I just had to share something I saw on an episode of "Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman" the other night - and then of course some comments and questions I have about it. Morgan Freeman explained a new way of procreation that could change the world. Apparently, this kind of technology is coming soon for the world and may be available in the near future.
The first thing Morgan Freeman explained on the show was the possibility for homosexuals to have a baby, using their own DNA. You would have to watch the show to get the best full explanation of how this might be possible, but from what I understood, scientists might be able to take one man's sperm and turn it into an egg. However, scientists are having a harder time taking a woman's egg and turning it into a sperm. But the possibilities are endless, and who knows what we'll see happen in the future. I think it's also a good idea to point out that these babies would have to be grown in an artificial uterus, which is interesting. Apparently, this artificial uterus is supposed to be just as good as a human uterus. But would it be right to grow a baby in one? Would it be just as good as natural child-bearing? Would the child turn out to be normal? Some scientists actually did an experiment to test this theory on sharks. They were able to breed 14 perfectly healthy, normal sharks in an artificial uterus. Why not humans? But I have some more questions. Would the child be accepted in the world? Would all kinds of people end up using these artificial uteri for childbirth, rather than having to endure 9 months of pregnancy and hours of painful childbirth? I mean, if you think about it, that sounds a lot less intensive and a lot more fun. Also, you have to think about all the people in the world who can't have babies. This kind of technology would be great for them, so they could have their own biological children. Would this kind of technology cause a major spike in world population growth? I've talked before about how the world population is at an all-time high, and that there are some serious problems that can come from that in my note "Seven Billion and Counting."
Another thing Morgan Freeman explained was the possibility of creating a splice between humans and animals - not in the sense of what you guys are probably thinking, though. Apparently, scientists think they may be able to take certain DNA from animals and inject that DNA sequence into that of an unborn human baby, so that that baby will be born with certain genetic characteristics that are characteristic of the animal whose DNA was used in the sequence. For instance, scientists actually took some spider silk-forming DNA and injected it into the DNA sequence of an unborn baby goat. That goat was born with the ability to produce silk like a spider. Of course, the goat was not able to spin the silk, but when the goat was milked, a scientist was able to process out all of the milk and find silk in its milk. Even though that is a seemingly useless characteristic for a goat to have, it's interesting and really shows us some scientific possibilities for us. What kinds of DNA sequences could we merge with our own DNA? Could we create humans who can fly? Could we create humans with extremely huge jaws and claws? Could we create humans that can run at the speed of a cheetah? Could we create humans who have gills and can live underwater? What would we need this for? How would that affect competition? Would it create a major "Survival of the Fittest" game, in which people with jaws and claws kill off whoever doesn't have jaws and claws? What kind of superhuman species could we create from this, and would it be good, bad, or necessary? And would it be wrong to do such a thing? And would this be a way to weed out diseases and other unfavorable DNA from our genetics?
Ok, I'm pretty sure everyone's heard about this, but it kind of helps to explain what Morgan Freeman said by explaining this first. Scientists are discovering ways to make babies with multiple parents (as in more than 2.) By this, I mean that it's possible they might be able to take certain favorable DNA from one person, other favorable DNA from someone else, and other favorable DNA from yet another person to form a human that has all of these favorable characteristics. Then, we could essentially make "perfect" humans. We could take athletic DNA from a professional soccer player, math skills DNA from a high-performance accountant, and the beauty DNA from a famous model and put them all together in a petri dish to form a baby that essentially has no flaws and has all these great characteristics. Is this right? Is it a good idea to try to make "perfect" people? If everyone were perfect, I guess there would be no appreciation for anything. Maybe everything and everyone would be efficient, but then there would be no competition, and no one would be special. Is that a good thing or a bad thing, though? Is this "Playing God," so to speak? This could certainly be a way to wipe out unfavorable diseases, such as Down's Syndrome. Well, Morgan Freeman took this to the next level in his third subject of this episode of the show. He explained that lots of diseases arise, because human cells end up having bad mitochondria in them. So if we take the nucleus of a diseased cell and put it into a healthy cell, the disease would not arise. In this case, the baby with these cells would have 3 (or maybe even more) parents, since he/she now has the DNA from more than his/her 2 original parents. But more importantly, this baby will be healthy and survive. This kind of technology is actually currently illegal, but lots of scientists are pushing this, because they say that tons of diseases come from bad mitochondria in the cells, and being allowed to perform these procedures would potentially wipe out diseases such as epilepsy, deafness, dementia, etc. If this were legal, how would this affect the death rate? Along with all over forms of technology that save lives and conquer diseases, we have to think about how the world population will be affected by it.
Technology seems to be taking us a long way, and it really is up for every individual to decide if these new technologies are worth our time and money, if it's right or wrong for us to take technology this far, and if it would overall be beneficial for us to take technology to these insane levels. I mean, we might end up killing ourselves with our own creations. Afterall, people do sometimes say that we're so smart that we're dumb. Technology is great and interesting, but are we going too far? Are we committing a crime against nature by pushing technology to these new and insane levels? Are we setting ourselves up for some crazy technological problems in the future? Are we killing ourselves with our own technology, like Dr. Frankenstein did when he created his monster? That's definitely up to the individual to decide, and it's something we may never know, or maybe we'll only know when it's too late.
Also, I'd like to mention that, if you're interested in talk about whether technologies for genetic engineering are right or wrong and/or talk about ways it can be beneficial for the world, you should check out my note "Does That Sheep Have Three Heads???" (I also just wanted to mention how funny it is that this is the 69th. Dodger Logic note, given the content and name of the note.)
An example of an animal being grown in an artificial uterus.
This is NOT what I'm referring to when I'm talking about animal splices. Just because you mix the DNA of a goat with that of a spider does not mean the hybrid will turn out looking like this!
This is where I got all this information, and it's a really interesting show if you want to check it out. Plus, Morgan Freeman is awesome.
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