Do you Approve of Genetic Engineering?

[SkepticLance]

I was away on business for 36 hours, and there have been a heap of replies since my last post. I may miss a few points, so beg for patience.

 

First to Rev., who believes that GM on humans will give the wealthy an advantage. Of course it will. So what is new? When the first motor car was made, only the wealthy could buy. When the first commercial air travel became available, only the wealthy could fly. The first TV. The first sound and music players. The first personal computers. The first car phones. Even the first music concerts.

 

Everything is expensive at first, and only the wealthy can access them. But if we let that stop us, progress would stop. I am not wealthy, and I have a car, a big flat screen colour TV, a lovely home, a good computer etc etc. All available at first only to the wealthy.

 

The same applies to GM on humans for beauty and for other advantages such as forms of intelligence, physical health, athleticism etc. All these things will be available only to the wealthy at first. That is the way of the world, and a stage we pass through before the benefits become available to everyone.

 

lucaspa said :

 

"falsify the hypothesis: to show it to be wrong. For SkepticLance and Halogirl (sorry to single you out, but you have been the most vocal cheerleaders), this meant that they should have been critically looking for cases and reasons why and how GM could have negative consequences. Instead, all they have been looking at (with the notable exception of Halogirl on GM the sex of the person) is positive effects. "

 

This pholosophy applies to hypothesis formation and their progress into scientific theories. I doubt it applies to debate. And this is a debate. It is pretty much the norm in debate for two sides to argue opposites, and that is what we are doing, which is a valid approach. I cannot speak for hologirl, but my reading also includes a heap of anti-GM stuff, so I am very familiar with those arguments. I just do not choose to use them in this debate.

 

lucaspa on bananas

 

"we are still making the same mistake because, even after that clonal banana was wiped out in the 1930s, we are still dependent on another clonal banana."

 

We don't have a choice. While there are thousands of varieties of seeded bananas, the mutation that causes them to be seedless, and thus edible, is very rare. There was an earlier variety, called the Gros Michel variety, which was sweeter and nicer than the current one. Panama Disease struck and wiped it out. Thus the vulnerability of a single genotype. Back then, humans had no techniques available and that variety was lost to extinction.

 

Today, we are more fortunate, and we have GM. The Uganda trials of the Cavendish banana that is modified to resist black Sigatoka disease are under way. Longer term, we have three choices for bananas. Either a GM disease resistant variety, or bananas drenched in fungicide, or no bananas as all!

 

For Uganda, where bananas are the most important staple food, and the people are too poor to afford fungicides, that is not an acceptable choice.

[Mr Skeptic]

GM means we are going to have more and more crops that are going to be clonal.

 

Even if that were so, its not necessarily a bad thing. So what if a particular type of crop eventually gets wiped out? We'll just get another, like with the potatoes and bananas. No one would ever rely on a single variety for our staple foods if there was a risk of famine.

 

natural selection is a lot smarter than we are. GM tries to have us substitute for natural selection. Since we are dumber than natural selection, I can see several ways for that to end badly.

 

Weren't you just picking on someone else for anthropomorphizing evolution?

 

The problem I have is that "better, faster, stronger" assumes that those are always good things. What about intelligence or situational awareness or even resistance to disease?

 

To each his own. People already sacrifice some traits for others, eg with steroids. GM would let them do so better, and probably safer.

 

Say you have a genius designing an airplane. You fire him and put the village idiot on the job. Do you really want to fly in that plane? That's that analogy I see in genetic engineering. Humans are the village idiots compared to natural selection.

 

Say you have a blind idiot designing an airplane. 99% of the airplanes he designed crashed. Then suppose you hire someone who isn't blind to help with the designing (without firing the blind guy). The new guy doesn't know much about designing airplanes, but he's neither blind nor an idiot. That's a better analogy, as evolution has no intelligence to it, but we do. Evolution has made mistakes, and we will too. But we'll learn from our mistakes, as well as plan ahead. And we'll be able to do some new things, and work on a timescale of decades rather than millions of years. Evolution, of course, will still go on.

 

And then an asteroid or comet hits the earth, changing the climate and making food a lot scarcer. What happens to everyone with high metabolism that require 5,000 to 10,000 calories per day? They have no reserves of body fat -- we've eliminated that. You can see what happens: they all starve. There simply isn't enough food for them to keep going. Congrats, your GM to have people more "beautiful" and "healthier" in our current environment has ensured that the human species becomes extinct when the environment changes. Are you sure you want to play with the survival of the human species this way?

