-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
That's *woot.* I always wondered whether that was possible.
Although - "We're not trying to alter them, just swap some bad ones for some good ones." Um. Call me stupid, but doesn't that constitute 'altering' them? Swapping out bad for good is changing them, alter is a synonym for change...Of course, I support genetic engineering and most people don't, so I guess it was probably just to sound "politically correct" or non-alarmist.
Oh, and "setback for human dignity"...I *hate* hearing about "human dignity." It's like we haven't made any progress at all in the last few hundred years. I'm tired of people thinking they're something "special" or "dignified" or "divine" about humans. There isn't.
Registered: Jul 2005
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-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
My ignorance is hanging out again. K who? (or K what?)
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Cousin to Fruity Pebbles, wife of Bam Bam, sister of Loops.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Daniel Butler: Um. Call me stupid, but doesn't that constitute 'altering' them? Swapping out bad for good is changing them, alter is a synonym for change...
He's highlighting a subtle point. When he refers to "altering them", it actually means taking certain alleles for those genes and mutating them, creating new alleles which may potentially not exist in nature. When he refers to swapping out genes, that really means swapping out an allele and replacing it with a different allele, naturally occurring in this case.
Its just a matter of being specific and in this case you're correct, he's trying to minimize what he's doing to sound less threatening to others.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
So, the genes aren't being altered themselves, but the DNA strand is. Well, that is okay then.
I am also puzzled by what they may have done with the contents of the emptied egg shell, and, why they used a women that could pass along diseases to her kids and not just have the healthy one get preggers. And people say I over complicate things.
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
As I understand it, and the article is a bit unclear (or I'm parsing it wrong), the issue is that two people want to have children but the mother has genetically linked diseases in her mitochondria (these are organelles that are outside of the nucleus where the majority of your DNA lies).
1) The couple create embryos from the first couple, they take the embryos out from the egg 2) The scientists take a second egg, "hollow it out" and stick in the embryo from the first couple 3) Somehow (and I'm unclear how), the result is that the resulting child will incorporate normal nuclear DNA from the first couple and mitochondrial DNA from the second couple, bypassing the diseases.
If they simply had the second couple get pregnant, all the DNA would be from the second couple. This way, the child has the vast majority of DNA from the first couple, a much smaller less important amount from the second couple.
In the Star Trek tradition, I'll create a simple analogy. Imagine that a new embryo is like a hybrid Ford. There are two engines, one gasoline and one electric. The one that is electric has problems so while they create the blueprints for the car, they swap in a new electric engine from a Honda. The resulting car is still a Ford, it just happens to use a second electric engine from Honda.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Why, that's like giving a Klingon scout ship the nacelles of a Dominion Battlecruiser.
Humans special? Well maybe to a point. But I reckon the more people want to cheat death, the more you're going to see these kinds of experiments. The nay-sayers are just delaying the inevitable.
Registered: Feb 2005
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
Well, I think we're not that special at all. Every time we name some quality we think is unique to humans we find it in some other animal to a lesser degree. There might be a quantitative difference, but not a qualitative difference, in things like intelligence, metacognition, empathy, etc.
Edit: More gene jockey stuff. I'm going to use the term "gene jockey" from now on because Xeni Jardin did.
Registered: Jul 2005
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"2) The scientists take a second egg, 'hollow it out' and stick in the embryo from the first couple "3) Somehow (and I'm unclear how), the result is that the resulting child will incorporate normal nuclear DNA from the first couple and mitochondrial DNA from the second couple, bypassing the diseases."
I would assume that, rather than "hollowing it out", they just remove the nucleus and replace it with the other one. The second egg's mitochondria are still in it, so that's why they stick around when the cell starts dividing.
Registered: Mar 1999
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Nobility? Mercy? Love? I know these seem to be rapidly disappearing qualities, but they DO still exist.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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