Did anyone else think about "Planet of the Apes" after reading this?
More like the Island of Dr Moreau, more obscure and quite a bit more disturbing.
Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
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Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#42From an engineering perspective, when trying to explore a dynamic, you simplify the experiment to reduce extraneous variables. So along these lines, I’d be more interested in following experiments like these on say sea slugs. Give them a proto-amygdala/hippocampus or limbic system and test them for increased memory, adaptive behavior etc. This choice of monkey experiment seems to be more sensation and less investigat…
unfortunately, the further you move generically from the human, the more extraneous variables you introduce and the lower the relevance of any result. There is a reason drugs and experiments are performed on primates. Any result you saw in say a sea slug would provide no insight into the human function.
The ideal experiment would be to delete the gene from a human, but this is unethical for obvious reasons.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#43If you want to know what science fiction thought of this kind of thing in 1896, read the Island of Dr Moreau -- an eccentric scientist in exile modifies animals into more human forms.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#44This is crucial in order to maintain ethical boundaries. After about 100 days after the fetus had been growing, the international team unanimously agreed to remove the fetus through a C-section I feel we’ve already entered into sensitive territory by aborting it.
Yeah, aborting in some circles is the same as murder so the "ethics" is a bit blurry here. The crossed the line by creating life and then they killed what could essentially be something that could have had the intelligence of a regular human being. I'm not an anti-abortionist but I can't deny that the ethics in this area is blurry. Even worse is when you're aborting genetically modified life.
No post body was provided.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#45Damnit, couldn't they have done this when Charlton Heston was still around to help out?
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#46I find it hard to describe how I feel about this.
These scientists essentially created what may have been a new species, that perhaps would have had similar sentience to us and had them terminated after 100 days.
The cat's out of the bag with this research so to speak now. Someone's bound to do this again
The part about whether they should have been born or not, which was the ethical thing is what tears at me.
Is it right to create something that may be similar to us and then not even give it a chance to live?
I mean whether creating such a being is right or not in general i'm sure is up for debate.
I'm not religious, but if we're going to play god, shouldn't we take responsibility for the results of our creation?
I dunno, I find a lot of genetic engineering research to be a bit unsettling. We're playing with things we barely understand that could have consequences we can't even imagine.
Nature took a long long time to get to this point where life has come to a sort of balance. Assuming we can go in and just start blindly messing around and do better seems like an extreme level of arrogance that's going to end up blowing up in our faces.
Our track record for messing around with the fundamental fabric of reality and life isn't so good. We've ended up with some pretty terrifying things.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#47This is either going 28 Days Later or Planet of the Apes.
Has anyone seen Marlon Brando lately?
You were down-voted I think because people are not familiar with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Dr._Moreau_(1996...
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#48So "Planet of the Apes" was not so far fetched after all.
Now somewhere someone will think ... hmmm why can't we replace all our complaining factory workers and their wages/healthcare/retirement plans with these "creatures" and only pay them peanuts and banana's.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#49Charlton Heston would like a word with these scientists.
Re: Scientists grow bigger monkey brains using human genes, replicating evolution
#50I find it hard to describe how I feel about this. These scientists essentially created what may have been a new species, that perhaps would have had similar sentience to us and had them terminated after 100 days. The cat's out of the bag with this research so to speak now. Someone's bound to do this again The part about whether they should have been born or not, which was the ethical thing is what tears at me. Is it…
>shouldn't we take responsibility for the results of our creation?
"I gave you life, I will take it" - Taras Bulba.