The World First Genetically Modified Babies

Given that the technology has been existing then having the first genetically modified humans seems of no surprise to me.

From Daily Mail.com

The world's first genetically modified humans have been created, it was revealed last night.

The disclosure that 30 healthy babies were born after a series of experiments in the United States provoked another furious debate about ethics.

So far, two of the babies have been tested and have been found to contain genes from three 'parents'.

Fifteen of the children were born in the past three years as a result of one experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science of St Barnabas in New Jersey.

The babies were born to women who had problems conceiving. Extra genes from a female donor were inserted into their eggs before they were fertilised in an attempt to enable them to conceive.

Genetic fingerprint tests on two one-year- old children confirm that they have inherited DNA from three adults --two women and one man.

The fact that the children have inherited the extra genes and incorporated them into their 'germline' means that they will, in turn, be able to pass them on to their own offspring.

Altering the human germline - in effect tinkering with the very make-up of our species - is a technique shunned by the vast majority of the world's scientists.

Geneticists fear that one day this method could be used to create new races of humans with extra, desired characteristics such as strength or high intelligence.

One way or another people’s curiosity will lead to more experimentation, which is why we should expect human cloning to be next, in spite political opposition.

This reminds me of two “cloning is bad'” movies: Scarlett Johansson’s The Island and Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s the 6th Day

Expect the rapid changes in technology to challenge people’s ingrained beliefs and lifestyles.

Will Jurassic Park (The Movie) Become Reality?

I’ve always been fascinated, and thus repeatedly watched via cable TV, the highly successful sci-fi thriller trilogy film of the Michael Crichton (novel) and Steven Spielberg (director), the Jurassic Park. The movie has been about the unforeseen consequences of turning a menagerie of cloned dinosaurs into an amusement park.

Well what seemed as merely a science fiction in the past may perhaps become a reality soon. I’m not referring to the amusement park of dinosaurs, but of the technology that would enable one.

According to the Telegraph (which includes the diagram above)

The woolly mammoth, extinct for thousands of years, could be brought back to life in as little as four years thanks to a breakthrough in cloning technology.

Previous efforts in the 1990s to recover nuclei in cells from the skin and muscle tissue from mammoths found in the Siberian permafrost failed because they had been too badly damaged by the extreme cold.

But a technique pioneered in 2008 by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama, of the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology, was successful in cloning a mouse from the cells of another mouse that had been frozen for 16 years.

Now that hurdle has been overcome, Akira Iritani, a professor at Kyoto University, is reactivating his campaign to resurrect the species that died out 5,000 years ago.

If these scientists will be spot on with their predictions, then the implications would be REVOLUTIONARY. You may call it a black swan- a rare high impact event.

Since one thing may lead to another, then it won’t likely be just about Jurassic Park and about possibly saving endangered or the restoring of extinct species, but likewise the possibility of resurrecting our ancestors!

While it would be a pleasure to see Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Menger debate Keynes live, it would be a nightmare to see Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot or Marcos back, yikes!

We’d also probably see our world co-exist with clones ala the movie The Island, starred by Scarlett Johannson. Of course, am guilty here of the projecting current trends into the future as a way of mental stimulation.

Nevertheless, the rapid progression of technological innovations never cease to amaze me.