 

Eh? That's what we're building satellite defenses for. And underground shelters with lots of food. And going to other planets. I know you meant [generic disaster]. However, there is no way we would modify everyone to have the same gene any time soon. The aforementioned poor people who can't afford the treatment, those crazy religious people who refuse to have anything to do with new technology, etc, will keep us safe from that. And soon we will have a colony separate from earth, and then even a global disaster wouldn't cause our extinction.

 

For those who like to hear personal opinions, my personal opinion (hypothesis) here is that GM has some potential for benefit in some very limited cases. Cases where we can definitely identify a deleterious genetic trait in either humans or species that we are exploiting and then correct it.

 

But that is also dangerous. Other than preventing the birth of a baby that is genetically destined to die a horrible death at a young age so as to spare him the suffering, you can't really definitely identify a bad gene. Imagine if we didn't know about malaria, we might try to eliminate sickle cell anemia. In fact, from the way natural selection works, you might expect that most of these diseases have some upside or the gene would have been eliminated (with the exception of simple mutations like the single nucleotide mutation diseases).

 

BUT, in general, I hold to the position that natural selection is much smarter than we are and it is impossible to predict future environments. Therefore we mostly let natural selection do its work and keep as much variation in the population as possible so that, if the environment changes, at least some individuals will have variations that will work in the change. We do as much as possible with other technology instead of GM. In particular, no tinkering based on our present idea of what is "beautiful" and recognizing that other traits, such as physical strength or athletic prowess, is not always what is needed.

 

Yes, variety is extremely important. However, I suggest that a safer alternative is to make sure we have an environment that won't change. Think underground shelters, space colonization, etc., as well as adding new genes via GM for extra variability. So even if there is a change too extreme for our natural variability, perhaps the extra variability from GM, or our special shelter, would allow us to survive such change.

[SkepticLance]

Lucapsa is clearly a fan for natural selection. However, we should always remember that natural selection is the most unintelligent, random and downright inefficient form of progress you can get. Under natural selection we get an enormous number of harmful variations which have to be selected out, leading to tremendous suffering on the part of individuals.

 

Natural selection has the advantage that it goes in all directions that mutation can physically deliver - meaning that adaptation to a changing environment can occur in any direction. However, that is at the cost of the suffering and premature death of most of the 'unfortunate experiments'. In addition, it takes an enormous amount of time to achieve changes.

 

GM on the other hand has the potential to achieve advantageous changes within one generation, and to avoid all the harm that a more random approach generates. I refuse to believe that human intelligence cannot achieve results that are better than a shotgun natural selection approach.

 

Human intelligence applied to the problem will give optimal results.

 

We are not there yet. It will be a few more decades before the human species can, with caution, fear and trembling, begin to adjust the genomes of our offspring - with confidence that the result will be to the benefit of the new born. That is why I suggested 100 years before the widespread appearance of the new beautiful people.

[dichotomy]

natural selection is a lot smarter[/b'] than we are. GM tries to have us substitute for natural selection. Since we are dumber than natural selection, I can see several ways for that to end badly.

 

Weren't you just picking on someone else for anthropomorphizing evolution?

 

 

I think he was just using convenient short hand.

 

You see, I understand when Lucaspa is being convienient, he just doesn't seem to understand when others are being convienient. What ever happened to a presumption of innocence?

 

Eeew, I've just been petty, I think I need a shower.

 

Since we are dumber than natural selection, I can see several ways for that to end badly.

 

But, would not that be natural selection in good working order?

[SkepticLance]

To dichotomy

 

When lucaspa was making a statement about us being dumber than natural selection, you have to realise that was a religious statement - an act of faith.

 

It does not take much thought to realise how dumb natural selection is. Even humans are smarter! What kind of process ends up giving us an appendix? Or gives women monthy menstrual cramps and PMT? Or a vertebral column so badly designed that 80% of us get serious back trouble some stage in our lives? The process of evolution by natural selection is so stupid that it took 3 to 4 billion years to come up with those seriously impaired beings known as Homo sapiens!!!

