Slashdot Mirror
The Oldest Mouse Contest
Shipud writes "Nature
reports a contest that was launched in Britain today, to produce the oldest laboratory mouse. Current record in 5 years -- 150 in human years. From the page
: ``Researchers can use any technique to boost longevity, including genetic manipulation and stem-cell therapy''. Winners will receive cash for every day beyond the current record. The
Methuselah Mouse contest was created in an effort to boost research into human longevity."
I think we tell ourselves that immortality would be a curse to make ourselves feel better about not having it. Think about it, it takes years, maybe even a lifetime, to know just a big city, or a country. If you were to go backpacking round the world, without paying heed to the time passing (and for good reason), by the time you'd make it back to where you started, everything will have changed so much you could as well go round again.
And if you get tired of that, it'd take at least a few centuries to read all the great literature, watch all the great movies, listen to all the great music... There is so much humanity produced and is producing, that not only is a lifetime not enough, but probably not even eternity. Entropy would take its toll on you before you'd be done with everything you had wanted to do.
>>The problem is political instability
And one way GM foods can help solve that is by allowing crops to grow in less favourable conditions. All that instability is, at the end of the day, just a hinderance to distribution. If we can make it easier to better grow crops locally, so much the better.
Also GM food can help in some other ways. You might have heard about the Golden Rice, a variety of rice that contains a high amount of A-vitamin and could be a great help to prevent its deficiency (which is quite a bit of a problem in many areas of Africa and South-East Asia).
We might not need it per se, but it sure is a nifty and useful tool to more easily solve certain problems.
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