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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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 Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 5:45 am Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
I have given money to the coast guard, in the form of taxes. That's strike two. |
How generous to have a small % of your income automatically deducted to government services without your say in the matter.
I on the other hand have donated hard-earned won to independent conservation charities that rely entirely on private funding.
If I was president a certain % of taxes would go to repairing, restoring and preserving our natural environment- an important but highly underrated task. To me, plankton holding up the ecosystem is infinitely more important to our sustainable existence on this planet than millions of $$ wasted on ensuring american consumers get to have 3 cars per family. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 6:14 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
| If I was president a certain % of taxes would go to repairing, restoring and preserving our natural environment- an important but highly underrated task. To me, plankton holding up the ecosystem is infinitely more important to our sustainable existence on this planet than millions of $$ wasted on ensuring american consumers get to have 3 cars per family. |
Well unfortunatley for you, no one votes for people like you. Perhaps in part because you don't understand what a President can or cannot unilaterally do, but it's probably mostly because you're so self-contradictory, bemoaning the loss of species while complaining about research that could one day help restore them. I can think of few things more foolish than whining about money being used advancing our knowledge of life sciences. |
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JMO
Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:02 am Post subject: |
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| nautilus wrote: |
If I was president a certain % of taxes would go to repairing, restoring and preserving our natural environment- an important but highly underrated task. |
This seems fair. It doesn't mean we cancel all other scientific research however. |
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Jeonmunka
Joined: 05 Oct 2009
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 7:51 am Post subject: |
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"To create the organism, Venter's team began with a computer reconstruction of the genome of a common bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides. The information was fed into a DNA synthesizer, which produced short strands of the bug's DNA. These strands were then stitched together by inserting them first into yeast and then into E coli bacteria. The bugs' natural repair mechanisms saw the strands as broken fragments and reassembled them."
E coli?
" A microbe that might be tailored, say, to clean up crude oil in an ocean can also be tailored so that it fails in any other environment."
And after it has done its job it stays there in the ocean - a new spread out life form sitting in the ocean. Is it poisonous, to fish and humans? Does it biodegade?
I hope these questions are looked at thoroughly each time a thing is newly developed for use. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 2:08 pm Post subject: |
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Did Dr. Frankenstein carefully consider the ramifications of his creation? And when it started killing people he did all he could to distance himself from it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein's_monster |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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Why is it that all your arguments revolve around fictional stories? Dr. Frankenstein isn't real, so what he did or didn't do is immaterial. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| .38 Special wrote: |
But that is a long way off. Scientists still haven't created life, just customized DNA that was inserted to a pre-existing yeast cell. Promising/terrifying, but not quite there yet. |
My friend in the biochem field agrees.
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| There is a lot of controversy about this feat- Craig Venter is a major showman, quite a brilliant guy, but he is more an entrepreneur than a scientist. What he did is construct a bacterial genome from scratch, meaning he chemically assembled all of the DNA necessary for self-replication, metabolism, and growth in bacteria (a very simplified, primitive genome). He then physically removed the DNA from a living bacterial cell, and physically inserted the new DNA into the bacterium, and produced a viable organism with a new genome. Its a pretty remarkable accomplishment, although I don't think it is as impressive as the first cloned human embryo (Robert Lanza, 1998, embryonic cell was not implanted but destroyed after 12 days). The criticism that has been leveled I generally agree with: first, the technology to do what he did has existed for decades, he is simply the first person to use it this way (the whole enterprise cost $40 million, so really he is the first person who had the necessary financial resources necessary to do this). Second, not much can be learned from this exercise, since it has long been known that bacteria and viruses are capable of exchanging/interchanging their genomes, Venter merely demonstrated that we have the capacity to engineer bacteria directly. He claims this approach will revolutionize synthetic biology, however there are very powerful, conventional methods for engineering microorganisms that are as effective, and cost a tiny fraction of what this project cost. Third, DNA is necessary for life to exist, but it is not sufficient- the cell is the true miracle, and where the mystery of life's inner workings reside. There are research teams around the world that have been struggling for decades trying to create a synthetic cell- such an achievement would be a milestone, Nobel prize winning accomplishment, with huge implications that would perhaps allow us to understand the origin of life. Venter's work utilized a pre-existing cell, and so this is truly not a synthetic life form- it is a transformed lifeform possessing a synthetic genome. The hype around this is unbelievable, Obama even made some statement about an inquiry into the ethical implications of it (clearly he has not been properly briefed on the subject). Overall, an impressive engineering feat- like a great work of architecture, but not a very significant advance in biological science. |
So, important news, but not a paradigm shift. |
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The Happy Warrior
Joined: 10 Feb 2010
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
Why is it that all your arguments revolve around fictional stories? Dr. Frankenstein isn't real, so what he did or didn't do is immaterial. |
Well, Frankenstein is a literary work about a scientist trying to create life, and the conesquences and implications of the result of that 'life.' So, completely relevant. |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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Dr. Frankenstein created life as a means of mitigating his own. The overall meaning of the text is not particularly relevant in a literary sense to the synthesis of life.
A major theme of Frankenstein is origination. Whence did Frankenstein originate, whence his creation? While Frankenstein takes his life and his fortune for granted and seeks to create a new identity in dead flesh, his creation renders his life and his fortune into dead flesh.
Frankenstein's ethical approach to life, in my opinion, is more so psychological than otherwise.
That said, literature is the third eye that scries the possible and levies it against the existent. Upon our imaginations lies great possibility and great fallacy. It is the great artist that can open the doors of possibility without inviting absurdity.
Shelly was such an artist, I think, though her work speaks more to ambition versus happiness than to the field of bio-chemistry. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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