Don't have a cow-man-hybrid!
I could react calmly and analytically to today's news that Britain's first human-animal hybrid embryos have been created by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg. Or I could climb onto the roof of my house and scream, "What are you doing putting human DNA into a cow egg, you fucking lunatics?!?"
posted by Andrew Collins @ 9:12 AM
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19 Comments:
I'd go with yelling from the rooftops too!
It's a frightening vision of the future. I can't believe it's really happening.
Sometimes I wonder if I've accidentally fallen into a J G Ballard novel, or something.
This can't be the real world.
Surely this has already been done? Michael Winner is walking talking drooling proof that human/bovine hybreds have been among us for years.
http://thatjokeisntfunny.blogspot.com/
"Andrew Collins in Catholic conversion shocker!" - I can see the headlines now ;-)
Did you catch The Now Show last week on Radio 4? Very funny it was! Particularly when they pointed out the hypocrisy of catholics complaining about "monstrous" human-animal hybrids whilst seeing no problem in the coming of christ being announced by people coming down from the sky with giant fucking wings coming out of their backs!
Seriously though, this is a small, but potentially brilliant, first step towards finding some cures to some serious diseases. Good on 'em!
someone should email andrew I think his blog been hacked by Jon Gaunt.
Have the Simpsons done an episode about this hybridisation subject yet? If not they should. Homer could be crossed with Spider-Pig. If they have done one anyone know which number?
It turns out that they're doing it to further research into treating horrible diseases or something, and not to create some human-cow chimera. I, for one, am disappointed.
Ross, I realise I fall into a number of like-minded camps with my mediaeval, reactionary views on this matter, but hey, I agree with the Tories about ID cards. And since I disagree with Gaunty on about 99.9% of everything he says, I think we'd still make an unlikely hybrid were they to splice my DNA into one of his eggs.
*eats mould*
me too on the ID cards.
I'm reassured that the gaunty/collings venn diagram has minimal overlap.
Though I quite like the idea of a wheat hating reactionary bigot who really loves 1982.
I'd say the non-scientists amoung us aren't qualified to say whether it's a good thing or not in the long run.
But all of us are probably qualified to find the story a bit weird!
Mind you, you could make a lot of common things sound very odd and raise emotions by describing them in such a way as to make them odd (and using ample punctuation):
- giving a man an organ from a pig???!!
- injecting people with bits of diseases in order to "protect" them?!
- pulling a live baby from a woman's clacker?!?
- murdering a baby whist it's still in its mother's womb?!?
- declaring something as wrong without necessarily understanding that thing?!?
Great post Steven. You forgot the obvious:
People flying through the sky in big metal tubes!?!
What I can't understand about this is why a free vote is being allowed. How is this a "moral" issue any more than, say, deciding to go to war? If catholic ministers want to vote against this then they can bloody well resign and sod off to the back benches like good old Robin Cook did over Iraq.
If catholics want us to judge them morally on how they vote on this issue then I'm more than happy to judge them on the basis of whether or not they are supporting research for curing some pretty harsh diseases.
Less righteous anger against Catholics, please.
TBH, I'd judge any MP who voted against it similarly - catholic, muslim, protestant, athiest, flying spaghetti monster believeing etc. I know that's judgmental and all, but then being judged is quite a large part of politics. They ask us to do it every 5 years!
The point with the catholic thing is that for some reason this specific bit of legislation is getting the free vote because they demanded it. As I said before, there are lots of things that are equally if not more deserving of free votes, so I'm a bit miffed at the religious priveledge implied by this free vote.
I can see a situation where people will start voting for MPs not on their individual merits, but on religious grounds, since there's a possibility they'll be voting in parliament on religious grounds too. That can't be a good thing, can it?
At pretty much any time in the history of Parliament, most MPs would have told you that the decisions they make are "informed by their faith". Despite that, Ireland aside, nobody's ever seemed particularly bothered about Parliament consisting almost entirely of members professing to be Christians (or more specifically C of E). And people have always generally voted for an MP on the basis of party rather than individual merits anyway. Taking a candidate's religious beliefs into account seems to me to be better than simply saying, "He's Labour," or, "He's Conservative," or whatever. And most people in this country clearly don't give a shit about religion anyway, beyond apparently not trusting them Islams. The Government simply couldn't justify its stance on this vote. Whatever the "rights" and "wrongs" of this issue, it plainly isn't a "right" and "left" issue. (And yes, that's true of many other issues too.)
I don't worry about human DNA being inserted into a cow egg any more than I worry (as Stephen might have added) about humans happily drinking cows' breast milk. Or about humans pumping hormones into cows to promote the generation of that milk. Or about those flying tubes contributing hugely to global warming before they crash into my house and destroy it. I tell you, thinking's become so much easier since I got these black-and-white tinted glasses.
Keep pressing those buttons, Andrew!
"At pretty much any time in the history of Parliament, most MPs would have told you that the decisions they make are "informed by their faith"."
Except that generally speaking they're not. Generally speaking they're informed by their party whips. Particularly if you're a minister - you simply don't get to pick and choose how you vote and get to keep your ministerial position.
All I'm saying is, why is this more of a moral issue than most other issues? Simply because a Cardinal has said it is? Are the morals of the religious more important than those of the non-religious?
Before I start, I should make it clear that I respect people's differing opinions on this topic, and I certainly understand that it's not as simple as I'll no doubt probably sound like I believe in what I'm about to write. And with that, I like a deep breath...
The way I see it is as follows. Which is more important: a collection of cells that can never and will never develop into a human, and will never be allowed to grow beyond a week (I believe that's what the proposals are) or the chance to help thousands (probably millions) of sufferers of some of the most horrible diseases that at present have no chance of recovery? I'd certainly say the latter.
I knew someone who suffered from Motor-neurone disease, and at the moment once you develop it all you have to look forward to is your entire body stopping working over a period of 18 months or so. It's horrible for everybody involved. If these supposedly "frankenstein" experiments can give even the faintest hope to the sufferers and their families then I don't see why they shouldn't be done.
As for these experiments, they're simply using the cow's egg as a carrier for the human cells. This is due to a shortage of egg donors. There never will be cows born with the heads of babies, or humans which produce cow's milk or anything like that. I could think of analogies, but I'd (perhaps rightly) be accused of trivialising the matter.
Apologies for the long post, but it's something I feel quite passionate about.
Although I am prepared to accept regulated research on human embyros where they are tackling disease, I would much rather they used cows eggs and human skin cells. So, I'm not on the rooftops, or at least not about this!
It's not even so scary when you begin to understand it. All of the cow DNA is removed along with the nucleus of the egg so it just becomes a place to grow new cells, which means it's not a cow-human hybrid at all, they're just human stem cells grown artificially. As stem cells could be useful in research but we're not too keen on using cells from embryos, this seems like a pretty good idea to me.
They could use unfertilised human eggs to do the same job, but women tend to want to hold onto them. Cows have much less say in the matter.
Ian
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