That's why his "emotive issues are still valid".

Yet, in spite of claiming to be the antithesis of a futurist
he did unconsciously foresee many future scenarios beyond
the science, if not the human nature, of his day.

His description of the suffering endured by Moreau's victims
is not unlike what one imagines of the Nazi labs.


~jwf~

I've read Wells on being compared with Jules Verne, and will agree that describing H.G. Wells as 'an English Jules Verne' is about like describing Jules Verne as 'a French Edgar Allan Poe'.

Besides Jules Verne, Poe also rather strongly influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Wells himself in his introductory and afterword commentaries alludes to Mary Shelleys' "Frankenstein" in connection of "Doctor Moreaux".

With respect to Wells scientific background material, he was as a matter of fact cutting edge against the state knowledge of his time, most of the time. One does occasionally turn up minor faults, for example describing our progress through time as a a 'velocity' while it is actually an 'acceleration', none the less a reasonable interpretation for his time, since the principle of acceleration wasn't demonstrated until the type 1A supernova studies, almost a century after he wrote "The Time Machine". His analogy of time to gravity was stunningly insightful.

Just starting on "The Invisible Man" at the moment. Definitely a fantasy, not without occasional notes of realism introduced to the effect of building 'suspension of disbelief'.

I haven't read Wells since the '60s. still haven't found copies of "Of Things To Come" and "The Sleeper Awakes".

There is a collection of his 'best' novels published
in 1934 as 'Seven Famous Novels by HGWells' with some
very mature comments and hindsights from the author.

Don't forget a healthy dose of Utopian optimism with
an analysis of guilt, greed and materialism in Days
of the Comet. Similar notions, and some GM applied with
less than happy results, are explored in Food of the Gods.

I'm still trying to find the non-fiction titles he turned
to when critics dismissed his fiction as predictable and
boring vehicles for incessantly optimistic humanitarianism.

His 1934 comments on Hitler are quite prescient.

~jwf~

I have a cousin who works [or at least used to work] with mice at a well-known science lab off the coast of Maine. I've been to her lab, and have seen pictures of some of the unusual mice that the lab has bred. Some of the mice are bred to be obese, for instance. My cousin's specialty is (or was) mice with heart disease.

I'm sure there are many lab workers who are fond of the animals they work with, and who try their hardest to show them as much kindness as they can under the circumstances. I'm not unhappy that they are looking for clues to heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and other conditions that plague the human race. Mice get these things, too. Maybe in some future era, when mice are regarded as gods, it will be possible to make their lives better because of the research, just as they are helping us with our problems.

But I draw the line when animals are used for testing what I consider frivolous applications such as toys, cosmetics, etc. As a species, we don't need these things so badly that we should be bothering other species in order to get them.