I for one welcome our synthetic embryo overlords.
Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
111–120 of 147 posts
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#112This is great news, which of course will generate a lot of heat in some circles.
Before someone screams "playing god" and similar nonsense, I would ask them if they would have the same reaction when a new advanced weapon is introduced, because you know, if playing god applies when giving life, then it also does when giving death.
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#113This is great news, which of course will generate a lot of heat in some circles. Before someone screams "playing god" and similar nonsense, I would ask them if they would have the same reaction when a new advanced weapon is introduced, because you know, if playing god applies when giving life, then it also does when giving death.
I think many people who dislike this kind of research would also dislike weapons research.
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, to quote Carl Sagan, if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. I doubt human technology will be able to create life from organic molecules for at least several decades if not centuries.
We already can...? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology
I think syntactic biology is still very far from creating lifeforms from atomic or molecular precursors.
Xenobots, for example are made using harvested stem cells
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, to quote Carl Sagan, if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. I doubt human technology will be able to create life from organic molecules for at least several decades if not centuries.
We already can...? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_biology
Depends on what you mean by "can". From the Wikipedia article:
"A living "artificial cell" has been defined as a completely synthetic cell that can capture energy, maintain ion gradients, contain macromolecules as well as store information and have the ability to mutate. Nobody has been able to create such a cell."
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#116This is great news, which of course will generate a lot of heat in some circles. Before someone screams "playing god" and similar nonsense, I would ask them if they would have the same reaction when a new advanced weapon is introduced, because you know, if playing god applies when giving life, then it also does when giving death.
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Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that the dark side?
Not sure why the parent thinks so, but my only concern is with new lifeforms. We constantly mess up the ecosystem, merely by introducing existing species into environments which cannot handle them. Soon we will be able to engineer exotic forms of life, yet we cannot currently control, reign in, or manage current, naturly evolved forms of life. For example, we have to spray deadly chemicals on crops, to kill fungus, b…
aside from bad actors, i think that safe guards could prove effective.
synthetic organisms would have no natural predators, but the would also have no natural defenses. we could make them without an immune system or make it depend on a molecule that does not exist in the wild. so they would quickly die out.
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#118A few years ago, someone did home experiments (posted to a FB group) with raising chickens outside of their egg shells. It caused a lot of controversy, but damn, so fascinating at the same time. This has actually been a whole thing for a while... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell-less_chick_embryo_cultur... https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/shell-less-chick-embryo... https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jpsa/51/…
This ought to prove that chicken came first and not the egg
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#119This really is pretty amazing work. But, to the uninitiated, there's a dark side; I overheard someone commenting about an earlier post about this experiment, thinking it's possible to get out a chemistry set and just make a living thing. To be clear, they started with stem cells, and teased them into doing the right thing - they did not create a new living artifact from scratch; > Instead, they used stem cells - the…
Ok, we've put stem cells up there too. Thanks!
Now the title is arguably confusing and significantly different from that of the original linked article. It seems unnecessary to mangle the title to that extent, to create a wider difference.
Re: Mouse embryo with brain and beating heart created from stem cells
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the embryo stage, what's the difference?
Ho ho courting controversy. The difference is you don't know if there's a difference: when does the soul come in? Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist? is the personality only some sort of construct that's formed as a child is raised? Or is there something eternal spiritual inside? It doesn't have to trip your anti-religious ADS, maybe it's a fact about the universe we haven't found a…
> Maybe you don't believe in souls but can you disprove that they exist?
Can you disprove that mouse souls exist?