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Scientists Genetically Engineer Pigs Immune To Costly Disease (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The trial, led by the University of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute, showed that the pigs were completely immune to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a disease that is endemic across the globe and costs the European pig industry nearly $2 billion in pig deaths and decreased productivity each year.
Pigs infected with PRRS are safe to eat but the virus causes the animals breathing problems, causes deaths in piglets and can cause pregnant sows to lose their litter. There is no effective cure or vaccine, and despite extensive biosecurity measures about 30% of pigs in England are thought to be infected at any given time. After deleting a small section of DNA that leaves pigs vulnerable to the disease, the animals showed no symptoms or trace of infection when intentionally exposed to the virus and when housed for an extended period with infected siblings. The study has been published in the Journal of Virology.
Pigs infected with PRRS are safe to eat but the virus causes the animals breathing problems, causes deaths in piglets and can cause pregnant sows to lose their litter. There is no effective cure or vaccine, and despite extensive biosecurity measures about 30% of pigs in England are thought to be infected at any given time. After deleting a small section of DNA that leaves pigs vulnerable to the disease, the animals showed no symptoms or trace of infection when intentionally exposed to the virus and when housed for an extended period with infected siblings. The study has been published in the Journal of Virology.
Ethics aside, because nobody in an emergency room wouldn't want a cure. We as a species IMO should be focusing 75% of our resources on biology for curing diseases and life extension, There is lots of space in this universe & our limiting factor right now is age / death
Pigs are biologically similar enough to humans that we ought to genetically engineer them to be immune to various ailments that also affect humans -- particularly the ailments that make them less likely to make it to the dinner plate. This'll lower the cost of meat production, and simultaneously lead to medical advances for humans.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
I'm reminded of efforts to stamp out sickle cell anemia. Then it was discovered that carriers of the gene for sickle cell anemia were highly resistant to malaria. Are they sure the snippet of DNA they're deleting doesn't confer some benefit which (on an evolutionary level) outweighs the disadvantage of vulnerability to this disease?
You are correct. But the problem is it means replacing our pigs. This solves just one problem (PRRS) but there are many other issues. I've spent decades breeding our nine genetic lines of hogs on our farm to thrive in our climate, be able to eat pasture as the main component of their diet (80%DMI), for good temperament and 33 other criteria.
So I can now throw out decades of work for a single solution (PRRS) resistance? Not going to happen. Their PRRS resistant pigs will die in our climate (USDA Zone 3) so it is pointless to replace our genetics with their genetics.
What we need is the ability to edit our existing pig genetic lines to fix the PRRS susceptibility, as well as other things. Then it becomes interesting.