posted on April 7, 2002 10:13:33 AM new
I know this isn't the response you were looking for, but wasn't there an old movie with a cast of fat pregnant ladies who didn't need men to reproduce; another one of those B&W's. Science fiction is more reliable than Nostradamus.
posted on April 7, 2002 11:22:41 AM new
Mostly I figure if these people are so desperate to reproduce that they are willing to spend their money and take the risk of having to care for a retarded or handicapped child then that is their choice.
The only legislation I would want to see is a regulation that it has to be private money and not public money spend to care for the kid if they are defective. It should be their risk not mine or the rest of us when it is so ill advised. If they have funds or insurance to cover the risk fine.
If I don't have to worry about paying for it it should be their call. I have no need to tell them how to live and what is important or not.
Too many people are willing to regulate every aspect of other peoples lives that are none of their business.
There are always risk takers who pave the way and without them you never learn how to do things well enough for everyone else to do it also.
The first people who used angioplasty were taking a heck of a chance - but now they have refined it until it has know risks and benefits and most people can benefit from it.
The first parents to allow thier children to be vaccinated probably were told they were nuts. It is part of human history going way back.
The first guy who first ate an oyster was a brave brave man, and probably pretty hungery.
[ edited by gravid on Apr 7, 2002 11:23 AM ]
posted on April 7, 2002 11:36:57 AM new
Personally, I have nothing against human cloning, so long as the chance of a medically-sound being comes out and it has exactly the same rights that all of the rest of us has. What I fear is clones-for-parts. If, a single replacement organ can be grown in a vat - say, a replacement heart or lung - that's great! But if you have to "grow" a full clone that has had it's brains mushed at "conception" so that it does not qualify as a live, human being, then that is what I think is the worst of fears.
Personally, if they can someday help to re-engineer genes in the unborn so that hereditary genetic defects will likely not happen, I think that's great too!
But, there couples who are receiving these cloned fetus' are fooling themselves. The science is still too young to be able for mothers to give birth to healthy, long-lived clones. Desperate couples are reaching out to this scrap of hope and are ebing fooled by these scientists. They are being fooled, because once they give birth, even if the child looks natural, it likely will never grow to maturity. What a heart-break they are setting themselves up for!
posted on April 7, 2002 11:40:12 AM new
"The first guy who first ate an oyster was a brave brave man, and probably pretty hungery." LOL Grav !
I would only add "raw" oyster.
This cloning and gene splicing is a brave new world.
I still think that 15 or 20 years from now we will have a society split in two segments. Those that are artifically genetically designed and those who aren't. Another 100 years and there will be people designed to be warriors/cops, those designed to be "workers", and too many of us that won't fit in anywhere.
It is going to change athletics and all forms of human endeavor.
There is also no way to prevent these genetically altered plants from cross pollinating, so we will be eating the stuff if we want to eat.
I wonder what vegans will do when animal genes are mixed with the plant genes ?
posted on April 7, 2002 12:17:21 PM new
What will the third world people think of us - because they will still be here even if there is global warming or some other disaster to reduce the huge populations in Bengledesh etc. - when they are struggling to get clean water and we are deciding how to alter our children?
There is a lot to be said for cosmetic changes. Attractive tall people earn more, are treated better in the emrgency rooms and are able to attract better mates to carry on their genes.
But if you learn the lesson too well selfish sociopathic liars who go through a series of women leaving them with bills and offspring do well in the gene preserving game also.
In my novel I am writing right now set in the near future the heroine of the story has minor alterations of her genes and is taking life extending medical care but I feel at that time they will still not be altering genes for such basic qualities as intelligence. You have to be able to aagree what intelligence IS and be able to define it's elements before you can speak of improving or altering it. I think we are as far from knowing what constitutes intelligence right now as the people before Pastuer were from knowing what caused disease.
I know that I for example have a trait that I have found very useful - I recognize visual patterns different than my wife. I can look up on a grassy hill and see an animal in the grass at a glance and tell my wife exactly where to look - so many feet down from the tree and so many feet to the left - and she will be looking right at it and can't see it.
