I saw in the news today
I think they should allow the researchers but also make a policy of no misuse. Each and every technology can be used for good or bad both. Like Nuclear technology can be used to make nuclear energy or nuclear weapon. There should be safeguards against misuse for this technology too. But preventing a technology would be a bad decision. What do you think?

This post has been edited by talktime: Nov 13 2006, 07:40 PM

I don't like it. I don't like the idea of fusing human DNA with a cow's DNA. I am a very religious man, and I do not think that this is what we should be doing with the bodies we have been given. I think that there is something holy about the human body and that we should not tamper with it, even if we only allow it to grow for a few days. Aside from religious reasons, what would happen if one of these embryos was not killed off and it grew to adulthood? We would have HUGE ethical issues regarding what to do with such a creature. We could also have problems with the "cures" to our diseases, because the embryos are not entirely of our species and many unforseen side-effects could present themselves and hurt people.

I doubt that they would ever be able to grow bast the state of an embryo. I think that they would be grown in a lab rather than in a cow. There wouldn't be any reason to let them grow any older than being a clump of stem cells. All stem cells are, are cells that have not yet been specialized to perform a certain purpose (muscle, skin, nerve, etc).

I don't mean to be disrespectful of others beliefs, but I don't understand why a microscopic glob of cells is any more precious than an actual human life. The stem cells could be used to save many lives and cure so many diseases and problems. I think that an actual human's life is more important than a few cells.

I agree with you. I think there is a distinct difference between little-formed stem cells and a human life. The cells would most likely be grown in a controlled lab and will not be developed into a humanlike cow creature. They will be "killed" before they grow into anything one might recognize as a human. Therefore, I think the researches should be granted permission, but with strict guidelines to prevent misuse, as talktime pointed out.

just hearing that makes it scary ... what happens when one day your friend is a cow that knows how to speak English or your girlfriend is a mix, cow skin but human body?

That's just freaky if it goes out of hand.

xboxrulz

I have not read the original article, but I suspect the scientists plan to extract the cow DNA and replace it with human DNA as a source for stem cells. Given the highly politically-, religiously-, and ethically-charged debate surrounding the use of "human" embryos, this method would quiet a lot--but not all--of the concerns.

A cow man is not possible ... at least not in the foreseeable future. Both bovine and human species are too different for successful [genetic] mating to occur. There are however other scary steps being taken by scientists who attempt to play god and ignore the ethical considerations / consequences. The United States has some laws to protect against unscrupulous human genetic manipulation and cloning. Other countries (such as Italy or Korea) may not hold the same view; so, there is a migration of such scientists to these countries to continue their research.

Exactly, so I don't know if these may get out of hands in the future.

xboxrulz

Also, the chromosomes would not be able to match, hence life would not be possible. What the scientist might do it replace bad DNA sectors with good ones. When i studied bio, to make it simple, our DNA strucutres are quite similar to many animals. If we can properly decode atleat one RNA strand properly, then we might be able to cure many diseases. They will just rearrange teh codons.

hey what kinda soul will the fused human-cow have? ;-)

i mean i dont think that any religion will go well with that. protests are inevitable in such a case.

This is definately scary, and I don't condone this. Whether you believe in a higher power,
or not (i.e. evolution), humans are meant to be humans,and human genes are
intended for humans. Humans have dominion over the world, and if you believe in
evolution, evolution should occur over time and in natural course.

This post has been edited by Kardus: Dec 3 2006, 11:15 PM