Re: "AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST" a song
Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, etc, yeah, that's important too, but what we
really care about is when can they put daylily flowers on hostas.
Chick
"James M. Anderson" wrote:
> 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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