[Reaper]

To dichotomy

 

When lucaspa was making a statement about us being dumber than natural selection, you have to realise that was a religious statement - an act of faith. It does not take much thought to realise how dumb natural selection is. Even humans are smarter! What kind of process ends up giving us an appendix? Or gives women monthy menstrual cramps and PMT? Or a vertebral column so badly designed that 80% of us get serious back trouble some stage in our lives?

 

I don't think he meant that literally. Natural selection by definition is purposeless, nor does it have any sort of agenda. It is, in a strictest sense, a physical process, just like fusion in stars.

 

The process of evolution by natural selection is so stupid that it took 3 to 4 billion years to come up with those seriously impaired beings known as Homo sapiens!!!

 

Well, natural selection did not come up with humans though. In fact, if it wasn't for the K-T extinction event, I'm not sure if humans would have even come to existence to begin with! I'm not sure if our level of intelligence provides any sort of long term evolutionary advantage, especially since our same intelligence gives us the ability to wipe ourselves out.

[SkepticLance]

Hello Reaper

 

Nice to have a pleasant chat with you.

 

Sure, I agree. Evolution has no set goal, and the fact that humans resulted from all those billions of years of natural selection was, undoubtedly, a very low probability event. Minor environmental changes along the way might have led to enormously different results.

[dichotomy]

To dichotomy

 

When lucaspa was making a statement about us being dumber than natural selection, you have to realise that was a religious statement - an act of faith.

 

What I realise is that Lucaspa was not being literal; he was being convenient, concise, delivering info in an easily digestible way which I have no issue with.

I realise Lucaspa doesn’t think N.S. is actually smart, intelligent, etc. He is just using “smart” in the same way I used “life doesn't think in terms of”, that is, for quick delivery of information. Nothing wrong with that in the context of things IMO. All I think is that Lucaspa might be assuming, all too readily, that members here are suggesting that ‘acts of god’ are involved in evolution, that is, when they use terms like - think and smart. Again the presumption of using ‘convenient language’ over ‘an act of God’, should be the Ockham’s razor approach that might be better employed here. But each to their own.

 

 

It does not take much thought to realise how dumb natural selection is. Even humans are smarter! What kind of process ends up giving us an appendix? Or gives women monthy menstrual cramps and PMT? Or a vertebral column so badly designed that 80% of us get serious back trouble some stage in our lives? The process of evolution by natural selection is so stupid that it took 3 to 4 billion years to come up with those seriously impaired beings known as Homo sapiens!!!

 

3 to 4 billion years...Well, maybe it's now mans turn to make more intelligent design decisions, the next faze of evolution perhaps. Only time will tell what is 'best' for life, man controlled evolution, or, blind unthinking natures evolution.

[SkepticLance]

Dichotomy said

 

"I realise Lucaspa doesn’t think N.S. is actually smart, intelligent, etc. He is just using “smart” in the same way I used “life doesn't think in terms of”, that is, for quick delivery of information."

 

Actually, I fully realise that. Lucaspa has a good knowledge of evolutionary theory. However, I think he ascribes too much power to natural selection. It is not superior to human ingenuity, and the only reason Lucaspa can (almost) get away with that suggestion is that humans ingenuity, backed by good science, is so recent. We have not had time to prove the superiority of an intelligent mind over the mindless actions of natural selection.

 

The main evidence I have to offer for the inferior nature of natural selection is :

1. The multitudinous mistakes of natural selection. Some mentioned in my earlier post.

2. The very long time it takes to get results. Social evolution, driven by human ingenuity, gallops by comparison, giving humans a tremendous advantage in terms of adapting to changing circumstances.

[halogirl]

quote): lucuspa

Changing the ratio of sexes would have social consequences -- China is facing some of that right now. You don't think that the process of GM to get what you consider "beautiful" people is also going to have social consequences? Some people have already brought those up: at first only the rich will have the opportunity. SkepticLance thinks the cost will come down. How long? If it is a generation, what is the social disruption as the have nots look at what the have's are getting for their children (especially if it is health) and their kids are not. People have started revolutions for less. So, Halogirl, how many killed in social unrest do you consider worth GM for "healthier" and more "beautiful"?

