From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri May 24 2002 - 22:44:18 MDT
On Friday, May 24, 2002, at 06:21 pm, Nick Bostrom wrote:
> You have misunderstood my proposal. The zygote doesn't fail to be a
> potential human because it will be aborted, but because, lacking
> certain necessary genes, it is not set on a natural course of
> development that may result in a person.
OK, you are right. This sounds a lot better than what I thought the
"time-bomb" was suggesting. Never forming at all is much preferable to
starting to form and then aborting. But if we carry this further, we
should be able to get rid of all differentiation genes so that nothing
forms. The single stem cells keep dividing into more stem cells, but
that's it. No other kinds of tissue are ever grown except stem cells.
Skip the zygote all together and go straight to producing the end
product only. No intermediate steps that look like human tissue forming.
>>>> A better approach would be to duplicate stem cells instead of
>>>> duplicating zygotes. Use adult stem cells.
>>>
>>> That is an alternative approach. At the current time, however, there
>>> are many things we can do with embryonic stem cells that we cannot do
>>> with adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are, for many
>>> applications, much more promising in the near term. By contrast, my
>>> suggestion is something that we could use now.
>>
>> We do not have the technology now to genetically modify sperm and ova
>> to implant timebombs that will abort the resulting zygote after a
>> specified length of time.
>
> As I said in the original email, we DO have the technology to do that.
> We can knock out specific genes that will cause the zygote to cease
> developing at a given stage (specifically, later than two weeks but
> before it can have turned into a person). I also mentioned that I had
> verified this with one of the leading experts in this field.
No offense, but I think you over-estimate our current abilities. We are
just mapping the genome now. We do not have the ability to turn genes
on and off, much less totally re-engineer the entire genome to control
what results from a DNA strand. I would be greatly interested in any
references that describe such an ability.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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