Emlyn, breaking himself away from all that sports action
on the telly, wrote:
> Working on GM food is good. Great! Designing crops to feed more people,
> excellent. Designing crops with terminator genes, dodgy, but still ok,
> maybe. Releasing self replicators into the general environment without
> safeguards, not so good.
I just knew if I waited long enough people would come round
to my point of view. I believe scientists feel currently that
the largest amount of biomass on the planet *is* self-replicators
*in* the general environment, *without* safeguards.
Quoting the Nobel Prize winner, Joshua Ledeberg
(Science 288(5464):291 (14 Apr 2000)):
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/288/5464/291
"The Microbial World Wide Web":
: "Mutators (genes that enhance variability) abound and may be
: switched on and off by different environmental factors. The germs'
: ability to transfer their own genetic scripts, via processes such
: as plasmid transfer, means they can exchange biological innovations
: including resistance to antibiotics."
: "Many viruses can integrate (download) their own DNA into host genomes,
: which subsequently can be copied and passed on: Hundreds of segments
: of human DNA originated from historical encounters with retroviruses whose
: genetic information became integrated into our own genomes."
: "What makes microbial evolution particularly intriguing, and worrisome,
: is a combination of vast populations and intense fluctuations in those
: populations. It's a formula for top-speed evolution. ... A year in the
: life of bacteria would easily match the span of mammalian evolution!"
I would add to that note, that my news trailer this morning informs
me of that a 12th case of West Nile Fever has been discovered.
Then of course we should not forget ~40 million people infected by HIV
that more recent studies seem to be confirming originated from natural
sources and wasn't transfered into human populations by the polio
vaccine. Add to that, several hundred million infected with Malaria,
causing ~4,000 deaths *each* day. That number is exceeded by TB
which killed ~3 million people in 1995. A number that is likely to
increase as drug resistant strains spread. All that caused by
4 species of microorganisms out of the millions that are believed
to exist.
So, Emlyn, for this to be an ultimately safe transhuman world, we
clearly need to fix this problem. I doubt using all of our nukes
to sterilize the planets surface would accomplish this the problem
because of the really deep rock protected microorganisms that would
still harbor retroviruses. Its probably going to require dumping
a number of 50-100 km asteroids onto the surface to boil the oceans
and heat the continental crust up to 300-400 deg. for a week or so.
Then we can rebuild life from the ground up using entirely engineered
as safe (Transhuman Laboratories Approved) organisms that don't shuffle
their information code, transfer it hither, thither and yon and don't
replicate unless they say "May I?".
It would make a good debate for the next Extro conference:
"Reconstructing Nature: Pros, Cons and Preferred Methods"
Thanks for coming over to my side... It warms my heart.
Robert
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