http://thecactusproject.com/cactus_project.asp
Splicing human and cactus genes to create cactus with human hair.
Unsettling much?
Wow, science at it’s weirdest.
Honestly, if we can make a cactus grow hair, I wonder what we can REALLY do. There’s probably a reason we havent done anything any more extreme (controversy of course). And I like the way they justified it as an art project.
But apparently with the technology we have, we can splice animal genes with humans and all that creepy stuff. They say it’s possible to create a human pig or human horse hybrid, so that would have our organs, so we can use them as organ donors (still pretty disgusting). I almost want to see something like this done, but Im afraid of what we would discover, and what would happen after that.
Yeah, I’d also love to see just what we can do, but the moral situation regarding a human/pig hybrid… would be strange.
There’s plenty of stuff we can do, but anything involving mammals would require us to have it live through the embryo stage with that modification. Cactuses producing keratin was quite simple: all they had to do was replace the usual material produced. You have to keep in mind that cactus spikes are not vital organs.
For example, we could probably change our fingernails to claws, but if we just added random pig genes to ours, we’d probably die.
In other words, this isn’t just a minor version of a human/pig hybrid. A human/pig hybrid would be a whole other ballpark.
Make a cactus grow pube hairs and I’ll laugh ROFL(to the power of ten). That put apart, I think this is… weird. Messing with genes… Have you ever seen a fly with limbs instead of antennae? That’s another genetic manipulation. I saw photos of mouse having strange grafts, like human ears on their backs or glowing in the dark, but this is strange. No medical breakthroughs discovered, though.
It’s just another human attempting to play god.
And why not, s123?
If you can play god, then I say go for it, just… within bounds.
Pushing boundries - yes
Doing… weird things for no reason - no.
Let me put it the way Jurassic Park put it:
God Creates Dinosaurs
God Destroys Dinosaurs
God Creates Man
Man Destroys God
Man Creates Dinosaurs
(Dinosaurs Eat Man, Woman Inherits The Earth)
If we play god, there is no reason to believe in him. If we lose that rationale, then millions of people would go on riots. The world would be in a frenzy. We would collapse in on ourselves.
How do you play god withing bounds? Playing god immediately states that what you’re doing goes against the natural order of things, which makes for one hell of a ball game. There is no bounds when screwing with nature.
Let me put it this way. Let’s say someone clones their dead son. Good reasoning, but it isn’t right. Now that clone, who is an exact replica of their son, loses their parents because of old age. See, those parents have already lived through a lifetime with their original son. Now, this clone has to live on the streets, fighting for survival. Eventually, he can’t take it anymore, and robs a bank. In the process of robbing the bank, he kills four people and injures several others.
Essentially, if we play god, things like that would eventually happen.
Also, even if it’s just doing weird things, it goes against the natural order of things. Maybe infusing cactus and human DNA caused some weird byproduct that kills millions. The problem is we don’t know what the repercussions of doing such experiments are.
Dinosaurs eat Man, Woman inherits the earth. Don’t forget that.
Whoops…
goes to edit
Haha, within reason is Jurrasic park. They did it on an island, right?
Cloneing your dead son wouldn’t happen, because that’s stupid, and pointless, seeing as he wouldn’t retain his memories.
Something unstupid and pointless would be cloning the son before he’s dead and useing it to save his life, etc.
I addressed just about everyones post.
Actually, with current technology, it is possible to do such things, though getting someone to fund and accept the project could be almost impossible. We need animals that are similar, and pigs are genetically similar to humans. With a little trial and error, we could probably get that going.
Im an atheist myself, so I see it more as Humans trying to take control of the world around him, which, while dangerous, there arent any other ways to advance…than up.
People arent THAT weak. Not EVERYBODY needs to beleive that they’ll go to heaven when they die or they’ll freak out. The people who would do that would simply continue beleiving in him, and that everyone else is a heretic.
This is reasonable, though I beleive within bounds means “not destroying ourselves”.
That’s a terrible example, no offense. That kind of thing wouldn’t even happen if someone adopted a child. The child would hopefully inherit the money from their grandparents. If they could afford to clone him, he wouldn’t be living on the streets, and they probably wouldn’t clone him if they were that old.
Things like THAT wouldn’t happen, but there are negative things that would happen. If we clone humans, people will be unhappy. If we create human pig hybrids, people will flip. protests to riots are likely, but even then, I can only see so much happening. Our society wont collapse unless we do something drastic.