 

 

first of all i already mentioned the down-side of the ratio of sexes, i also mentioned that i don't approve of determining the sex of a person.

not only that, but if we can prevent scumbags from taking over then the engineering can be available to everyone.

second of all i've been voting to make people healthier, and smarter, but we all know that physical appearance will be the main concern of the public, not us. if you can convince people that physical appearance is unimportant then good for you, but in the mean time we will continue to make people "beatiful" and "smart" and "healthy" so answer me this, lucaspa, how many uprisings do you need to see before you realize that the majority of people don't actually care if other people are healthy or smart. the only thing that matters to the majority of society is physical appearance.

[Rev Blair]

Like blonde hair, blue eyes are recessive as well, so why, if all blued eyed people have a common ancestor, are blue eyes so successful in parts of Europe?

 

Because there was a minimal mingling of populations. A lot of Europeans carry the recessive gene.

 

No, that's not how recessive traits work. The gene will remain, but will not be visible unless there are two recessive genes.

 

I think maybe I wasn't clear enough. That's exactly how recessive traits work.

 

The blonde gene is recessive, but it is relatively common in European populations, so there are a fair number of blonde Europeans. It is very uncommon in non-European populations though. So as the populations intermingle the trait expressed by the recessive gene doesn't exhibit as often. Blondes, not people with recessive the gene, but people with blonde hair, become less and common.

 

It's okay though, we have hair dye.

 

It's kind of like dairy cows. Holsteins are basically a super-cow. They produce milk like mad. Cross-breed them with beef cattle though, and that milk-producing capability disappears in a hurry.

 

[if you have two copies of the recessive gene, it will be used instead of the dominant gene (which won't be there). No, you can't as a rule make recessive genes dominant, because of how the dominant genes work. For example, if a dominant gene makes a pigment, whereas the recessive gene doesn't, then the pigment will be visible even with just one copy of the dominant gene -- the only way to not have the pigment would be to deactivate the dominant gene that makes it.

 

See, this is what I'm wondering about. Can we, through genetic engineering, change that? Can we create a super gene, taking a recessive gene and making it dominant over even previously dominant genes? Is there a chance we could do so in the future?

 

I understand the dominant/recessive thing...that's basic animal husbandry...what I'm wondering about is we have developed, or have a decent chance of developing, a way around that.

[halogirl]

whats really fascinating is how people are interbreeding now. remember that humans were seperated for centurys and now we've all been suddenly exposed to each other. people bred with people who looked like them because there weren't any other options. now within the last couple of centuries we've had a chance to inter-breed. do you think if left to our natural devices we would eventually lose genetic diversity? another benefit of genetic engineering

[SkepticLance]

Halogirl asks :

 

"SkepticLance thinks the cost will come down. How long?"

 

The only data we have to approach this question is recent history on recent innovations. The time varies a lot, but generally seems to be well under way within 20 years of the invention. Sometimes less. Sometimes more.

 

As to people going on some kind of killing rampage -- seriously unlikely. There have been a lot of innovations which benefit the rich at first. There are protests, and lobby group actions, but no killing rampage, even when the innovation is a very expensive new drug that can save lives.

 

To Rev, re blue eyes.

I recently read an article in New Scientist, which impinged on this. It produced the hypothesis that the blue eye trait, which expresses only with a double recessive, became widespread in certain populations because of sexual selection. The suggestion is that, particularly for females, having blue eyes made for more physical attractiveness, and thus more reproductive success.

 

On blonde hair - it appears likely that this trait may have been a result of genetic drift. If it appeared in a small population as a mutation, then random chance may lead to it becoming the major trait in that tiny population. If that population then grows and becomes a very big population, we see the blonde hair trait becoming more frequent.

 

Rev asked

 

"Can we create a super gene, taking a recessive gene and making it dominant over even previously dominant genes?"

 

It all depends on the mode of action of the gene. The brown eye gene is dominant over blue eye, because the brown eye gene works by manufacturing pigment. The blue eye works by lack of pigment. Obviously, brown eye will ALWAYS be dominant because of its mode of action. As long as any brown pigment is being manufactured, the eyes will appear brown.

[ecoli]

I recently read an article in New Scientist, which impinged on this. It produced the hypothesis that the blue eye trait, which expresses only with a double recessive, became widespread in certain populations because of sexual selection. The suggestion is that, particularly for females, having blue eyes made for more physical attractiveness, and thus more reproductive success.

