SkepticLance

Dak One couple in five in today's world is infertile. Many are already going to IVF to have kids. The next step is for those people to add a little gene manipulation as part of the IVF. If only one in ten children as a result are genetically modified, then over time and many generations, the relevent genes will increase in frequency through the population, till every individual has 'superior' genes are part of their make-up. I could even suggest there may come a time when, for humanitarian reasons, no couple will be permitted to have children without those children at early embryo stage being modified to make sure they do not begin life with nasty genetic handicaps. Over the past 100 years, human reproduction has changed massively. From 'if you caint have em, tough!' we have moved to a stage with numerous reproductive interventions - from fertility drugs to IVF to embryo selection to AI to egg donation etc. We can predict that the next 100 years will see just as many, and probably more, massive changes in medical technology for human reproduction. It is only a matter of time before genetic manipulation is a part.

To Dak Ethical concerns are always the first to disappear. 35 years ago, human reproduction by artificial insemination was considered immoral. Now it is very widespread, and widely accepted as OK. In Victorian times, the word 'damn' was considered to be so evil that its use condemned the user instantly to eternity in Hell. Today it is in such widespread use that it is unremarked. In the same way, once genetic manipulation of humans becomes easy and practical, it will slowly creep into widespread useage, and become accepted as normal. We will begin with deletion of nasty genes like those for multiple sclerosis, and Lou Gehrig's disease. Then we will move on to inserting genes that will enable a child to have a normal life, untainted by unsocial physical traits. Then we will insert genes for beauty, athleticism, intelligence etc. Personally, I only regret that I did not get all these myself at conception, so that I would now be a devastatingly handsome, athletic genius. Alas......

ParanoiA's reference describes the US as having overwhelming force. This is a bit ironic bearing in mind the ongoing list of military failures the US has instigated. The Korean stalemate. Viet Nam. Bay of Pigs. Somalia. And today's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue with resultant loss of life on both sides, and no sign of 'victory' any time soon. It is as if the US military and US administration are retarded children unable to learn any lessons from the past.

jimmy That is just plain paranoid. Our whole economic system is based on greed, and it works well because of that greed. Biotechnology companies are no different to any other company. The antidote to greed, where it gets out of hand, is well policed and appropriate government legislation. If there is a problem with biotech companies, then it is due to lousy laws and lousy policing.

To Mr. Skeptic I do not confuse the two. The thread has been talking about natural selection as the driver of evolution. I am talking about ongoing evolution which will be driven by human efforts instead of NS. Human evolution will be faster than ever. Just not influenced by NS.

To Dak, foodchain and iNow. I think you guys may not quite have taken on board the extent to which I am making my point. Once humanity learns to carry out large scale genetic modification of our own species, natural selection in humans will become a non-event. Anthropogenic changes will operate so drastically and so rapidly that NS will not get a look in. Natural selection will become the ultimate has-been, in relation to Homo sapiens. The reason, of course, is time spans. A process that takes hundreds or thousands of generations simply will have an impact so trivial by comparison, that its impact becomes one divided by infinity.

To POM You have my full sympathy. I have always loved the idea of humans moving into space. Colonies on the moon and Mars. Cities in space. Mining of the asteroids. I think it will happen. Just not in our lifetimes, sadly.

Genetic modification can be either or both. However, in my opinion, it will be essential to continued human survival and progress. This will apply to crops, where extra food will need to be grown to feed the hungry millions, and extra biofuels grown. It will also apply in the end to humans. My favourite is resistance to radiation for space travellers. Even a round trip to Mars would expose the travellers to enough radiation to almost guarantee a case of cancer. To actually live in space, or travel to another star would be a death sentence. However, some organisms can tolerate much larger radiation doses than humans, and a little genetic manipulation would result in a human who can tolerate 1000 times as much radiation as the current model can.

