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Japan's Unique Cow/Whale Hybrid Experiments
RemyBR writes "Controversial scientific research happens all the time, but a review conducted by scientists in Japan uncovered a list of 'bizarre' trials - including one program designed to crossbreed cows with whales.'Scientists have analyzed 43 research papers produced by Japan over 18 years, finding most were useless or esoteric. The scientific research included injecting minke whale sperm into cows eggs, and attempts to produce test-tube whale babies.'"
Wow, imagine the size of a T-bone from a whale sized cow...
TFA says Australia is going to try to end the "scientific research" loophole. These idiotic "experiments" smell of bureaucrats hiring incompetent and/or lazy "scientists" to do useless thumb twiddling just so they can say they need to keep killing whales.
Whether or not there should be a ban on killing whales is another matter altogether. Wasting time and resources in this manner to circumvent public opinion is another. I'd be pretty pissed if I were a Japanese consumer / taxpayer (depending on who pays for these useless "experiments").
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Meat wouldn't be that great of an incentive considering that we can directly clone meat so that we don't need to raise any animals and there would be a greater energy efficiency for the production of meat. I don't see milk being a problem either, as a similar solution could be developed with greater ease and less time.
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i hope the article's author realized that female whales are called cows...
I think the combo makes sense. Japan still hunts for whales, which gets them a lot of bad press. What if, they could grow whale meat on land? You'd want whale flesh in a easily manageable form that lacks the intelligence of a whale, but you already had facilities to breed, slaughter and distribute.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Some day, the International Whaling Committee which discusses hunting and killing of whales will be about as ethically acceptable as an International Slavery Committee that discusses acceptable ways to enslave people.
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tiger or even the elephant. The most dangerous animal is a shark riding
on an elephant, just trampling and eating everything they see." oh Jack Handey
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Seems natural to me, from a japanese perspective. Japanese like eating whales. Cows are easy to breed and keep. It would be a terrific thing for Japan if they could make cows that tasted like whales. (It wouldn't be a bad thing from the whales' perspective, either.)
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Nobody EATS IT! The whole things has become a matter of pride, they japanese can't shift the meat without subsidies. It just ain't popular. Now beef. Good beef? That will cost you a fortune.
The reason whale meat was on the diet (when it hasn't been for ages in the rest of the world) was because post-WW2 japan had a food shortage and whale meat was easily available. For all kinds of reasons Japan just ain't a beef country. But that doesn't mean the meat was popular. Before commercial whaling was banned the consumption was already plumetting.
Japanese politics are EXTREMELY controlled by special intrest groups. Far more so then even the US. Would New York keep valuable land for growing grain just a few miles outside the city center? Hell no. Drive out of tokyo were land-prices are insane and you will land right smack in the rice paddies, rice that is so expensive to grow in Japan it makes no economical sense.
The entire whaling debate is just a product of old elite japanese wanting to say NO to the world. No normal japanese person wants to eat it. It is like those people who claim they hunt seals for historic reasons while wearing synthetic clothing and dining on pizza.
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That's why their government is pursuing whaling, trying to get people to eat the stuff and exaggerating the extent to which whaling and whale-meat consumption is a traditional part of Japanese culture.
Personally, the whole thing disgusts me, as does the intelligence-insulting excuse that this has anything to do with science. That includes these bullshit "experiments", which are laughable but (under the circumstances) not particularly funny.
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Actually, leaving that out of the summary doesn't just make it sound more ridiculous, it's suspiciously xenophobic. It singles out Japan as doing wacky science. You know, unlike us Europeans or you Americans.
Bit of a reality check:
1. Western companies routinely pay for dubious research that pushes their own agenda. Probably more rabbits and rats smoked tobacco because of tobacco companies trying to prove that smoking is harmless, than because of all other research combined. (And if they want to present test-tube whale babies as ridiculous research, then, hello? Smoking rabbits? When was the last documented time a rabbit just naturally rolled a tobacco leaf and smoked it?)
Or mice were shaved and exposed to UV-B so they'd die of cancer, in an experiment that tried to prove that drinking coffee is good for you in that aspect. Gee, I wonder who the sponsor was there. (And again, seriously, when was the last time a mouse shaved and went to get a tan on his own?)
