Why does the media potray genetic engineering in such a bad light?

[augment]

I just watched some past episodes from star trek. For people that are unfamiliar with the Trek universe I've given a brief description if you are interest in reading all of it. My question is as the subject says, why does the media portray genetic engineering in such a bad light?

 

In the 1970s a group of humans genetically engineered a few thousand humans, thus creating stronger, faster, and smarter humans(they pretty redesigned humanity. They were suppose to have about double the intelligence. I dont know if this number is right so someone correct me if I'm wrong. The average IQ is about 100-110. So if they were twice as smart their IQs would be 200-220. If I remember correctly Einstein's was 160. Anyway, in the 1990s these superhumans seized control in about 40 different countries(this period was referred to as the Eugencis Wars), the strongest one was Kahn Noonien Singh. Eventually humanity overthrew the superman and about 80-90 of them were put on a sleeper ship that would take them to a new planet. The ship never made it to a planet and was found in space by the Star Ship Enterprise, from TOS, in episode 1x24 "Space Seed." Kahn and his superman gained control of Enterprise but were eventually beaten and set down on a barely habitable world. Going back, after the Eugenics Wars were over their were still thousands of unborn genetically engineered embryos waiting to be born. The gov'ts didn't know what to do with them so they put them in cold storage. Years later Dr. Arik Soong who was the cheif scientist at a research facility inside of an asteroid where pathogens were studied(also the new home of the thousands of embryos). Soong stole 19 embryos and incubated them, bringing them to life. He raised them on a planet for 10 years until he was caught and the augments were left to fend for themselves. In episode 4x04 "Borderland" the augments, now fully grown, have stolen a Klingon Bird of Prey. Enterprise picks up Soong from his prison to aid them in stopping the augments(which soong has no intention to do). The augments dock with Enterprise and take Soong with them after Malack has Captain Archer hostage. Thats pretty much what happens in that episode. The story arch spans three episodes. In 4x05 "Cold Station 12" the augments now lead by Soong go to Cold Station 12 to retrieve the thousands of embryos. They succeed in getting the embryos and also pick up a few canisters of pathogens. In 4x06 "The Augments" Soong is overthrown by the leader of the Augments Malack. After being aided by Persus, one of the Augments, Soong escapes in an escape pod and is picked up by Enterprise. The Augments are planning to release the pathogens they brought with them on a Klingon colony. If they succeeded they would star a war between Earth and the Klingon Empire, allowing them to settle on a planet and start their superior civilization. Soong does not want to see a war started so he helps enterprise stop the Augments. Malack then blows up the augments ship, taking with him the embryos. Soong is sent back to prison where he decides that perfecting humanity wasn't going to work so he goes to artificial life. So he is kind of the great-grandfather of Data.

 

Wow that was a whole lot of writing. Looking back it wasn't that brief.

[Bluenoise]

ignorance

 

*edit*

 

Also it makes alot better of a story that way...

[jeskill]

wow. You must really like Star Trek . Seriously, I didn't know why or how Data came to be, although I never really thought about it, it's a grand story.

 

I agree with Bluenoise.

 

Ever notice how Star Trek almost always tries to put a moral spin on the story? They should have gotten educational programming status for that.

[augment]

I don't really know that much about Star Trek, just this particulary storyline. I've also read the books on Khan Noonien Singh written by Greg Cox(great writer). It's a three book series. I haven't read the third one but the first two were great. Heres a link to the first one:

Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars #1: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh

Heres the second one: Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars #2: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh

[Sisyphus]

Er, I'm not sure what your point is with the Star Trek thing, but people fear all kinds of genetic engineering and cloning and for no other reason than it sounds like "mad scientist" stuff. It's been a common and easy plot device for so long (going all the way back to Frankenstein, which was allegorical more than anything else) that there tends to be a kneejerk reaction to it that has little to do with a rational outlook. When pressed, most people just call it "unnatural" or something. Yeah, it's unnatural - about as unnatural as the rest of modern medicine...

[Daecon]

Let us rip the organs out of dead bodies and use them to extend the lives of other people.

 

It's perfectly natural acceptable.

 

Let us enhance some bactiera to produce enzymes that can help cure diseases, or create beings that wouldn't suffer from those diseases in the first place.

 

(After death) "Hello Satan, I'm your new roommate."

 

Consistent much?