Interesting to note from today's newspaper that Exxon and other oil companies have just been invited back into Iraq, from which they were excluded by Saddam.

lucaspa You seem to have a strong faith in natural selection. I have a much stronger faith in human ingenuity. Natural selection is just too damn slow! Our species has existed for about 200,000 years, and genetic variation in different populations has simply resulted in a few small differences in skin pigmentation and other minor effects. Natural selection simply cannot keep up with the demands that our rapidly changeing society requires. However, human ingenuity can. Society is changing at a break-neck pace, due to changes in technology and social structure. In the near future, human genetics will also change in order to permit the required adaptation. This genetic change will be the result of human intervention in our own genetic development. Natural selection will not get a look in.

To POM Sadly, your optimism is probably misplaced. The cost of anything made in space or on the moon and delivered back, even to Earth orbit, is orders of magnitude greater than the same material made here on Earth. Even if crude oil reached US$1000 per barrel, that would still be true. In fact, it is far more likely that any economic downturn will actually have the opposite to your desired effect. Less money means more excuses to cut NASA's budget. There is, in fact, no overall shortage of raw materials of most types here on Earth. Just an increase in extraction cost. For example, there is 50 million tonnes of Uranium 235 dissolved in the ocean, which can be extracted using the technique developed by the Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI), at a cost about 5 times that of mined U235. The same applies to all essential raw materials. We can get all the materials we will need - just at a higher cost, which is still way, way cheaper than going into space.

To particles I assume that this is something that is personally very emotionally sensitive and you don't want to get too specific. Fair enough. In that case, you will need to do the basic research yourself. Every substance is different in its effects, and none of us can give you a statement that applies to all of the possible drugs this might be. Check on google. Find out the minimum level able to cause a discernable effect and compare that level with the levels you are talking about.

Charon We are in danger of arguing over irrelevencies. The key point is that the work on potatoes led to a claim that was later demonstrated to be false. The key claim was not that a toxin in potatoes was toxic, but that the GM process itself was harmful. That claim led to enormous public opposition and was false.

In other words, no. However, you have an example that comes close to what you are describing in planet Earth. It has been spinning for 4.5 billion years now, in vacuum. The spin is, however, slowing due to the pull of the moon, albeit to a very trivial extent.

To Mr Skeptic Thank you for that comment. It is really nice to see that someone, at least, has a decent idea. Your suggestion is the best and soundest to appear on this thread so far.

Charon The publication date for Pusztai's article is irrelevent. His work was reported unofficially in 1997, and the results widely disseminated through the world media that year. The date of the formal report is not a factor. Popular response was not based on the final report. dichotomy While it is true that we have much to learn from nature, the idea that 'nature knows best' is simply wrong. Humanity has improved its success on all levels by moving away from the 'natural' life into one that is seriously unnatural. We live longer, healthier lives, in stronger more vigorous bodies, suffering less disease, and experiencing more comfort, less hunger, and far more intellectual stimulation. Who would rather live a primitive life where you will probably die young, or live to a better age with that life blighted by disease, hunger and the fear of predators?

Charon As I said before, there are two given explanations for Pusztai being sacked. His employers said one thing while Greenpeace and Pusztai said another. I would be more inclined to believe the employers, since the other sources are so strongly biased. Greenpeace, because it was busy turning Pusztai into a martyr for the cause, and Pusztai, since he would have been bitter and twisted about being sacked. As I also said, there was some minimal anti-GM activity prior to 1997, but the massive increase in that activity dated roughly from that time and from Pusztai's work. In particular, Greenpeace and other major NGO's ramped up their opposition from that time. The problem they had is that, before Pusztai, they had no scientific rationale for their opposition. Pusztai gave them a rationalisation from a pseudoscientific result. Not all GM is good. It has its dangers. Some examples should not be used. eg. Glyphosate resistant sugar beet in Europe, since sugar beet has several close relatives that can hybridise with it, that happen to be common weeds. However, dangers come from any change. There was a case in the 1970's when a new strain of potato was produced by conventional breeding techniques. A technician took some of that potato, and cooked and ate it, and died. Turns out that this strain had excessively high levels of the natural toxin solanine. All new forms of food should be thoroughly tested before being part of the human food chain. However, this applies to GM only to the same degree that it applies to other methods of changing crops.

