Re: "AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST" a song
Joe,
Ouch. The question of what constitutes a species is already unanswerable.
I suppose if the engineered plant no longer can cross with the original
species it would be a new species. In horticultural crops the species
concept can loose meaning anyway. Is Zea maize (corn) really a species?
Personally, I will leave such questions to people that worry about
systematics.
Genetic engineering of Humans. Why not walk on fire. The ethical questions
are of primary importance here, but what if your family consistently
produces children that get Alzheimer's at a young age. There is a gene that
can be inserted to prevent this (hypothetical at this time, but probably not
for long) -- should you abstain from having children or attempt to cure a
genetic problem using genetic engineering in your gene line. Even more
difficult to answer. What if a gene from plants or bacteria is found that
prevents plaque from forming in human arteries (would be the end of the most
common form of heart disease). Is it ethical to put this gene into the
human genome? I am not looking for answers to these questions, but only
pointing out how knotty the ethical problems are going to get.
Jim Anderson
----- Original Message -----
From: <halinar@open.org>
To: <hosta-open@mallorn.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 1999 1:53 PM
Subject: Re: "AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST" a song
> Jim:
>
> >Not to be argumentative, but we there are several areas that could
> >benefit agriculture that would require multigene transfer.
>
> Your point is well taken. At the present time one gene is about what
> is all that is practical. Of course many of the most important traits
> are going to be multigenic. Unfortunately, we also don't understand
> how these traits operate. The techniques of genetic engineering is
> such that it is going to be very difficult to inject multiple genes -
> would probably have to be done one gene at a time. How to do isolate
> 10, or 100 genes for cold tolerance or aluminum tolerance?
>
> Actually, some of this could be done by other techniques, just as
> complicated as genetic engineering but not as glamorous as genetic
> engineering and probably not understood by the biochemical geneticist
> who work on genetic engineering.
>
> The question I have is, how many genes can you inject and still claim
> you have the original species? Even if you inject one gene is that
> transgenetic plant a new species? What's going to be more intersting
> is when they start injecting genes into human DNA!
>
> Joe Halinar
>
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