For our 4th AFIL seminar, Dr. Jim Womack showed how biotechnology can affect our lives. He mainly focused on the topic of cloning animals and touched on the issue of stem-cell research, but that doesn't mean we didn't get to see some "cool" photos of transgenic animals. I wish I took pictures because some of my fellow AFILers' faces were priceless. Check out some of the pictures below.
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| Green rabbit? |
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| Flourescent zebra fish can make cool pets for those living in dorms |
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| Normal-looking dog right? Just turn off the lights |
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| My jaw dropped seeing this photo (myostatin deficient cow) |
Apparently we can clone all sorts of animals if you are willing to pay the fee. Cattle start off at around $17,500 while pigs are $4,000 each. A company is South Korea is willing to clone your dog starting at $150,000. But be warned because you can be easily scammed. How hard is it to just grab a random dog that looks similar your dog, say "we cloned your dog", and then leave with your hard-earned 150K?
So we can clone animals (and technically plants as well, although Brady can expand on this topic better than I can), but what about humans? We already completed the Human Genome project. Many countries around the world look down on stem-cell research/cloning, citing ethical concerns. But who knows if there is some scientist out there that has already cloned a human under the radar? Plus I have seen way too many movies (i.e The Island, Aeon Flux, Splice) that bring up this issue.
What are your thoughts on the seminar?
In reference to the muscular cow: What do you guys think about it possibly becoming an issue, maybe even more so, than steroids? As we saw, some even invested in putting this into their children. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that the child was injected with anything. I think what Dr. Womack was saying was that they discovered a few cases of humans as well as animals (and in the case of that baby) having a deficiency in the hormone (or whatever the correct term was sorry) that stopped the growth in muscles. In other words, a deficiency in this hormone led to over-grown muscles, as was the single case that was documented of the boy living in Germany. So I highly doubt that people are injecting this stuff into humans because as we saw it leads to a lot of health problems. I do think, however, that injecting growth hormones in animals and altering the the make-up of our food can be potentially hazardous. I was intrigued by Mr. Womack's response to my questions about the safety of food. Some of our classmates and I had a question though: what is the real status in our quality of meat? Why isn't our meat being exported? Is it true that the EU has better meat quality than us due to our "unhealthy" use of growth hormones?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it this talk was fascinating, but it did make me reconsider my eating options. Have any of you seen the documentary "Forks over Knives?" If you have, I am interested to know what you think about your thoughts and how it relates to our topic. If you haven't watched it, it's a fairly interesting documentary and has some interesting health facts that are worth hearing.
Haha and yes Allan, I really wish we had pictures of our reactions! I know that I couldn't control my facial expressions when we saw the pictures of the glowing cats and dogs, and I was too stunned to look around the room to see what anyone else looked like!
I did like your question about the quality of our meat compared to those of the EU. Unfortunately, we don't have a world organization that enforces regulations on such a topic. The U.S. has the FDA and the EU has its own. These two entities have their separate standards and will continue to do so, unless there's an international group that would serve as an umbrella to both. It all boils down to having enforcers, which are missing in the equation.
DeleteIn regards to the status of exporting beef from the US, I think it all depends on how you define "quality." The EU has cleaned things up a lot, but don't forget about the Mad Cow Disease outbreak a few years ago. Of course, I don't know what the case is now, but part of the reason that became an issue at all is because they were feeding the cows meal made from ground up cows that had already died, thus perpetuating a disease that wouldn't necessarily have spread so much. We didn't have the problem in the US because we feed our cows grain. In that case, I think you might say that the US had higher quality beef. Like I said though, that was then--I have no idea what they're doing now. Still, I suspect the real issue is mostly politics.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I would have liked to hear more about was "where do you draw the line." If there's one thing we could take from Thursday's lecture, it's that bioethics mainly consists of shades of grey. Surely though, there are some lines that flat out shouldn't be crossed? Thoughts?