Then if she is patient the animal will make a mistake like moving an ear and she will immediatly say yes - there it is I see it. Would that be useful to program into a child or is it learned behavior? I suspect it is hardwired because I don't have a history that would explain learning it. I don't conscieously remember learning it. Is it part of intelligence? I think so because it is a form of analyising data. But I bet it will be a long time before they have a name for that sort of pattern recognition and longer still until they can tell you what combo of genes favors it.
That is the real future of genetics - understanding how a quality is expressed by specific genes, not just cloning combinations that have worked well in the past and hoping to repeat some of the results. Breeding already does improvements with as much success or more than we can hope for by having a method that does not force us to mix new genes with the old.
I do predict that if clones are raised it will tell us a great deal more about how genes are expressed by comparing a succesion of clones with each other, and seeing what qualities repeat and what are different.
posted on April 7, 2002 12:36:22 PM new
>>This is a BB not a college lecture<<
Hel-lo! Thank you.
I think now it was more like a Twilight Zone episode. That's its own thread.
Gravid: As you continue the quest for "what precisely is intelligence and I was going to tell you "me".<s> I'd like to throw Reamond in. You are both unusual, you know, for men. (Either that or the preponderance of women here are especially dense, opaque and defensive. Could be. Dunno.)
posted on April 7, 2002 12:57:21 PM new
.>>> But I bet it will be a long time before they have a name for that sort of pattern recognition and longer still until they can tell you what combo of genes favors it.<<
There may not be a name for it but there is a respect and a demand for it by those fields that analyze slides of cells or tissue for pathology. That kind of thing; something about an uncanny talent to interpret patterns. I imagine those guys trying to figure out where Cuba had those missles hidden were able to do this kind of thing also.
Every since my guy was an infant he had a thing for patterns, earning him the nickname Mario Buatta (an interior designer very big on fabrics). You could be holding him and he'd would stare at a patch of your herringbone or intricate floral, smiling and looking hypnotized, for what seemed like ten full minutes. I mean all the time. Now when he is doing his first grade math he'll hop and say "Look a pattern! Or look a flip! And he also has uncanny eyesight.
Which doesn't mean he won't grow up to be a serial killer of course...
posted on April 7, 2002 12:57:25 PM new
I think that the genes will be manipulated to produce "desired" qualities. What would qualify as intellegence is up for grabs. Grey matter with photographic memory might be desired, coupled with Einstein like synthesis abilities.
But I can see a proto-type "worker" designed to be passive and doing what they are told. It would be not unlike modern interviews and psych tests employers apply now, except the drones would be made to order.
Make cop/warriors that are very large and very strong and agressive but follow authority.
You're right Grav about the third world's view of all this. There was a guy named Cetron that used to do consulting in predicting trends and problems by a scale he used to measure differences between societies and groups within a society to make predictions. The scales were between incomes, ect.. He predicted the Iran revolution, and the companies that listened to him got out and saved millions.
I think this "scale" is widening exponentially between the U.S. and the rest of the world. I have little confidence in other industrialized countries even keeping up with us. The Chinese just launched an unmanned space flight- that's 40 years behind us.
If you have money, the U.S. is the place to be. You can even survive AIDS if you have money in the U.S..
It is becoming like the old Chinese curse- " May you live in interesting times".
posted on April 7, 2002 03:23:14 PM new
They are very interesting and very complex. Anyone who figures out even a little of the pattern like your fellow predicting the fall of the Peacock Throne will do very well for themselves.
A good book to re-read and then extrapolate from: Futureshock
posted on April 7, 2002 04:20:07 PM new
I've read Future Shock. Also Toffler's Third Wave, War and Anti War, and PowerShift. Toffler talked about bin Laden in all but name in PowerShift.
However, Future Shock makes you keep looking at the copyright date and shaking your head.
posted on April 7, 2002 08:19:30 PM new
>>Nycyn, if the name "Mother Orcas" rings a bell in relation to the film you mentioned, that was an Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode from the 1960's.<<
That has to be it. That's sure what they looked like.
posted on April 7, 2002 08:51:06 PM new
hahaha, I just now "got" the reason for the name, Orcas. It wasn't pronounced that way, though -- more like "orkus", but I know it was spelled "orcas" yet never made the connection. That really is too funny...
