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Louisiana Rep. Preps State Bill Banning Human-Animal Hybrids
mikeljnola writes with an excerpt from NOLA.com that says state senator Danny Martiny (R-Kenner) will introduce a bill to the Louisiana legislature on April 27 to "'make it illegal to "create or attempt to create a human-animal hybrid, ... transfer or attempt to transfer a human embryo into a non-human womb ... (or) transfer or attempt to transfer a non-human embryo into a human womb."' With budget cuts all around, our struggling state is concerned with the eminent danger of human-animal hybrids. The upside is that the odds of the Louisiana becoming the Bayous of Dr. Boudreaux are now even slimmer."
You think the Japanese will follow a USA bill?
If you had sex with a human-animal hybrid, could you be prosecuted for bestiality? Of course *I* wouldn't have sex with a hybrid. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I think.
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Usually Louisiana and Alabama are on the cutting edge of scientific advancement.
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I live in New Orleans. from the article, this was filed "on behalf of the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops". If you've never been here, Catholicism is huge in south Louisiana.
This bill has nothing to do with any sort of research or proposed research in the state. There are no biomedical companies here threatening to build mutant humans. Louisiana doesn't generally have the sort of biomedical research centers that would do work of that sort. We're happy if the Germans build a steel mill here.
This is just another one of those ideas based on a garbled sci-fi fear of Science, made by people who'd rather not have to learn anything before forming an opinion, and who have far too much access to lawmakers.
I have no doubt the law will pass, the religious community here will crow about it for a few days, and then absolutely nothing tangible will have changed. Except that a few hundred thousand more of my state tax dollars will have been spent on bullshit.
Bacteria are not technically classified as animals, so the new law would not affect them. Human/tree and human/mushroom hybrids would also still be legal.
Furries everywhere are universally disappointed.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
OK, I've dumped my Karma bonus and am expecting to earn a couple of new Freaks, because this is the single most heartless thing that I've ever posted on /.
That would reduce the risk for the mother; I doubt it would reduce it for the child. The child is under far more risk than the mother in most pregnancies.
Who cares? The mother is far more important than the child. The "child", at least in the most risky period of the pregnancy, is just a collection of tissue that will hopefully develop a nervous system and eventually become a person. If we can halve the risk to the mother while doubling the risk to the embryo - I'm all for it.
When my wife was pregnant with our first child, she asked me very seriously how I would respond if something went wrong and the doctor told me that he could only save either her or our child (she watches too much TV). I told her that I'd pick her and we could try for another baby or adopt. She was satisfied with that and responded with something to the effect of "Damn straight." Reduce the risk to the mother at (almost) all cost - Babies are easy to assemble, far more difficult to transform into productive adults.
[/monster]
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I really hope there's an obscure reference that's setting me up for a 'whoosh' here, because if you're serious, you should look into a few names:
...to name just a few. The first pair and their connection to the second name were probably the longest knowledge setback in scientific history. The Catholic church has always opposed any knowledge that would allow common people to think freely and question its dogma.
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Law of Unintended Consequences, we've all evolved to be in a womb. There's a whole list of things that go on during pregnancy that I don't think we're even close to completely understanding.
Babies pickup up the basic phonemes of the mothers language in the womb. Babies respond to their mother's voice after birth because they've been 'hearing' it for the last 9 months.
Babies constantly hear the mother's heart beat. It's why you can calm a baby by placing it close to your chest, it hears the heart beat again.
Babies' immune system get bootstrapped with antibodies from the mother's body.
The mother's body (kidney, hearts, lungs, livers) act as the baby's for the first 9 months. We haven't perfected artificial copies of those yet, so what is the artificial womb supposed to do? We're already seeing problems where a constant flow motor in place of a heart causes problems in the rest of the body that had grown accustom to a (1/60) Hz throbbing.
Artificial / Cow milk is no substitute for breast milk during young development. The fatty chains and stuff can't be replicated by any formula, what makes them think that the fluids the mother and baby exchange?
The human body is an infinitely complex system of feedback loops and control systems. I can't ever see us getting this right artificially. If the baby is low on X, the mothers body will give it more X.
How many versions of this will we go through of very very messed up babies/people before we get it right?
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