[augment]

The point of the Star Trek thing is because in every instance the "augments" try and take over. The whole "superior ability breeds superior ambition thing" is kind of nonsense to me.

[RyanJ]

Ignorance, they don't have an idea what they are talking about and uncertaintly leads to fear so there we go...

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Daecon]

"superior ability breeds superior ambition thing"

Didn't you know? That's the American Dream.

[insane_alien]

its the same thing when they dropped nuclear from NMRI when it started being used in medicine. people thought anything with the word nuclear in it was bad.

[Bluenoise]

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/genetics/mg18925381.300-make-me-a-hipporoo.html

 

excellent article

[Daecon]

If you are not an existing subscriber and wish to continue reading this article click here

*sigh*

 

This is why the copy/paste function is so useful.

[Bluenoise]

Would I be putting this site at risk of copy right violations?

 

Bahh who cares if anyone complains I'll take it down...

 

You all better read it now!!!

 

IT HAS become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the 20th century was the century of physics and the 21st century will be the century of biology. Two facts about this century are agreed by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce or by the output of major discoveries, and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the 21st century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications or by its effects on human welfare.

 

These facts raise an interesting question. Will the domestication of technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers, GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe the answer is yes. I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next 50 years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the past 50 years.

 

I was lucky to be at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the 1940s and 1950s when John von Neumann began designing and building the first electronic computer that operated with instructions coded into the machine. It was his invention of software that gave the computer agility and flexibility. Yet it never entered von Neumann's head that computers would become small enough and cheap enough for doing income tax returns and homework. He imagined them as giant centralised facilities serving large research laboratories or large industries. According to legend, somebody in the government once asked von Neumann how many computers the United States would need in the future. And he replied, "18".

 

I see a close analogy between von Neumann's blinkered vision of computers as large centralised facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because the company likes to put genes for pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralised activity in the hands of large corporations.

 

Yet I see a bright future for the biotech industry when it follows the path of the computer industry that von Neumann failed to see, and becomes small and domesticated rather than big and centralised. The first step in this direction was taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colours appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly.

 

I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, California, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego in lizards and snakes. Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people who devote their lives to this business.

 

Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.

 

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into everyone's hands, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and industrial development have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora.

 

The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age, but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others.

 

If the domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the limits our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? I leave it to you and your grandchildren to supply the answers to these questions.

Plants on Mars

 

The actual shape of domesticated biotechnology is as impossible for us to discern today as the actual shape of a personal computer was impossible for von Neumann to discern in 1950. The best that I can do is to describe the functions of a DIY biotechnology kit. I cannot guess the shapes of the gadgets that will carry out the functions. The kit will have five chief functions. First, to grow plants under controlled conditions. This requires a garden or greenhouse with the usual tools and chemical supplies. Second, to grow animals under controlled conditions.

 

This requires a stable for big animals or cages for small animals, with the usual supplies of food and medicaments. Third, simple and user-friendly instruments allowing unskilled people to manipulate seeds or eggs or embryos. Fourth, a table-top genome sequencer able to sequence single molecules of DNA. Fifth, a table-top genome synthesiser able to synthesise substantial quantities of DNA with any desired sequence. The latter two instruments do not now exist, but they are likely to exist within 10 or 20 years, since they will have great commercial value for medical or pharmaceutical industries, as well as for scientific research.

 

What use will we make of these domesticated biotechnology kits when they become widespread? Their applications will be at least as novel and diverse as the applications of domesticated computer technology. Domesticated biotechnology will begin with gardens and pets, but will rapidly spread to mines and factories, laboratories and supermarkets. Domesticated biotechnology will mean that many objects of daily life, such as beds and sofas and houses and roads, will be grown rather than manufactured. When teenagers become as fluent in the language of genomes as they are today in the language of blogs, they will be designing and growing all kinds of works of art for fun and profit.

 

I do not venture to predict what new scientific revolutions will emerge from a mastery of biotechnology. One of the worst things that I can imagine is that medical researchers will find a cure for death. After that, aged immortals will accumulate on this planet and there will be no more room for the young. The normal replacement of each generation by the next will come to an end, and progress in science will stop.

 

A more hopeful outcome is the design and breeding of radically new microbes and plants and animals adapted to living wild in cold places such as Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. New ecologies adapted to low levels of sunlight could make these alien worlds teem with life. Plants that grow their own greenhouses could generate breathable air and keep the surfaces of these worlds warm, so that they would become hospitable to human settlement.