Im pretty sure something like that WOULDN’T happen just messing with a cactus.
Sure, who saw I am legend? If we genetically modified a virus, we could create something terrible…oh wait, dont we already do that? But yeah, since viruses mutate, thats already possible, as birdflu could become airborne tommorow.
The point is that we control these viruses in labs, and test them extensively before we let these things happen.
Uh…Wow… Scratches Head Um…You both missed my point. Horribly.
My point was that screwing with nature (a.k.a. playing god) has advantages, yes, but it also has very, very bad disadvantages, should the right mutation occur at the right moment.
Yes, It’s unlikely, but remember the Anthrax panic? Anthrax was a controlled substance in a lab, until someone released it. Yeah, that’s why those labs are a bad idea. Oh, and who else saw Resident Evil? In it, they were going to smuggle out the T-virus. That’s right, the very thing that could end all life on earth, and they were planning on smuggling it out.
Redhalberd, people are that weak. I’m not. I can deal with God not existing. But take all the radical christians in the world. If we were to give them Iron-clad proof that God didn’t exist, they would kill anyone who said so. Or at least try to.
Yeah, the cloning example was a bad idea. But I thought it drove the point across. Anyone remember the movie AI? Yeah, the humans which created the AI got destroyed by them. It’s the same story every single time. Whether it be a miracle cure, bringing the dead back to life, or creating artificial intelligence, there will always be repercussions.
Yes, those are worse-case scenarios, but what’s the best-case scenario? Especially in this case. Come guy makes a cactus grow human hair, and what’s the benefit. Besides being freaked out and somewhat amused, nothing.
Psst, the T-Virus isn’t real…
So… what you’re saying is: We can’t progress here, because there are bad things that could happen?
Since when has that stopped us? Chernobyl, did that stop us using nuclear power? No, so why should we let ifs mights and buts stop us?
The benefits of making a catus have hair are legion, for one it can keep warm in cold environments (<_<) but more importantly, it shows that we. can. do. it.
And that, is the best thing in the world, the human race, making one more step forward.
I wonder if they could do the opposite: make humans grow spikes instead of hair. That’d be cool.
Shaky ground there.
Is it right to mess with ourselves?
If so, how is that different to not eating human meat, yet eating the meat of other animals?
Well to be blunt, you stated it badly.
I’ll address this in a later paragraph.
You know how many diseases like that we already have in contained labs? Like I said earlier, we’ve INVENTED viruses worse than anything natural.
And this REALLY annoys me.
You continually reference movies.
That’s the problem with society today. TV and movie have blurred the line between reality, and fiction. Half of us dont know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. If we did, we wouldn’t be afraid of things we know arent going to “just happen”.
You think that they would KILL people? That’s just wrong. I have christian friends who dont kill me when I tell them that god doesnt exist. And you can’t PROVE god doesnt exist by trying to play him anyway, so that’s completely irrelevant. There’s no such thing as IRON CLAD proof that god doesnt exist, according to christians.
Back to movies. We don’t know what the nature of AI would be if we created it. Sure, it’d have the potential to destroy us, but only if we gave it that option.
Something could be intelligent without being built in mans image. It wouldn’t need emotions and shit to be intelligent. We could always limit it enough to protect ourselves.
Sure, there’s a point where we would probably take risks with it, but life isn’t some sci fi movie where a small scale AI suddenly becomes super sentient and takes revenge on its creators.
That this helps us learn more about genetic manipulation (which will hopefully lead to the cure for things like AIDS (we technically have cured cancer, though we’re extensively testing it to make sure the cells STAY uncancerous)).
Seriously, we’ve cured cancer?
Fricking woot.
And yeah, 1984, if people had said ‘No cameras, we’ll go all big brother!’ cameras wouldn’t be here, so why should we not do things because games and movies say so?
Example: Resident Evil: True to life, The T-Virus doesn’t get relesased, it’s just a life simulator…
2001:A space oddesy, the mission goes fine.
AI, Our AI helps us do shit.
etc.
Films and movies stress reality, because my idea up there simply wouldn;t sell.
This kind of reminded me of that game Bioshock, to a much lesser extent. People growing spikes and claws, I don’t know about you, but it’d be neat to have some form of offensive/ defensive capabilities on our bodies. I think as long as we have good boundries, testing some things on ourselves shouldn’t be a problem.