Should we be playing God?

[megamaced]

I read a story on the BBC news site the other day. Apparently a team of scientists have genetically modified a mosquito so it is resilient to Malaria. The idea is to reduce the spread of Malaria to humans through bites from the infected insects. The next stage would be to release these genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild with the hope that they eventually drive out the 'natural' type.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand the motive behind this. 100 million people are taken ill every year and there's around a million deaths worldwide. But thinking ethically, I don't think we should be playing God. If we allow something like this to happen, at what point do we say enough is enough? Where does it stop? Should we be allowed to 'change' whatever we don't like? And what are the consequences? We've already seen what happens when you play around with food. Inevitability, all those chemicals aren't doing our bodies any good. Of course there are motives for GM foods as well. The food lasts longer, it's easier to cook; "stick it in the microwave for 10 minutes and your done"! But there are consequences. It's detrimental to your health.

And I just think that once we accept this as the norm. There is no stopping where it can go.

 

[Matt]

No thats wrong!!

I agree totaly. You can't start messing with things likje that. There are consequenses to everything. When you release this mosquito and it erradicates the real deal there will be consequences for the food chains that the original mosquito uses to be a part of.

Not only caould that kind of thing be bad for the enviroment but its morily defunct. This is man trying to controll everything to his extremely unnatural expectations. This kind of thing could set an example, a standard, and scientist will keep pushing genetic interfereance untill everything is screwed up. An example of that kind of society where everything is changed unaturaly would be dear Mr Michael Jackson.

 

[RHochstenbach]

Another example is the creation of robots, and eventually with an AI included in their 'minds'. This might get useful to help people, but it could also result in robots taking over te world. Changing humans into slaves...:confused: .
Experimenting with everything is not bad, but there are limits. Lets say someone finds a way to revive the dead, you still wouldn't do that, right.

 

[megamaced]

Another example is the creation of robots, and eventually with an AI included in their 'minds'. This might get useful to help people, but it could also result in robots taking over te world. Changing humans into slaves...:confused: ..

You've been watching too many films! Arnie is human, not some crazy android :chk:

 

[Swansen]

there no physical way to revive the dead, there is no possible way zombie could exist, jut not physically possible. I dunno, i'm on the boarder on this one, as i feel there are great things we can do, but at the same time, i do believe that we should be very careful about what we change. And like you said Mega, it comes down to ethics. Do i think this is a good thing yes, why, because there are so many people that make so many non natural type habitats for mosquito's that they've become more or less an unnatural problem. There is way more of them than there should be, and they carry a lot of messed up stuff around with them. You'd be thinking a lot differently if you or some one you cared about was dieing from a mosquito bite.

 

[megamaced]

that they've become more or less an unnatural problem. There is way more of them than there should be, and they carry a lot of messed up stuff around with them.

You could say the same thing about us humans too :confused:

 

[Swansen]

yes i know it, its all a really big problem, and nothing is being done about anything

 

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Of course there are motives for GM foods as well. The food lasts longer, it's easier to cook; "stick it in the microwave for 10 minutes and your done"! But there are consequences. It's detrimental to your health.

What's detrimental to our health? I haven't heard of any genetically modified food that's detrimental to our health ... as a matter of fact I'm sure it isn't. The only potential health issue in agricultural practices that I know of is pesticide use: the pesticides sprayed on the field could eventually end up in our stomach.

As far as this type of scientific activity goes in general, I don't see a big deal here. I see nothing wrong with genetically modifying food or other plants; in fact I think it's great. It's awesome that we can make tomatoes, for instance, which are more resistant to diseases or pests or bad weather and that we therefore get better, larger harvest yields as a result.

Regarding the mosquito, however -- well, that's more complicated. This is the first time I've heard of such a thing, but it sounds rather fascinating! So thanks for bringing this up, mega, hehe. But should it be done? I don't know yet. I'm neutral right now because I think this prospect requires a lot of considerations about the mechanics of how this mosquito would be released and how it would eventually replace the wildtype mosquito. In other words, considerations about how it would affect ecosystems and such. And I really don't know much about all that, that's something all the biologists would know better. But right now, from my limited perspective from the couch of my house, I don't see any fundamental obstacles. I don't think it's unethical or anything like that. It looks to me like a very interesting idea which, if considered very carefully, might be well worth a shot.

