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Chinese Scientists Make Cow Producing Human-Like Milk
hackingbear writes "Scientists from China Agricultural University have produced 17 healthy cloned cattle expressing recombinant human lysozyme using somatic cell nuclear transfer. Lysozyme, a bactericidal protein that protects human infants from microbial infections, is highly expressed in human milk but is found in only trace amounts in cow milk. The cloned cows produce milk with similar nutritional benefits as human milk, and the scientists hope their results will lead to new techniques that could be further refined for production of active human lysozyme on a large scale."
Is china regulated on cloning and stuff of the sorts as much as the us is? I see so much opposition in the US towards anything Genetically Altered that its saddening.
I can see Freud clicking his heels in glee already! :-D
Geekism is your _only_ God!
Leave the breasts for the fathers!
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Maybe one day I can see human milk cheese on the store shelves!
for those of us that are lactose intolerant
.. and sell it under the wrong name!
They are meddling with forces that they cannot possible control or understand!
The purpose of existence is to make money.
Just make sure we don't import any or we'll get babies with 4 legs.
Bigger boobs ARE better.
Yet another Chinese proverb validated
Does anyone else think this could be a terrible thing for human infants by eventually spawning a new breed of Lysozyme resistant bacteria? I anticipate that this will eventually INCREASE infant mortality as a result of just such a thing. Right now breastfeeding mothers can be relied upon to pretty regularly nurse their children... but with this cowbreast milk, we'll likely see occasional sporadic use of the stuff due to tight family budgets or forgetfulness.
Bonus question for long-time Mac users: would you call Moof's lactation dogcowbreastmilk? g=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ (at time 1:12+)
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Finally we can get Breast milk ice cream back in stores !!!
"We're tired of having to share a tit with a cigarette smoker", says one.
Have gnu, will travel.
With all the trouble needed to make this, wouldn't a human farm be cheaper?
if they can get it approved and produced in large-enough quantities. It has been known for a long time that breast milk is far better than any of the 'formula' milks alternatives out there. There are, sadly, many women who cannot breast-feed for one reason or another (it may not be a high percentage, but it is still a lot of women). For them, they want to see the best done for their child and if this is a way of keeping their child healthier than the alternative then I'm sure an awful lot of them would take it as an option. I know that my wife and I would have done when she couldn't breast-feed our 2nd born due to her suffering from post-natal depression.
This is all well and good, but it would take some seriously exhaustive studies to prove that this should be given to babies. Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. I didn't think I'd ever become a breastfeeding militant, but it's happened... breastfeeding worked out so much better for my daughter & I than anyone ever lead me to believe, yet people still look for ways out of the "inconvenience" of, say, having to see women nurse in public (gasp!).
I love science, but if we're really smart we'd put less energy into trying to duplicate human milk, and look for more ways to support, assist, & enable nursing mothers.
spacefem.com
Am I the only one that thought it was funny that they developed this at CAU? CAU is producing human-like milk!
Why not just hook the baby straight up to the cow? What could possibly go wrong?
that can produce melamine in the milk by themselves?
Sure, I see the scientific prowess, I can even sort of appreciate it... But am I the only one to find it disturbing, to say the least, that we reprogram other animals to suit our needs rather than adapt our ways of life or ourselves ?
No wit here.
I would rather get human milk from humans.
I wish more grocery stores carried this.
Awesome, now we can genetically engineer mutant cows that express human proteins - we can build an industry of these mutant cows that supply human proteins into a global distribution network, shipping product overseas in tremendous tankers and transports and delivered by truck to retail locations across the globe...
Or, you know, we could just breastfeed our kids.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The product must come in a shape resembling half a grapefruit, be skin colored and warm and flexible to the touch. Teenage boys will love the product.
However there is a reality that any product that assists in reproduction or the survival of babies is the last thing this world needs. There is a population bomb and it is already killing us.
I didn't rtfa or even the summary. The title implies that the chinese made human-like milk which produces cows. That's the way i always want it to stay for me.
All milk contains the protein alpha-lactalbumin, but only human breast milk contains the multimeric form (just means the protein has more than one peptide chain).
