Okay, I admit, I did not watch the president's State of the Union Address on Tuesday night. I try to avoid watching the president give speeches if I can possibly help it, because he really, truly, seriously infuriates me, and then I sit and yell at my TV as if he could hear me through it. (My ex-H refused to watch the 2004 presidential debates with me after the first one. It takes a very special sort of person to put up with watching TV with me.) As a once-upon-a-time communications major and forensics team member, I absolutely can not stand the way that man gives speeches, regardless of the content!
But I have read parts of the transcript of the speech. And within the transcript, I found this glorious bit of crap:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research -- human cloning in all its forms ... creating or implanting embryos for experiments ... creating human-animal hybrids ... and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.
I'll not argue that there all kinds of bizarre moral issues in genetic and medical research, but creating human-animal hybrids? Please pardon my language, but.... what the fuck? Did some aide think it would be hilarious to slip a sci-fi story into the president's research briefings?
Absolutely mind-boggling.
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13 comments:
Human-animal hybrids! Manimals! :-p
I have no clue where that came from.
No No no. I heard something on CNN (perhaps?) of some kind of human-animal hybrid they are trying to create. Seriously.
Also, a few years ago, a friend of mine worked for a company that created Spider-Goats. Where a liquid form of "silk" similiar to that the Spider would produce would come out and could be separated from the actual milk of a cow from the teet.
A crazy world we live in.
"Crazy" being an understatement!
Please pardon me for using the old cliche', "Playing GOD", but that is what is happening.
It's true. I also read of some kind of animal DNA combined with human DNA to prevent certain life-threatening diseases. I wish I could remember what I read it in; but I do know it wasn't MAD Magazine. I wish it was!
I agree, Banwein; I cannot sit thru one message from Dubya without hollering at him or wanting to put my fist through the tv. But this one time, his writers did their homework. He may not be aware of what he said, of course, until afterward, when he re-read his speech and said "WTF?! Did Chris Carter write this?!"
Wasn't there a heart transplant within the past couple of years; a man recieved a sheep or a goat's heart? I never followed up on that, so I don't know if it was successful. But messing with DNA codes? I mean to make hybrids...?! That definately crosses the moral line.
I don't doubt it one bit.
Say what you want about Dubya, I STILL think he's better than the alternative.
But a hybrid, as I understand it (and anyone with more science knowledge than I have may feel free to correct me), is a whole and entire organism. Human and animal DNA combined to use as a medical treatment would not constitute a hybrid. A hybrid would be, for example, a mule (child of horse and donkey, two different species), or a pink rose formed by cross-pollination between red and white roses.
So a human-animal hybrid would be.... really messed up.
Hmmm... you're both right. A true hybrid would be a liger or a mule, an offspring of two different species. A genetic hybrid, which I think he was getting at, is one that has some genes in common with another.
Stephen's dead-on with that. That's a genetic hybrid, same as some of the glow-in-the-dark mice I have seen. They insert jellyfish DNA.
Okay, so, for argument's sake, let's give the President the benefit of the doubt and say his speechwriters were just really sloppy with their words, and he meant genetic hybrids.
So, we can do useless things like create glow-in-the-dark mice with jellyfish DNA spliced in. But we can also do amazing things like create a transplant heart which will never be rejected by the recipient by combining human and pig DNA. Doubtless this technology has the potential to be horribly abused. Every technology does. But if we believe in God, we also believe that God gave us the minds and curiosity and insight to discover such things. How can we know that we were not meant to discover this and use it for the betterment of all?
Well I see nothing wrong with experimentation and such. Besides, as I've always said, Americans have a God-like complex anyway.
I want to order a hybrid that is Part Llama and Part Redneck Man.
or Part ostrich and Part Oprah.
I see little problem with tinkering with animal DNA to add in human. Then, you have an organ or tissue that is perfectly suited for transplant.
Animal to human, though, I have problems. Eyes of an eagle, speed of a cheetah, strength of a bull, all for $.
Bougie I laughed out loud at that llama redneck hybrid My boss now thinks Im on drugs.
They should have talked about the genetic experiments that supposedly happened on the lost continent of Atlantis. That would really have given Dubya credibility!! I mean we all know that's actual 'history' right??
If I was a hybrid I'd want to be part cat. However, if we're talking mutations? Make me like wolverine anyday! I want claws!!
kat's mom: how do we know if there are indeed such hybrids in some secret government facility a million miles from nowhere. If you believe in the lost continent of Atlantis you may believe that they were doing just such experiments and creating "workers" which had sub-normal IQ's.
Poor Bainwen. This must have really ruffled your feathers, because I don't think I've ever heard you swear on your blog. I'm sorry for giggling. I just found it humorus.
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