 

[Matt]

I agree with darussiaman. I think plant modifications to benifit mankind that is done in a responsible way is very good.

I just see animal and human genetic modifications as unetical. Its hard to reason it out but basially it just feel s to me that mam is going to abuse this knind of thing and mess everything up. Its like a whole lot of idiots with test tubes trying to play god. I say idiots because it is difficult if not possible to forsee all the consequences to a thing like this.

 

[thomas234]

Personally I think "playing God" is a bad idea. Presumebly Mosquitos have evolved to give Malaria to humans for a reason, and by changing that there could be some unforseen consequences. When America dropped the nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the consequences weren't thought of, and people are still suffering today. Things have evolved to how they are for a reason, and changing things would mess that up.

That's my opinion anyway, and I'm sure many people will disagree, but that's why we have free speech!

 

[Big B]

Mosquito's are the carrier, and, if this were implemented, it would eradicate a major problem. The biggest question here would be how long it would take to get the malaria-resistant mosquitoes out and into the gene pool.

I have a friend who's parents were missionaries over in Africa. He got malaria, and (at least the strain he got) has a nasty habit of re-occurring. It happens to the rest of his family too, and it prevents them from donating blood. I don't know if this is standard for everyone, but I got the impression it was. If that's true, malaria isn't just another bad mojo disease.

If this were a way to eliminate the AIDS virus, would you all be saying the same thing?

 

[Matt]

But B its not that simple. Is it right to change the very core of how we are made. The issue i think is not whether this this can be helpful (most would agree that it would help a great deal) but whether it is morally correct to fiddle with the way things are.

 

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Presumebly Mosquitos have evolved to give Malaria to humans for a reason, and by changing that there could be some unforseen consequences.

This will probably have no effect at all on what you think about this :P , since it sounds like you just get "a bad feeling" about it, like several other posters here (which is totally fine, I'm not implying any kind of judgment), but I'd still like to argue, for the sake of discussion, that I think what you said there is rather wrong :D . The malaria-causing microbe is an independent organism. The mosquito's evolution has nothing to do with it. Molaria-bearing mosquitoes go about their blood sucking business like any other mosquitoes. It's the malaria-causing microbe which has evolved a sort of symbiotic relationship (I guess) with the mosquito to survive inside the mosquito and then to infect humans. But the mosquito itself experiences absolutely no effect from this! So I don't see how you can reason that the mosquito somehow evolved to facilitate this process. It's just an evolutionary accident that the microbe uses the mosquito as a vehicle of sorts.

So that's also why this idea seems to me to carry few, if any, consequences. It doesn't feel to me as if we'd be messing with anything really. Presumably the mosquito itself has not been changed in any other way except for that one little detail. And this malaria microbe? Well, it's just a parasite. I haven't researched this yet, and I have to go in like 5 minutes, but what I'm thinking is that a human parasite probably doesn't have a large role in ecosystems. Think about it: if the malaria protozoan lives and multiplies inside our body for the most part, how would it affect the rest of "nature" even if it went extinct? This isn't like driving extinct some major predator in a food chain or anything like that, so it just doesn't seem like it would disrupt anything.

 

[Big B]

We've messed with plants, crossbred other animals before, and this isn't destroying the mosquito...so why is it a big deal when we already have some sort of genetic manipulation going on as it is? Purebred cats, dogs, horses, etc...while it's relying more on natural means to get a particular design, are you guys going to be up in arms about that?

What's the difference between this and making pest-resistant corn?

 

[Matt]

For info's sake. I remember doing the malaria parasite in bio a few years back. The mosquito is the vestor for the malaria and that means that it will only carry the parasite but not be harmed by the parasite. Yes killing off malaria would be good but to replace a genuine species with one that was created in a lab... Come on, you cant be suggesting that they can create a perfect copy of this mosquito with the only difference being that they are not suitable to be the vector for malaria. They may get a near perfect copy but scientists cant see everything that may have changed untill the muatant is released. say for arguments sake that this mosquito is more resistant to its predators for some reason and this makes them overpopulate; or say they are less resistant to some desease and one day their whole population is killed off by a desease therby causeing a collapse in the food web of their habitat.

