Genetic Altering Possibilitys

[Doc. Josh]

This may seem a bit uncanny, However i feel as science starts to extend into the deep of the unknown as far as being capable of certain things such as genetic altering. And yes this derives from the movie planet of the apes but raises a good question in my opinion. Is this currently possible to somehow inject, influence development in apes in order to give them human like quality's such as speech, rational thinking problem solving and so on. And when if ever will this be a possibility? If it becomes possible i feel a sort of taboo and 'playing' God scenario. would it be right for the sake of science or ethically wrong? And is there just some things that will never happen i look forward in hearing some educated opinions from the sfn members. Thanks ahead of time.

[Ringer]

If you knew all the genetic markers that influenced those things and were able to alter them while they're still in early developmental stage, like between 1-8 cells or so, I would assume it wouldn't be horribly difficult. It's somewhat like changing the sex of a child before birth or those things that we already do. And like those things there will be a sense of taboo for certain people, that's why we have ethics committees.

[Doc. Josh]

But your saying with current technology we can pretty much accomplish this feat already? As an individual do you think its unethical?

[Ringer]

We have the technology (we an rebuild him ) but we don't have the knowledge. There's quite a few differences in our genes and apes, even apes and apes, so we would have to know all of our genes and all the ape's genes that need to be change. We would also know how they interact, if there will be any effect on other genes after the change and what they will be, and if this would case the rise of the planet of the apes .

 

Personally I don't think this is really unethical, though the experiments leading up to it may be more unethical. Inserting and altering genetic sequences can have various unfortunate consequences. Things like this could easily cause unforseen consequences that could case the animals various amounts of pain and suffering. So I don't think altering genetic sequences in itself is unethical, but the consequences of the early experiments could easily be seen as unethical.

[imatfaal]

Personally I don't think this is really unethical, though the experiments leading up to it may be more unethical. Inserting and altering genetic sequences can have various unfortunate consequences. Things like this could easily cause unforseen consequences that could case the animals various amounts of pain and suffering. So I don't think altering genetic sequences in itself is unethical, but the consequences of the early experiments could easily be seen as unethical.

 

a lot of the ethical questions arise in the details though. I don't believe that all experiments would be unethical - but that would clearly change if genetically altered humans were allowed to come to full term. but how can the science progress without these early experiment which would struggle to get past any ethics committee. this is the catch22 - we do not have the genetic knowledge yet to be sure of the results - to allow a foetus come to full terms without certain knowledge of the result is unethical in the extreme - BUT the only way to gain the required knowledge is to conduct those aforesaid experiments.

[CharonY]

In short: we have a lot of tools and can change things. On the practical level we basically have no idea what they do. And there are a lot of detailed technical problems (ignoring all the ethical issues).

So as already mentioned, knowledge is the limiting factor.

[Doc. Josh]

Okay so taking into account we have the tools but no knowledge of how to accomplish this feat quite yet, Is it probable to speculate that if and when the ethic community will allow such experiments to happen on average how long do you think it would take to successfully achieve this goal? ( Basic time line ) 5yrs 15 yrs 1000yrs ec...

[CharonY]

Let us aim for 1000 years. Long enough to not be able to predict what is going to happen.