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Spidergoats
LandlessGentry writes: "Market Oriented Genetic Manipulation takes a turn for the surreal as two Nigerian dwarf goats named Mille and Muscade have had their genes altered (or more precisely the genes of their parents) so their mammary glands produce spider "silk". The story is here on Forbes.com."
spidergoatse.cx
The episode where Homer had the crayon in his brain which made him stupid removed. He just returned to "Screaming Monkey Research" and asked them to put it back in...
Scientist: "We don't play God here."
Homer: "Correction -- You do nothing _but_ play God, and I think you're Octo-parrot would agree."
Octo-parrot: "Rawk! Polly shouldn't be!"
The enemies of Democracy are
Well with the new spidergoats, Spiderman will have to deal with a new enemy.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually).
/.ers are biting on the same story we all rebel against when it's applied to us (internet bad, internet geeks evil) when it's applied to genetic engineering.
How is tinkering with genetic codes more 'playing god' then creating new lakes where there were none before, changing ecological niches, probably causing new species to evolve, to fit the new ecological niches created.
How about the effect from electomagnetic fields? New roads through the countryside?
Face it people, we're playing God. We always have. Chaos theory argues that our existance on this planet will change things, even if we all stood perfectly still and didn't move for all our lives.
Like any technology, there will be ethical considerations, and we'll screw it up occasionaly.
Can we cause irreperable damage? Probably. Can we use the technology to save ourselves? Probably.
On the other hand, one of those cosmic rays could zap one of us just right and randomly cause any given mutation "naturally". Does that make it OK?
Let's face it, we already have plenty of technologies that let us wipe out the planet earth. Anyone who feels like it can use one of them, or the new one. What this gives us is a whole new way to solve problems.
Being an optimist, I like to assume that we will cause more good then harm from new techologies.
Unfortunatly, the media finds it easier to sell (insert medium here) using bad news. So we all hear about 'clones' being evil (most of which assume a clone will be of the memorex variety, not the identical twin reality), and nanotech will destroy the earth, and the internet will cause our children to become porn loving, rocket launcher shooting, black clothing wearing, 3l337 hax0rz.
I find it suprising that so many
Nuff Said.
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Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
All your dangifiknow are belong to us.
Raising genetically altered mammals for industrial purposes is cool, but growing industrial hemp is a crime. Custom-designing living beings is all good, but ingesting RU486 in the first trimester is murder.
Did I get something wrong here? Because the longer I think about it, the sicker I get...
We thieves, we liars, we vandals, and poets. Networked agents of Cthulhu Borealis.
Sorry to contradict you, but this has been done already, and the genetically modified rice has met what they're calling "consumer resistance". That means the people who need it are not buying it. Because, presumably, they have no money as well as no food. Until we start caring about world hunger GE will just be used the same way every other technology is used - to insulate the already wealthy from the world around them.
<rant>We already have a food surplus. The USA and EU feed their grain to animals instead of people, because "economics" says that your hamburger is more important than the life of someone you will never meet. Don't get me started on overfed "right to life" hypocrates. </rant>