What im trying to get at is that we can not see all the consequences of our actions now and we may do something (maybe not in this mosquito case but in another) that causes another problem.

Then if it is ok to mess with plant genes then oh well its also ok to mess with animal genes... then its only another step to creating freak humans. And hence the original question of this thread is proposed agian. should we be playing god...

 

[DaRuSsIaMaN]

Purebred cats, dogs, horses, etc...while it's relying more on natural means to get a particular design, are you guys going to be up in arms about that?

What's the difference between this and making pest-resistant corn?

Yeah well Big B's point remains unchallenged (so far). I agree, Matt, it's certainly possible that scientists won't foresee something, but then why does no one see any problem with what Big B is talking about? As an aside, I actually think it is quite feasible that the mosquito will be identical in all else except for this new malaria resistance, or that the other differences will be unnoticeable ... but even if not, surely all of mankind's previous experimentation with animals has been much greater! Besides dogs and cats which Big_B mentioned we also have dogs, cows, and all other farm animals, all of which were domesticated and then bred and changed overtime. This mosquito thing seems tiny compared to all that work humans have accomplished on certain animals over thousands of years by now.

 

[Matt]

Yes but domesticated animals if left in the wild would die off because they do not fit into nature anymore so that point about humans cahnging animals cant be applied here because we take care of all these domesticated animals. we cant see how these changes would affect natural enviroments because they do not live in natural enviroments

Dont get me wrong here, im not seeing this with with an immature standpoint for the sake of having a standpoint. What im try to show is that allthough these amazing scientific advances only seem to have positive effects there may be drastic effects that we cannot predict.

Another parralell would be the use of creatine in sport. (creatine is a protein complex that sportspeople take to help build muscle quicker). A lot of sportspeople are taking the stuff even though there are no long term effects studies to date. We simply dont know if it has negative long term effects. I dont take it even though it would/could improve my squash because the long term effects could be bad but a lot of people (like the guys who like the idea of releasing these mosquitoes) can only see the benifits of it now and therefore overlook the dangers.

I am by nature prudent in my aproach though so i concede that i may be exagerating and that there probably wont be any negatives

 

[Anti-Trend]

We've messed with plants, crossbred other animals before, and this isn't destroying the mosquito...so why is it a big deal when we already have some sort of genetic manipulation going on as it is? Purebred cats, dogs, horses, etc...while it's relying more on natural means to get a particular design, are you guys going to be up in arms about that?

What's the difference between this and making pest-resistant corn?

Yeah well Big B's point remains unchallenged (so far). [/QUOTE]OK, I'll bite. Most pure-bred animals are so inbred that they begin having health and even reproductive problems. Take for instance the bulldog, which has severe nasal and respitory problems. Or the pug, which has both that and it's eyeballs tend to pop out of its skull. Or the royal family, or any other tribe which has inbred throughout history. Doing things like this effectively breed out natural diversity. Diversity is the enemy of mass-disease, and conversely lack of diversity helps disease spread like wildfire. This principle even extends to operating systems, and those in the know will realize to what I'm referring.

 

[Karanislove]

[ot]

(creatine is a protein complex that sportspeople take to help build muscle quicker). A lot of sportspeople are taking the stuff even though there are no long term effects studies to date. We simply dont know if it has negative long term effects.

You scaring me:ohah: I have recently started taking creatine:confused:[/ot]

 

[Willz]

I think its good genetically modifing mosquito's, I dont see any animal that benifits from these little nasty insects, Its not going to have an impact on the enviroment if we eliminated malaria from them, except, humans wouldent get it from them..... which obviously is a good thing, its better than leaving it how it is for us all to catch malaria, I dont think mosquitos are giving us malaria for a reason, or maybe there really some inteligent little thing thats trying to take over the world haha, its for the best..., I dont know anyone that would like to catch malaria.