Two news items today really worry me. As a species, we suffer from hubris. Hubris, as in way too much arrogance and pride.
The two items giving me concern are F.D.A. Says Food From Cloned Animals Is Safe and Japan, Home of the Cute and Inbred Dog.
The first one... Well, do you want to eat food that was created through science? We don't even understand how our own bodies work, but we're willing to risk our food supply on animals that wouldn't exist if not for scientific work? I'm not! The problem is that the big business assholes and the government whores on their payroll are saying we shouldn't be told which food is from cloned animals. Instead, normal food and food from clones should be packaged exactly the same way.
The second one shows the real result of human meddling. The overall theme of the article is the Japanese ability to get into national obsessions, like the Tamagotchi and Pokémon. Lately, however, they're getting into all kinds of small designer dogs.
The result? Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.
There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.
This isn't just a Japanese phenomenon (although it appears to be a large and growing problem there). It happens here, too, but that's not the point. The point is that human interference in natural processes can lead to disastrous results.
So back to the first article. Cloned food? Yes, that's a completely different process than dog breeding, but it remains the result of human interference. I'll pass on eating anything like that. But, again, the problem is whether we'll be able to tell what's from clones and what's from naturally occurring animals. What? Antibiotics, hormones and other chemical tainting of the food supply wasn't enough? Now we have to do this? Someone please stop it!
(And yes, I'm writing to my legislators immediately!)
One last note: irresponsible dog breeders should be tortured to death very slowly.
6 comments:
*Long, sad sigh.* One of the arguments I come up against all the time from secular types is that God must be a pretty bad "intelligent designer." Clearly, humanity is in no present position to criticize God's creative successes.
Genetic medicine has some serious moral questions it needs to consider more deeply. After all, modern science rests largely on belief in the success of natural selection, yet here we go tweaking genes in plants and animals, before we fully understand them, hoping to bend biology to our will, sometimes altruistically to cure disease, and sometimes, as this sadly illustrates, from greed and arrogance.
Soylent Green is .....People!
I read that Times article about breeding in Japan, sad. And for cloning animals for food, why not just breed more animals. I don't think I'd want to eat cloned meat.
i completely agree with you on both counts. kudos!
The idea of humans playing God is one thing, I completely despise the dog breeding issue you rose, but my concern is that people far too often dismiss what Science does as stepping over the boundary between Man and God.
Humans are curious, and if God didn't want these things to be "meddled" with, then he'd have made them incomprehensible to us, but he didn't, and he gave us the capacity to figure things out.
For me, cloning is just a safer way of propagation than leaving it up to nature. If something is going to have a genetic disposition to causing us cancer, wouldn't you prefer that we removed that risk, just like we add things to our water to help filter toxins and boost fluorine levels?
As for "genetic medicine" having "serious moral questions", isn't the manner of how the experiments are done that cause the moral issues rather than the resulting knowledge? If that's the case, then this has to be dealt with on a Scientist-by-Scientist basis as morality is created by humans, and it's the humans that are bound to morality.
I'm sorry, but sometimes morality, a sense of what's right and wrong defined by a group of humans enforced differently by different cultures the world over, needs to be pushed aside in order for the greater good to prosper.
That's what I believe anyhow.
Bradley: you're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I can't agree. Just because we can do something doesn't make it right to do it. I'm not anxious to let anyone define right or wrong, but some things are better ideas than others. We know how to make thermonuclear explosions, but that doesn't make it a good thing to do. As far as genetic medicine, that can be a good thing. If conventional medicine can't fix an illness, of course it's good to have another approach, but meddling with the creation of animals when the ones we have work just fine is meddling with things we don't understand. We don't know what negative effects we're going to create. Those poor genetically defective puppies are a fine example. There's no reason for this but greed!
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