Anti-depressant companies routinely publish studies where their MAO uptake inhibitors are the best thing since Eden, and routinely junk studies where for various forms of depression other stuff works even better. Yoghurt manufacturers publish studies after studies in which their bacteria are the best thing that could live in your intestine... if they only got past that pesky acid in your stomach. Etc.
2. Western corporate PR routinely carpet-bombs the media with even more bizarre and ridiculous pseudo-science. Scientist discovers formula for the best day to take a vacation! (It doesn't even add the same units and stuff, and it's sponsored by a travel company which runs a promotion for flights in that months. Go figure.) Scientists say: In the future all women will have huge breasts and all men will have huge dicks! (Except it wasn't as much science, as an essay paid for by a magazine.) Scientists discover: Cocoa contains valuable enzymes so chocolate is good for you! (Except they don't exist in chocolate. And it was sponsored by Mars.) Etc.
Still think Japan's actual research in wales looks ridiculous compared to _that_ kind of garbage?
3. If it sounds ridiculous just because it tries to do genetic stuff with wales _and_ cows, I humbly propose the following list of stuff done by the West and China. And that's just off the top of my head. You don't even need to try hard to spin any of them as ridiculous.
- Crossing jellyfish and rabbits to get glow-in-the-dark rabbits.
- Ditto for pigs.
- Ditto to get coloured glow-in-the-dark sperm. (I wonder why the porn industry didn't already jump on that idea. Imagine a bukkake in the dark, where each shot glows a different colour;)
- Getting genes from insects or arachnids into goats, so they'd produce silk strands in their milk.
- Getting mammal-speciffic proteins into fungi, so they'd produce renet. (Actually used by the cheese industry.)
- Making a human embryo with two mothers and a father.
Etc.
I mean, if anyone wants to look at Japan's research as "hur hur hur, Beavis, where in the nature would a whale fuck a cow?"... then, by the same token, heh, exactly when was the last time when a horny spider impregnated a goat? And do female rabbits in heat routinely get their bones jumped by jellyfish? And exactly how would a baby with two mothers and a father happen naturally? It's actually impossible even with two fathers and a mother, but it's at least the kind of thing which some people would believe as an urban legend. But two mothers and a father? Exactly what perverted act would those two women need to do, so the egg of one ends up merged with the egg of the other, before the guy impregnates the result?
Or, I dunno, we could accept that just because taking stuff out of context can make it sound funny, it doesn't mean there can't be a legitimate purpose to doing that kind of research.
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probably what has been lost in translation here is that a female whale is called a "cow". While I haven't RTFA, I expect this has nothing to do with bovines and a lot to do with OMG journalism.
Having said that Japan must stop whaling; the rest of the world's govenments must step in and stop the insult to "science" this loophole exploits; stop the IWC 3rd world country votes-for-cash bribery; and the rest of the world's people should boycot her until she does. It's complete and udder bullshit that this $1M industry is allowed to continue (yes, that's "1 Million" with an "M", it hardly even covers the fuel costs to get the whaling fleet into the southern ocean whale sanctuary hunting grounds (yes, that's "sanctuary" with an "i" for illegal breach)).
It's in my cultural heritige to throw rocks at the heads of Englishmen. Well, times change, and we must move on.
~.~
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Herein lies the problem. The first, which would have eliminated the need for a whaling fleet, was not attempted, as far as I can tell. No great surprise, given who financed the research. The second is extremely unlikely - whales are ancient, and the genetic differences with their closest land relatives are significant - and don't apply to cows. If they'd worked with hippos, I might be inclined to believe that they took their own research seriously. They're still way too distant for it to be remotely credible, but given it's the closest land relative going, it would at least make some sense. Sure, cows are easier to obtain, but you need to be in a truly Dilbertesque situation, incredibly stupid or believe everyone else to be incredibly stupid, to go in that direction.
(Sadly, many people are incredibly stupid when it comes to bad science, which is why there's so much out there any why it's so profitable. I suggest reviewing the animated Dilbert episode on Chronic Cubicle Syndrome for further information on credulity. It's not restricted to any group of people - plenty of people regarded as geniuses believed incredibly stupid things. Intelligence provides an extra tool to filter out nonsense, but it must be applied for it to work and it is easily negated by flawed assumptions and preconcieved notions. Problem is, as the cartoon notes, it's impossible to investigate everything, which means everyone works from flawed assumptions and preconcieved notions.)
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Informative? Oh god.
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We ARE talking about Japan, here ... Pray it does not involve a squid.