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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (33609)	4/2/1999 8:18:00 PM
From: Chuzzlewit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

But it is not imho a sound basis for the sort of sweeping dismissal your source made. No, he's talking about natural selection. If you artificially select you can "fix" the gene in two or three generations. Only one is required if it is a recessive trait. The current art in gene work is primitive. This, too is wrong. The current art is highly sophisticated. You can excise a trait using a chemical or biological mediator and insert it into another individual. You know how the code works. You know how proteins are encoded, and sophisticated analysis reveals their secondary and tertiary structure. There is nothing primitive about this. You can, for example, insert porcine genes for insulin into a bacterium and have it start producing insulin that diabetics use. But these are not the issues in my opinion-- they are only subtext. The issue is not whether humanly modified genomes can alter evolution under passive mating structures -- they cannot, or under artificial selection -- they will. The issue is why consider engaging in this kind of thing at all? There is no benefit to it and there is a clear danger, for in so doing we assume a god-like role in claiming prescience and if we are wrong we have reduced the hybrid vigor of the gene pool because the adaptability of the species is reduced. As a result the species is likely to face extinction in the face of sudden and sustained environmental changes. In other words it is pointless, but it is the stuff of good science fiction. TTFN, CTC