 

On blonde hair - it appears likely that this trait may have been a result of genetic drift. If it appeared in a small population as a mutation, then random chance may lead to it becoming the major trait in that tiny population. If that population then grows and becomes a very big population, we see the blonde hair trait becoming more frequent.

\

 

It can't be both? I was under the impression that blonde hair and blue eyes is on the same gene locii.

(or am I confusing that with red hair/freckles?)

[SkepticLance]

ecoli

 

It CAN be both. It requires a small degree of coincidence, but not beyond credibility.

[john5746]

do you think if left to our natural devices we would eventually lose genetic diversity? another benefit of genetic engineering

 

I think that may be the big danger of genetic engineering - losing genetic diversity. Of course, natural selection can do the same thing, but all the variables of nature are taken into account, not just a few by man. In short, it would be hard to make a man that is more fit for nature than natural selection - do we know all the variables?

 

I think promoting genetic diversity is the way to go. Try to fight certain diseases, etc. But even a disease like sickle cell has advantages in certain environments, so it is hard to predict all the ramifications. Be humble and tread softly.

[SkepticLance]

The problem with relying on natural genetic variation to solve human problems is that it is just too damn slow! Natural changes take dozens, hundreds, or thousands of generations.

 

In the mean time, the human population has to cope with problems by the hundreds each century. Just new diseases alone is far too great a number for natural genetic variability to cope with. Maybe in the old tribal days, but not now when all forms of illness are being 'shared' by all of humankind.

 

Today, to cope, we need technology.

[Rev Blair]

Today, to cope, we need technology.

 

Arguably, the technology is the root cause of our over-population though, and that over-population is the cause of most of our modern problems.

 

I recently read an article in New Scientist, which impinged on this. It produced the hypothesis that the blue eye trait, which expresses only with a double recessive, became widespread in certain populations because of sexual selection. The suggestion is that, particularly for females, having blue eyes made for more physical attractiveness, and thus more reproductive success.

 

On blonde hair - it appears likely that this trait may have been a result of genetic drift. If it appeared in a small population as a mutation, then random chance may lead to it becoming the major trait in that tiny population. If that population then grows and becomes a very big population, we see the blonde hair trait becoming more frequent.

 

That pretty much matches my holstein analogy as well, although I'm not sure the mechanism is exactly the same. In both cases, it's sexual selection though...although in the holstein the selection is generally done for them through artificial insemination.

 

But the human selection for blonde hair and blue eyes is being interfered with through the mingling of populations, hair dye, and contact lenses. There's also fashion...if brunettes and/or red heads become stylish, we will sexually select for them. Then there's the matter of people having fewer kids, so the genes having less chance to be passed on.

[SkepticLance]

Rev said :

 

"Arguably, the technology is the root cause of our over-population though, and that over-population is the cause of most of our modern problems."

 

I am glad you said 'arguably'. There is an alternative school of thought, particularly pushed by Prof. Julian Simon, the economist. He said that human progress depends on those people with a high level of brain power, and the more brains there are, the more people with the brain power needed. In other words, when population increases, we have more people (assuming a high standard of education) that have the minds capable of innovation, and thus faster progress. This might even be a substantial part of the high rate of recent scientific and technological progress.

 

If he is correct, we can predict that, once a high standard of education is normal for their whole population, China will gradually become the world leader in scientific and technological progress. USA will slip into second place (or third - behind India). 300 million cannot overwhelm 1300 million.

[Lighthouse]

I had to go with "Yes, even on food" because even though genetic engineering could be useful in many aspects on humans, how do we determine which aspects should be altered? The fact that there would be no way to determine this, and if there were, there would be so much controversy surrounding it, suggests that perhaps it would be better to stay away from genetic engineering on humans.

[john5746]

The problem with relying on natural genetic variation to solve human problems is that it is just too damn slow! Natural changes take dozens, hundreds, or thousands of generations.

 

Well, is it a 100-yard dash or a marathon? Turtle or rabbit?

 

In the mean time, the human population has to cope with problems by the hundreds each century. Just new diseases alone is far too great a number for natural genetic variability to cope with. Maybe in the old tribal days, but not now when all forms of illness are being 'shared' by all of humankind.

 

Today, to cope, we need technology.

