11-27-2005, 08:48 AM
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#28 (permalink)
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Junkie
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by raveneye
AFAIK nobody is proposing to insert cockroach or spider genes into any foods whatsoever, and I don't know why they would. I think this is just fearmongering by capitalizing on people's disgust of creepy crawlies.
But in any case, even if it were true, this reminds me of the "pissing in the shower" thread. Sure, it seems disgusting, but there's nothing dangerous or unsanitary in it.
The fear of spider genes in your corn flakes is completely irrational. There's no biological law, or chemical law, or physical law etc. that states that mixing genes from two different species is bad for you, for any reason whatsoever. So any such fear is essentially a fear of spiders. Or a fear of cockroaches. Etc. It's based on your own personal psychology or aesthetics, and doesn't have anything to do with the science. Just keep in mind, a gene is not a spider, it's just a stretch of DNA.
Maybe folks will be shocked to learn that we already eat spider genes and cockroach genes in all our foods. In fact there are many genes in the human genome that are practically identical to many cockroach genes.
For those of us who believe in evolution, that's no surprise. We all evolved from a common ancestor, and we still have those common ancestor genes.
Genes /= organs (that's science fiction)
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Dont' forget we are living in 2005 and the article I posted earlier specifically says they are doing these kinds of things:
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In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey Platt at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it’s not just pig blood cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells themselves have merged, creating hybrids.
It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk of pig viruses getting into patient’s cells. Now scientists know the risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two cells fuse.
In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose livers are up to 80 percent human – and make all the compounds human livers make.
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