A decade of studies by Dr. Catharina Svanborg at Lund University in Sweden have demonstrated that human breast milk has efficacy against many forms of cancer, and that the agent responsible is multimeric alpha-lactalbumin. This unique protein selectively destroys malignant cells in two ways: by apoptosis on contact, and when morphologically transformed on contact with oleic acid in the stomach, it can migrate into the bloodstream, target cancer cells, slip in through the cell cytoplasm and destroy the malignant cell's RNA.
Problem: mother's milk tastes awful to adults, and breast milk banks are needed for infants.
If cloned cattle can produce milk containing multimeric alpha-lac, this would be of great interest to cancer patients.
Being fat and producing tainted milk from eating processed crap is one job that won't be going overseas.
I guess they won't start selling the milk until they find a way to also synthesize the melamine and have pre-tainted milk. It would save them a lot of work.
without regulated and mandatory GMO labeling they could introduce this milk into your corner store (certainly in Canada anyway) and you wouldn't even know about it.
I think we know what next to expect from the Chinese. This could turn that talk about whether or not men are still necessary right back around. The Chinese aren't that hot on girl babies as it is. Now, cows as surrogate mothers will allow a lot of flexibility in redesigning society, starting with lifting the burden of birthing and caring from women and allowing them to realize their ultimate potential in the intellectual workplace of the future, a task from which they are already displacing the feckless and lazy male, who in turn will be able to return to checkers and sperm donation. In the meantime, infants and children should be as happy as pigs out in the stockyards, until harvest, selection and socialization. The Communists, by way of Capitalism, will arrive, oddly, at Nirvana before their Indian neighbors do, via a social system we must call Cowwunism. (This is all in Cowrad Moo-oh's little red book.)
The researchers have added a human component to cow milk, but they didn't do eveything that's different in one shot. The upside is this is a naturally occuring antibiotic that would have benefits not just for babies but also for adult drinkers. Your body already produces this (for example, it's in your tears and helps a lot with preventing eye infections). It may also help with reducing the need to load cow with as much antibiotics as they do. To the poster who asked about antibodies, it won't have them. Those need to be human and specific to the mother. Antibodies are sufficiently complex that coming up with a comprehensive suite of them appropriate for mass consumption wouldn't be possible. Though maybe a small handful around common ailments/issues might be possible.
Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. ...
Indeed.
Another issue with cow vs. human milk is risk of Multiple Sclerosis. Feeding cow milk to human infants drastically increases that risk.
MS is an autoimmune reaction against the myelin sheaths of nerves. Much of the avoidance of autoimmune reactions is done soon after birth, when the differentiated immune cells take a "grand tour" and those that recognize the body's own structures commit suicide. But myelin sheaths is one of a handfull of things not present until after this period. So it avoids attack later by having a "I'm special, don't attack me." sequence coded into the protein, next to its major antigenic region.
There's a protein in milk that has the same sequence. Unfortunately, the bovine version of the protein is slightly different in that region. So heavy exposure to cow's milk (perhaps in combination with other factors) occasionally leads to the immune system missing the signal, becoming sensitized to the myelin protein, and eventually attacking and destroying the nerve sheaths, creating one of the forms of MS.
To prevent this, some recombinant cattle have been created that express the human, rather than the bovine, version of the protein in question. Expected result, if this were to become the norm in dairy herds: No more risk of MS from drinking cow's milk than from drinking human milk.
At least for people. Calves might occasionally get MS as a result, unless the rest of the systems in question are also replaced with the human version.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yuuuuummmmm!
But does it contain melamine?
Gotta start the Happy Meal addiction while they're young!
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Actually, from the URL:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/01/france-breast-breastfed-baby-death
Emphasis: /2011/apr/01/
Without natural cow's milk, they'll be moooving on to greener pastures.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
"...well I don't want it. You said you wanted it."
"Not me. I don't want it. You drink it...."
Seriously, why can't we have a chemical process such that I empty the lawnmower in, and get milk/cheese/cream out? That would be hugely beneficial, and have major benefits for environment, food supply, and vegans.
Now they just need to make humans produce cow milk. THEN we'll be in business.
Frankly, I just find this a-mooo-sing.