Evolving evolution

 

But what impact will all this have on evolution? Carl Woese at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign is the world's greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy. He explored the ancestry of microbes by tracing the similarities and differences between their genomes. He discovered the large-scale structure of the tree of life, with all living creatures descended from three primordial branches.

 

He recently published a provocative and illuminating article with the title "A new biology for a new century" (Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, vol 68, p 173). Woese's main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practised for the past 100 years, and the need for a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organisation rather than on genes and molecules. Aside from his main theme, he raises another important question. When did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of non-interbreeding species.

 

He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution did not go back to the beginning of life. Comparing the genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures shows evidence of massive transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time.

 

Whatever Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his "new biology" article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel, and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer.

 

But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbours in efficiency. That cell separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species of bacteria, reserving their intellectual property for their own private use. With their superior efficiency, the bacteria continued to prosper and to evolve separately, while the rest of the community continued its communal life. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became the ancestor of the archaea. Some time after that, a third cell separated itself and became the ancestor of the eukaryotes. And so it went on, until nothing was left of the community and all life was divided into species. The Darwinian interlude had begun.

 

The Darwinian interlude has lasted for 2 or 3 billion years. It probably slowed down the pace of evolution considerably. The basic biochemical machinery of life had evolved rapidly during the few hundreds of millions of years of the pre-Darwinian era, and changed very little in the next two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species once established evolve very little. Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

 

Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over. It was an interlude between two periods of horizontal gene transfer. The epoch of Darwinian evolution based on competition between species ended about 10,000 years ago, when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganise the biosphere.

 

Now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the rules of "open source" sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.

 

In conclusion, I would like to borrow Carl Woese's vision of the future of biology and extend it to the whole of science. Woese likens organisms to eddies in a turbulent stream, that reappear no matter how often they are disturbed. He writes: "It is becoming increasingly clear that to understand living systems in any deep sense, we must come to see them not as machines, but as stable, complex, dynamic organisations."

 

This picture of living creatures as patterns of organisation rather than collections of molecules applies not only to butterflies and rainforests but also to thunderstorms and active galactic nuclei. The non-living universe is as diverse and as dynamic as the living universe, and is also dominated by patterns of organisation that are not yet understood. The reductionist physics and the reductionist molecular biology of the 20th century will continue to be important in the 21st century, but they will not be dominant.

 

The big problems - the evolution of the universe as a whole, the origin of life, the nature of human consciousness and the evolution of Earth's climate - cannot be understood by reducing them to elementary particles and molecules. New ways of thinking and new ways of organising large databases will be needed.

 

That is as far as I am able to go. If you want to learn more about the real future of science, the best way is just to stay alive as long as you can and see what happens.

 

Freeman Dyson is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. This is an extract from a talk given at the Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery symposium, held at the University of California, Berkeley, in October 2005

From issue 2538 of New Scientist magazine, 11 February 2006, page 36

[Daecon]

I was going to purchase the 11th February edition of New Scientist, but I wasn't anywhere near a shop that sold it during that period.

[Bluenoise]

It's nice having institutional access to every online journal from any computer with internet

[augment]

Enlightening article thanks. Would you mind telling me where you got it from please?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

They've watched too many Resident Evil movies.

[Bluenoise]

Enlightening article thanks. Would you mind telling me where you got it from please?

 

uhhhh I did leave the reference at the bottom of the post

[augment]

Oh sry I meant a link.

[Bluenoise]

Oh sry I meant a link.

 

Yeah I linked it too....

 

..sigh.

[augment]

A hyperlink cuz I'm not seeing it sry??

[Bluenoise]

And I quote...

 

 

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/genetics/mg18925381.300-make-me-a-hipporoo.html

 

excellent article

[RyanJ]

They've watched too many Resident Evil movies.

 

Thats a good one. I still think its because they simply have no idea what they are talking about.

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[Daecon]

Maybe they don't like non-christians playing God.

 

If the Church has created genetic engineering, then it would be wholeheartedly encouraged and the 21st Century would be heralded as the new Age of Miracles™

[bascule]

What's sad is anti-GMO alarmism has kept the governments of several African countries from approving GMO crops, so their people continue to starve when we have a solution...