Dear friends,
Please note that Mia's excellent reply can be found in replies under Part 5 of the series about Cloning.
Dear Mia,
Yes, they are my opinions, which have been slightly changed now by some new information from you. I got a little hope from what you wrote, but I also remember that it was expected to take a hundred years to complete the world genome project and took so much less time that the speed of completion was breathtaking. It's in an earlier part of this series, but I'm sure you knew it anyway.
With so much at stake, especially fortunes and historic scientific reputations to be made, there will be a race to work out which genes do what, and as you say, how they are involved in other places in the body. It doesn't all have to be understood at the beginning, as they start doing the acceptable to correct particular genetic problems in foetuses and then move easily on to adding genes for physical attainment, since it shouldn't be too hard to pick out people with exceptional physical genetic heredity and work from their genes, rather than putting together collections of manufactured ones. Manufactured packages are the longterm outlook if something isn't done soon to reign in over-eagerness to proceed further along a road of deep potential pitfalls, as outlined in the Cloning series.
That scary road seems to be the one we are on. Not enough of the population have yet paid attention to our very fast progress along it, and the general directions it is swiftly taking, as discussed by various scientists. Not enough people seem to realize the potential for extreme damage and abuse. That is why I chose to write about it when Facearmy brought up the fact that he is very interested in cloning. Like so many things today, it is a wonderful thing that can be used well and wisely, or ignorantly and greedily. What the outcomes will be depends on the wisdom and ethics that govern it.
Yes, I must say I really believe that's the way it will go if let run wild as it is ready to do at present, -- exactly as it has for vegetables. Animals are harder, but that is being done. From everything I've read I think this will all happen unless something happens to inject some wisdom and altruism. Apparently there isn't a strong enough ethical base to control it and strongly enforce it, worldwide.
Isn't that the case in so many desperate conditions we face as humans today, that have started, and developed into monsters which require a world level of control for protection of the whole fabric of life? I am thinking of damage to the oceans and fish stocks, to air pollution, to the plagues of foreign creatures that due to human carelesness are infesting new areas that have not built any defenses to them, and other similar world problems of magnitude.
In Canada, labels indicating which foods have been genetically altered don't exist yet. Such labelling has been in the works for four years, but seems to have been deliberately stalled so that if there are negative results from genetically altered food, sometime downsteam, those companies involved won't be able to be sued. There is a move afoot to get genetically altered food into every country so that it will be entwined into each country's base plant stock and production, and will become a fait accompli before it is realized.
We are really in a whole new ball-game. It has become impossible to keep genetically engineered plants' pollen from fields of non-genetically altered plants. There was a test case here in one of our prairie provinces a year or so ago. Monsanto found a farmer had some genetically altered plants growing in his fields. He testified that it had been through self-pollination and that he hadn't used any of their seed, but he lost. It must be very hard to fight Monsanto. Farmers can't save genetically altered seed from year to year as has long been the practise. The new seeds are deliberately designed to be unable to grow the following year. That is so that it will always be necessary to buy new seed. If seed cross pollinates with plants that can be saved from year to year, won't that have the potential to make them unsaveable, too?
What about people who are allergic to some kind of plant or creature? Will the gene from that creature cause them to have allergic reaction? I haven't heard that question answered factually yet. For instance, a person who is allergic to fish could possibly have an allergice reaction to the fish gene implanted into strawberries to keep them from freezing. How would a person ever know that they shouldn't eat strawberries or whatever other thing that may suddenly harbour what they are allergic to?
Farmers, who have always been people who love their independence, are being turned into cash cows for big companies. If they can't afford to pay for seed, they won't have crops. In a depression, such as we had in the 1930's and among people who live in very poor countries that is a recipe for trouble. I hear all these questions being asked, but I don't hear anything reassuring from the companies or governments about this kind of thing.
We just managed in Canada to refuse to have milk from cows that had been altered to give huge amounts of milk, but that had to be constantly on a special diet and would suffer many more infections in their udders and teats than regular cows, and would have to be given many more antibiotics against the unavoidable infections. Some of the infective pus would undoubtedly show up in their milk and although it would be pasteurized and so wouldn't make people ill,it is still an obnoxious though. These cows would also have much shorter lives, having been worn out by all the pushing of their systems. This was allowed in the United States. I don't want to drink milk from there.
Feed lots are already horrible enough. People who would keep some of the feed-lots I've seen and smelled, would do anything to animals for money. There are a lot of people who will do anything for money now, as the social system breaks down more and more.
I'm a curious person, and read fairly widely, picking up bits of information here and there, until finally I begin to see some sort of interesting patterns. I suspend judgement, and just keep a sort of watching brief on anything that catches my interest and I make a point of being detached enough to be able to see, and to change and adjust if better information comes along.
There certainly is an on-going and widening division between the very rich and the others, and I've watched and examined how opportunities and station in life are determined by the lives and positions of parents and ancestors, and not necessarily by personal dullness or brilliance. To a great extent, it involves having connections and advantages, and knowing the ways through the system, and from having a platform from which to spring or into which to sink. It has been said that every really great fortune was built on a crime. I know of some that have. Quite often that is the case, I think, and the descendants benefit and the crime is long forgotten as the present generation enjoys its power and elegance. ;->
Most of world human potential is carelessly wasted. We humans are cruelly flinging away potential talent, even genius, all over the world. Here in the west it is said that "cream will automatically rise to the top." I say, not if it never had hope, or example, or mentoring.
I visualize this wasting as some ignorant person digging hands into chests of jewels and wildly flinging away sparkling handsful of pearls, emeralds, rubies and diamonds into the mud. That's what poverty and ignorance is. We all lose their potential contributions when people anywhere are deprived of the chance to contribute their gifts.
Thanks for your interesting reply. :-)
Warm greetings, Mary
