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Human Language Gene Changes How Mice Squeak
archatheist writes "Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany have engineered a mouse whose FOXP2 gene has been swapped out for a different (human) version. This is interesting because the gene is implicated in human language, and this has changed how mice squeak. 'In a region of the brain called the basal ganglia, known in people to be involved in language, the humanized mice grew nerve cells that had a more complex structure. Baby mice utter ultrasonic whistles when removed from their mothers. The humanized baby mice, when isolated, made whistles that had a slightly lower pitch, among other differences, Dr. Enard says. Dr. Enard argues that putting significant human genes into mice is the only feasible way of exploring the essential differences between people and chimps, our closest living relatives.' The academic paper was published in Cell."
Today's biology is finite component analysis done at a massive scale.. Figuring out how a machine as big as a person works is going to take millenniums.
How we know is more important than what we know.
in a nut shell, i'd support any form of genetic experiementation that does cause undue distress or suffering on an animal. call me a soft lefty, but i just can't stomach unwarranted suffering of animals. i feel worse for them than i do for most humans, because they don't understand what's happening and certainly don't bring it on themselfs.
once i was asked if i supported harvesting organs from animals to save people - I do, but only if it's done in a humane manner and the animals don't suffer. after all if we can't protect animals from cruelty what chance is there we will do the same for our fellow man?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Anyone who has spent any time at all around farm animals, will tell you that they ain't got nothin' to say that's worth listening to. Which is actually much like most of the people in the world.
Nah, if we are not careful the monsters could be the scientists and rest of us.
From the link:
> However, there is no evidence the chimeric mice began to contemplate the meaning of life. We need to give such chimeric mice no more or less moral consideration than we already give laboratory mice.
Really? How do they know that - they don't speak mice.
And what about the humans who don't contemplate the meaning of life? Most of us don't contemplate the meaning of life every minute of our lives.
OK say 1% human is still not human enough. At what percentage does a subject become too human to experiment on?
Yes, look at it that way.
And they'd probably do things the other way round too - start adding nonhuman (not necessarily animal) parts to humans.
So maybe you might decide to reject an "upgrade" because you would be no longer be classed as human and thus be no longer eligible for human-only medical insurance or "NHS".
Just because the tech is ready, doesn't mean the laws, systems and societies are ready.
What? No they wouldn't. Why go to all the trouble of genetically engineering a subhuman slave race when you've already got millions of untermenschen all over the place that you need to find a use for? The whole point of the Third Reich was to get rid of the inferior breeds, not to create more!
Mengele would probably have played with this technology, but as a matter of policy the Nazis were fixated on genetic purity. Cross-species gene tampering of this kind would probably have disgusted them.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.