 

We are discussing a specific technology, not all technology. I think technology, especially medicine has helped increase genetic diversity, just by keeping the "weak" alive to procreate.

 

While individuals themselves may be weaker, I think from a species standpoint, we would be more able to overcome unforseen events from a genetic standpoint anyway.

 

I guess the argument would be that making more people super intelligent would increase technology, which can hlep us adapt faster. But wouldn't this expose us to some environmental change such as a virus that could wipe out everyone, if are genes are less diverse?

 

I am for genetic manipulation, but just feel it isn't the obvious answer to the survival of the species. Maybe improved lives while we are here.

[Rev Blair]

Rev said :

 

"Arguably, the technology is the root cause of our over-population though, and that over-population is the cause of most of our modern problems."

 

I am glad you said 'arguably'. There is an alternative school of thought, particularly pushed by Prof. Julian Simon, the economist. He said that human progress depends on those people with a high level of brain power, and the more brains there are, the more people with the brain power needed. In other words, when population increases, we have more people (assuming a high standard of education) that have the minds capable of innovation, and thus faster progress. This might even be a substantial part of the high rate of recent scientific and technological progress.

 

If he is correct, we can predict that, once a high standard of education is normal for their whole population, China will gradually become the world leader in scientific and technological progress. USA will slip into second place (or third - behind India). 300 million cannot overwhelm 1300 million.

Yesterday 10:28 AM

 

Well, that is part of why I said arguably. The other part is that it's far from clear what a stable population should be. I tend not to listen to economists much though...they are too often wrong about their own field and believe to much in the doctrine of infinite growth with finite resources in a finite system.

 

You are also assuming that more people will become educated as the population increases. There is little or no evidence supporting that however. In fact the most heavily populated areas of he world have some the poorest educational records while more sparsely populated areas have higher levels of education.

[SkepticLance]

Rev said

 

"You are also assuming that more people will become educated as the population increases. "

 

Actually, I was trying to hedge my words so that no such conclusion would be drawn. Obviously I need to learn to be a better hedger!

 

More people become educated as a nation develops, rather than as their total population grows. However, a nation with a billion people and 50% tertiary educated will have a lot more 'brainpower, than a nation with 300 million and 50% tertiary educated.

 

China and India are both developing at a great rate of knots. Their populations are still growing, but at a reducing rate. However, their educated classes are growing very rapidly indeed. If Julian Simon is correct, and I think he is at least partly correct, then China and India will become innovation powerhouses.

[halogirl]

I think that may be the big danger of genetic engineering - losing genetic diversity. Of course, natural selection can do the same thing, but all the variables of nature are taken into account, not just a few by man. In short, it would be hard to make a man that is more fit for nature than natural selection - do we know all the variables?

 

I think promoting genetic diversity is the way to go. Try to fight certain diseases, etc. But even a disease like sickle cell has advantages in certain environments, so it is hard to predict all the ramifications. Be humble and tread softly.

 

i think you misunderstood me. i meant that the way humans are today, mixing with one another, would we lose genetic diversity.

personally i think genetic engineering could prevent this.

[SkepticLance]

Loss of genetic diversity has frequently been used as an argument against GM. This, of course, applies mainly to crops, not humans.

 

The problem, though, such as it is, is not related to GM so much as to agriculture as a whole. Loss of genetic diversity began when the first human farmers began selecting only those varieties that gave better yields, and dumping the rest. This process has been going on for 10,000 years now, give or take a bit.

 

More recently, certain groups have been collecting more varieties and setting up 'gene banks' to provide genetic diversity, in case such is needed in the future.

 

Since WWII, seeds for farming have become concentrated into the hands of a few massive multinational seed companies. Farmers buy those seeds. This has nothing to do with GM per se. It is just a result of the fact that the big companies, with their legions of scientists can do a better job of developing various high yield varieties than the farmer, with fewer resources.

 

These seed companies have been patenting the seeds for decades now, and preventing farmers replanting from their own stock. Again, this has nothing to do with GM - just a business practise that the law permits. The use of specialised seeds also reduces genetic diversity, but this is not limited to GM.

 

The best bulwark against loss of diversity is living or frozen gene banks, and these are springing up in various places all over the world. Dedicated researchers are in the field right now collecting as wide a range of genetic diversity as possible for growing in a living gene bank, or freezing in the other kind.