As a non American, I can say that the Iraq war was a source of utter disgust to us here in NZ. Another factor substantially reducing the already poor reputation of the US administration as a 'responsible' group. Back when Bush was talking about invading Iraq, we had newspaper columns already detailing his TRUE motives. They were : 1. Oil 2. Political advantage (his popularity rose when the Afghanistan invasion looked successful) 3. Finishing off the work Daddy had begun - an entirely personal and emotional reason. The rationalisations Bush gave at that stage were already recognised as being such, rather than real reasons. That has been shown to be correct since. There were no signs of the infamous 'weapons of mass destruction' even before the invasion, and no signs Al Qaeda were present in Iraq (though they have taken advantage of the subsequent anti-American feelings since, big time), and no signs that Saddam Hussein had ambitions outside Iraq, subsequent to the Iran/Iraq war. Because of these factors, the invasion had nothing at all to do with the "War on Terror.' Quite simply, the invasion was for mean and unworthy motives, and the results have reflected that, making the world a more dangerous place for Westerners, and killing over a million innocent citizens of Iraq.

Another possible motive. Publicly available records show that Greenpeace, in the two years after it came out with a strong public opposition to GM, had a major increase in both membership and income. Draw your own conclusions....

Charon I said "no real opposition till 1997". That did not mean zero opposition, since there are always a few cranks around. However, the opposition was not serious till after Pusztai and his potatoes, when Greenpeace etc took it on. I did not say he was fired because of the publication. He was fired, according to his employers, because his work overall was not considered to meet the exacting standards set for good scientific research. I think this included other work besides his GM potato work. You can speculate on other reasons, but the above was the stated reason. Certainly Greenpeace et al have claimed it was due to influence by GM companies. However, Greenpeace et al have their own reasons for not accepting that poor science was the real reason - it would make their campaign look silly. The real point is that the major campaigns against GM began as a result of scientific results that were later found to be invalid. I have seen nothing since to indicate a change in the conclusion that GM has no inherent harm.

Opposition to GM is highly political, led by such extreme groups as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. There was no real opposition until 1997, when a highly flawed study by Dr. Arpad Pusztai on modified potatoes fed to rats was publicised. The following shows a description of this incident : http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Arpad-Pusztai-Potato.htm I quote from the conclusion. "I would not recommend this paper be accepted for publication in its current form. In my experience as an editor and reviewer it would be rejected by the British Journal of Nutrition, Journal of Nutrition and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." Soon after this incident, Dr. Putsztai was dismissed from his position for scientific incompetence. This, of course, just made him a martyr for the rapidly growing anti-GM movement. However, there is no doubt that his work, which was the genesis of the anti-GM movement, was deeply flawed and his conclusions unjustified. To date, there is no credible scientific evidence to suggest that genetic modification as a process is inherently harmful in any way. There are a few situations where the results of GM should not be used, of course. However, this is true of any agricultural technique, including traditional breeding of new crop types.

iNow said "That's actually very poignant, Rev." Also totally subjective, biased, and unproveable by good scientific data.

An item from New Scientist points out that males with certain anti-social qualities get far more sex, albeit in short term relations, than 'nice' guys. Now I know why I missed out at University! Damn!! http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826614.100

Looking back over my last post, I realised I forgot to add an important detail. Cement is made by a chemical reaction between Calcium alkali and silicate. The Romans did it by mixing ground limestone and volcanic ash together and heating them in a furnace together. Under the heat, the limestone became quicklime which reacted with the silicates in the ash to form the mixture of Calcium Aluminium silicate materials we know as cement.

Halogirl Conception can be achieved artificially, in the lab. However, to incubate the resultant embryo through to birth requires an actual woman, acting as surrogate mother. Medical science is still a very long way off developing an artificial uterus that actually works.